The man straightened to his full height and drew back a step. His eyes narrowed.

"Mind if I call the next?" I asked.

He looked at the phone beside my hand, then back to the open floor. With a forced casualness, he shut his door halfway. "Keep it down."

Pleased with myself, I pulled the stack of papers closer. Glenn went back behind his computer, typing with an annoying slowness.

My mood quickly sobered as I scanned the coroner's report, skipping the picture portion this time. Apparently the man had been eaten alive from the extremities inward. They knew he had been alive at the time by the tearing pattern of the wounds. And they were fairly confident he had been eaten by the lack of body parts.

Trying to ignore the mental picture my imagination provided, I called the contact number. There was no answer, not even a machine. I called his former place of work next, my intuition settling into a nice groove at the name of the place: Seary Security.

The woman there was very nice, but she didn't know anything, telling me that Mr. Seary's wife was away at a "health resort" trying to relearn how to sleep. She did look in her files, though, telling me that they had been contracted to install a safe on the Kalamack estate.

"Security…" I murmured, pinning Mr. Seary's packet to the bulletin board atop Glenn's sticky notes to get it out of my way. "Hey, Glenn. You have any more of those sticky notes?"

He rummaged in his desk drawer, tossing me a pack, shortly followed by a pen. I scrawled the name of Mr. Seary's workplace and stuck it to his report. After a moment's thought, I did the same to the woman's, writing "safe designer" on it. I added a second sticky note with "Talked to T" circled in black ink.

A scuffing in the hallway brought my eyes up from the third report. I made a noncommittal smile recognizing the overweight cop, minibag of chips in hand. He acknowledged me and Glenn's nod, coming to a rest in the doorway. "Glenn's got you doing his secretary work?" he asked, his good-old-boy tone almost thick enough to cut.

"No," I said, smiling sweetly. "Trent Kalamack is the witch hunter, and I'm just taking a moment to tie the links together."

He grunted, eyeing Glenn. Glenn wearily returned his look, adding a shrug. "Rachel," he said, "this is Officer Dunlop. Dunlop, this is Ms. Morgan."

"Charmed," I said, not offering my hand lest I get it back covered in potato-chip grease.

Not getting the hint, the man walked in, crumbs falling to the tile floor. "Whatcha got?" he said, coming to peer at my thick reports stuck to the board atop Glenn's faded sticky notes.

"Too soon to say." I pushed him out of my space with a finger in his gut. "Excuse me."

He backed up but didn't leave, going instead to see what Glenn was doing. Heaven save me from cops on break. The two talked over Glenn's suspicions concerning Dr. Anders, their rising and falling voices soothing.

I blew chip crumbs off my papers, my pulse quickening as I saw that the third victim had worked at the city racetrack in weather control. It was a very difficult field of work, heavy in ley line magic. The man had been pressed to death while working late, stirring up a fall shower to dampen down the track for the next day's race. The actual implement of death was unknown. There had been nothing in the stables heavy enough. I didn't look at that picture, either.

It had been at this point that the media realized the three deaths were connected despite the varying methods of death and named the sadistic freak the "witch hunter."

A quick phone call got me his sister, who said of course he knew Trent Kalamack. That the councilman often called her brother to ask about the state of the track, but that she hadn't heard if he had talked to Mr. Kalamack before his death or not, and that she was just sick about her brother's death, and did I know how long it took for insurance checks to come in?

I finally got my condolences wedged in between her chattering and hung up on her. Everyone handled death differently, but that was offensive.

"Did he know Mr. Kalamack?" Glenn asked.

"Yup." I pinned the packet to the board and stuck a note to it with the words "weather maintenance" on it.

"And his job is important because…"

"It takes a heckuva lot of ley line skill to manipulate the weather. Trent raises racehorses. He could have easily been out there and talked to him and no one would have given it a second thought." I added another note with "Knew T" on it.

Old Dunlop-the-cop made an interested noise and ambled over. He hung a respectful three feet behind me this time. "Done with this one?" he asked, fingering the first.

"For now," I said, and he pulled it from the board. Some of Glenn's notes fluttered down to fall behind the table. Glenn's jaw tightened.

Feeling like someone was starting to take me seriously, I sat straighter. The overweight man ambled back to Glenn, making noises as he found the pictures. He dropped the report onto Glenn's desk, and I heard the patter of chip crumbs. Another officer came in, and an impromptu meeting seemed to be taking shape as they clustered around Glenn's computer screen. I turned my back on them and looked at the next report.

The fourth victim had been found in early August. The papers had said the cause of death was severe blood loss. What they hadn't said was that the man had been disemboweled, torn apart as if ravaged by animals. His boss had found him in the basement of his workplace, still alive and trying to push his insides back into him where they belonged. It was more difficult than usual since he only had one arm, the other hanging by his underarm skin.

"Here you go, ma'am," a voice said at my elbow, and I jerked. Heart pounding, I stared at a young FIB officer. "Sorry," he said as he extended a sheaf of papers. "Detective Glenn asked me to bring these up when they finished. Didn't mean to startle you." His eyes dropped to the report in my hand. "Nasty, isn't it?"

"Thank you," I said, accepting the reports. My fingers were trembling as I dialed the number for the victim's boss when there was no next of kin.

"Jim's," a tired voice said after the third ring.

My greeting froze in my throat. I recognized his voice. It was the announcer at Cincinnati's illegal rat fights. Heart pounding, I hung up, missing the button the first time. I stared at the wall. The room had gone silent.

"Glenn?" I said, my throat tight. I turned to see him surrounded by three officers, all looking at me.

"Yeah?"

My hands shook as I extended the report across the small space. "Will you look at the crime scene photos for me?"

His face blank, he took it. I turned to his wall of sticky notes, listening to the pages turn. Feet shuffled. "What am I looking for?" he asked.

I swallowed hard. "Rat cages?" I asked.

"Oh my God," someone whispered. "How did she know?"

I swallowed again. I couldn't seem to stop. "Thanks."

With motions slow and deliberate, I took the report and stuck it to the bulletin board. My handwriting was shaky as I wrote "T availability" and stuck it on the pages. The report said he had been a bouncer at a dance club, but if he was one of Dr. Anders's students, he had been skilled with ley lines and was more likely the head of security at Jim's rat fights.

I reached for the fifth packet with a grim feeling. It was Trent—I knew it was Trent—but the horror of what he had done was killing any joy I might find in it.

I felt the men behind me watching as I leafed through the report, recalling that the fifth victim, found three weeks ago, had died the same way as the first. A call to her tearful mother told me she had met Trent in a specialty bookstore last month. She remembered because her daughter had been surprised that such a young, important man was interested in collectable, pre-Turn fairy-tale anthologies. After confirming that her daughter had been employed in a security subscription firm, I gave her my condolences and hung up.