And, more often than not, coming up empty.

Still coolly professional, on the outside at least, she said, "The paranormal as defined by the SCU has absolutely nothing to do with occult or satanic rites or practices. That is a totally different thing, not grounded in science but in belief, in faith. Just like any religion."

"Religion?"

"To most practitioners, that's what it is. If you want to understand the occult, that's the first rule: It's a belief system, and not inherently evil in and of itself. The second rule is, it's not a single belief system; there are as many sects within the occult as there are in most religions. Satanism alone has at least a dozen different churches that I know about."

"Churches? Riley-"

She interrupted his indignation to add firmly, "Practitioners of the occult may be nontraditional and their rites and habits blasphemous from the viewpoint of the major religions, but that doesn't make their beliefs any less valid from their own point of view. And believe it or not, Satan is rarely involved-even in Satanism. Nor is any sort of sacrifice, barring the symbolic kind. Most occult groups simply honor and worship-for want of a better term-nature. The earth, the elements. There's nothing paranormal about that."

Usually, at least.

"And the SCU?"

"The SCU is built around people with real human abilities, abilities that are, however rare and beyond the norm, scientifically definable." If only as possibilities.

He shrugged off the distinction, saying only, "Well, call it whatever you like, you obviously know more about this shit than the rest of us. So you think this is somebody's idea of religion?" He waved a hand back at the carnage behind him. "This?"

"I think it's too early to make assumptions."

Jake gestured again toward the hanging body. "That's not an assumption, it's a murder victim. And if he was killed in some kind of ritual, then, goddammit, Riley, I need to know that."

Still reluctant, she turned her attention at last to that victim.

Riley had seen corpses before. In war and in peace. She'd seen them in the textbooks, in the field, at the body farm. She had seen corpses so mangled they barely looked human anymore, destroyed by explosions or dismembered by an arguably human hand. And she'd seen them on the medical examiner's table, laid open with their organs glistening in the bright, harsh lights.

She had never gotten used to it.

So it demanded even more concentration and focus, even more energy, for her to study that dangling body.

Yet, at the same time, once she began studying it, she found herself moving closer, circling it warily. Absorbing the details.

He was naked and virtually covered in blood. There were numerous shallow cuts all over his torso, front and back, all of which had undoubtedly bled for some time before what looked to her to be the final cut and ultimate cause of death.

Decapitation.

Out loud, slowly, she said, "I'm no M.E., but I think the cuts on the body came first. That he was tortured, maybe over a period of hours. And that his head was hacked off while he was hanging here."

"What makes you sure of that?" Jake asked.

"The amount of blood on the boulders directly below him; it probably came mostly from the shallow cuts, and there's a lot of it. The spray pattern out in front of his body, on the rocks and on the ground, looks arterial to me. His heart was still beating when his throat was cut. I think somebody was behind him, probably standing on the tallest boulder, and grabbed him by the hair. Then-"

Leah made a choked sound and hurried back up the path away from the clearing.

Riley gazed after her, then looked at Jake and grimaced. "I forget some cops aren't used to this sort of thing."

He was looking a bit queasy himself but didn't budge. "Yeah. Okay, what else can you tell me?" He considered, then added, "If somebody was standing on that tallest rock and had to keep his balance while he-he sawed off a head-he must have held on to something. Or somebody else held on to him."

"It takes some strength to decapitate by sawing or hacking, even with a sharp knife or other tool," she agreed. "Especially with the vic's arms in the way so that he had to reach around them for at least the first part of the job. Keeping his balance would have been tricky." She circled behind the tallest upright boulder and studied the ground intently. "No sign of marks left by a ladder."

"Just don't tell me the guy levitated or something, okay?"

She ignored that. "Your forensics people have been all over this, right?"

"Like I said. Pictures from every angle and samples of everything."

At the side of the larger boulders, a cluster of three smaller ones made it quite easy to climb up onto the seat, and it was likely many a hiker in these woods had done just that over the years.

Riley hesitated only a moment, but since she had picked up absolutely nothing clairvoyantly, she had to conclude that all her psychic senses were AWOL. Touching the blood-spattered boulders was unlikely to change that.

Probably.

She drew a breath and climbed up onto the seat so that she could look at the slightly curved top edge of the back, unwilling to admit to herself that she was glad even the usual five senses seemed to be functioning at less than accustomed norms.

The smell of blood and death would have been overpowering.

It occurred to her only as she was standing there on the blood-spattered rock that she might well be wearing the same shoes-casual running shoes-that she'd likely been wearing the day before. Or the night before. She had awakened barefoot, but there had been no blood on her feet, she remembered that much.

What if there was blood on these shoes?

She hadn't thought to check.

Man, I'm losing my mind as well as my memory. Why the hell didn't I check my shoes?

"Riley?"

Pretending that her stillness and silence hadn't lasted too long, Riley rose on tiptoe in order to study the top of the tallest boulder. "If he stood up here, it doesn't look like he left any helpful traces."

"Yeah, that's what my people said. No marks from a shoe or any forensic traces at all. Including blood. All the blood went on the flat rock you're standing on or got splashed on the upright part of the taller rock, but not a drop hit the top."

"Odd."

"Is it? That rock's not really close to the body and, as you said, most of the blood on it is from drips that fell straight down."

"Yeah, but that's the thing. He should have struggled. If the body had been moving at all, I'd expect to see at least a few droplets of blood on that top edge."

"Maybe he was drugged."

"That's certainly possible." But why torture somebody who isn't conscious of what you're doing? Unless maybe the shedding of blood was the point… "I assume you've requested a tox screen?"

"Definitely. The blood and tissues will be checked six ways from Sunday."

"Good enough."

Riley turned on the seat to study the body from this closer position, trying not to think about whether her shoes had had blood on them before she'd climbed up here. Because they certainly did now.

Since the body was hanging directly above the front edge of the seat, her position put her roughly at eye level with the small of his back. She studied the distance between the body and the tallest boulder, and said slowly, "Balance had to be a real problem, if the killer was standing up there. He also had to lean forward quite a bit in order to reach the vic."

"He could have pulled him closer," Jake offered. "At least long enough to get the job done."

"But then the vic's head would have been pulled behind the arms, and there's no arterial spray to indicate that happened. All the evidence says his head was forward when his throat was cut, or at least between his arms, not pulled back behind them."