He turned back to Hauser who was already breathing like a cornered animal and trying to smile for the cameras. “Tell them you’ll make a statement as soon as you can and you’d appreciate it if they’d stay across the street to leave the scene clear for emergency vehicles.”

A Southampton cruiser drifted around the corner and Jake recognized the big form of Scopes behind the wheel. Hauser seemed to be a little more in control with the sight of Scopes pulling up. He walked up to the line of tape and into the bright glare of the camera crew.

“I have no comment at this time. If you’ll wait across the street I promise to give you a statement just as soon as information becomes both available and pertinent.”

Across the street Danny Scopes climbed out of the cruiser.

“Officer Scopes will escort you across the street where you will wait for me.” Hauser turned away from the now disgruntled news team and nodded at Jake. “Geronimo,” he said.

They left Spencer standing by the line of tape.

Around back and out of sight of the news team, they both slipped their hands into nonpowdered latex gloves.

The screen door creaked open on a hydraulic closer and Hauser held it with the tip of his boot. The inner door was slightly ajar and the sheriff reached up and pushed it open from the top. It swung silently in and the warm smell of blood, feces, and burned food boiled out.

33

The kitchen looked like hell had crawled out of the walls and emptied onto the floor. Blood was splattered in great gusts that had pooled in the low troughs of the linoleum, etching a pattern of symmetrical death in the space. The floor wasn’t level, and a bucket of blood had gathered in one corner under the cabinets in a dark cracked triangle, the top skinned over like wrinkled pudding. It had run in from the hallway, a thick sloppy soup the color of the Ganges in spring, mud and silt and garbage and iron oxide. From somewhere beyond the kitchen door came the hum of an electric appliance left on, its motor whining noisily.

Hauser eased along the counters, carefully minefielding his way over the caked black topography of the linoleum. Jake stood at the door, taking in the space, committing details to the memory banks of his reconstructive CPU. He focused on the long isosceles triangle of blood, followed its inflow over the once-yellow fake tile, out to the hallway. Hauser poked his head through the door, into the hallway, stiffened, and lurched back to the sink and was sick.

He retched out one violent cable of vomit, coughed, spit, and looked over at Jake. “Sorry,” he said, yellow spittle hanging from his bottom lip.

Jake looked down at the sink, usually the primary source of evidence in any messy murder, and once again wished that he was here with some of the hardened bureau boys. He had seen lifers throw up down their own shirts in order not to contaminate murder scenes.

Jake moved past Hauser, like a slow spider. He got to the door to the hallway and saw why Hauser had chucked his doughnuts.

A woman lay on the floor. Or, rather, what used to be a woman. Like Madame and Little X, she was skinless, lifeless. She lay like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on the rug, arms and legs splayed, scabbed to the floor with lines of glop and fluid that had hardened. There was no small electrical appliance humming away—Jake had been mistaken—the sound came from the black writhing mass of flies that swarmed over her body like an insect exoskeleton. Where the hell had they come from?

Jake stepped over the threshold into the hallway. Keeping clear of the bloodspatter with fluid movements born of experience. Hauser was still clearing his throat at the sink. Jake skirted the area rug where the woman lay, now thick and heavy with her blood. Back in the kitchen, he could hear Hauser at the sink, spitting like he had a down feather stuck to the back of his throat. Jake moved by the woman, past a fan-shaped arc of blood on the cracked wallpaper in the hallway, and into the body of the home.

The house was typical of its kind and Jake knew the layout without having to be told: kitchen at the back, living room and dining room in front, two small bedrooms and a bathroom—all with sloped walls—on the second floor. Basement. Detached garage.

He headed into the living room to be sure that there were no more victims even though the little voice was telling him that she was the sum total of occupants; the unmistakable flavor of a single inhabitant filled the place, even thicker than the smell of blood and the buzz of flies.

There was an old upright piano, a long low sofa in tufted velour, a pair of Barcaloungers, a glass coffee table piled high with copies of People and Us, and a small television with a paperback on top. There was a plug-in fireplace with a few photos perched on the plastic mantel; bright happy splashes of color that smiled from across the room. Other than the few pieces of furniture and sparse reading, the room was sparse, and Jake knew that the woman who lived here worked a lot.

Jake moved toward the photos, stepping high to avoid creating static that might pick up errant trace evidence. He had not been aware that his heart had been pounding until he took the first step and felt the woozy flush of lightheadedness that told him his fuel pump was racing. He took one of the deep belly-breaths that Kay had taught him to use when he had to oxygenate his blood, and the vitriolic smell of death pierced his head like a flechette. He stood still for a second, concentrating on his breathing. When his chest stopped vibrating like it had a live animal in it, he moved forward, taking full breaths, smelling the skinless woman sprawled on the carpet behind him. The photographs had grown from indistinct flashes of color to fuzzy face shapes bisected by white smiles. Another step and the fuzziness hardened, became clear.

He reached for one of the framed photos, and the movement pulled all the blood from his system, as if his arm were a pump handle. His fingers touched the frame and he stared into the face grinning out at him. A woman—and he knew that it was the same woman back on the floor, splayed like a sideshow knife-thrower’s assistant on a spinning plywood wheel—sat on the gunwale of a sailboat somewhere off Montauk Point, the lighthouse behind her by an easy mile. Jake brought the photograph up, his gloved fingers holding it carefully by the corners.

He looked at the face smiling out of the frame, unaware that his breath squeezed though his teeth in ragged birthing pants.

Skinned.

She smiled up at him. Bright white teeth. She looked so alive. So happy.

Now fly-covered on the hallway carpet.

He felt his chest tighten and his heart hammered as he was hit with a bucket of adrenaline. His chest went numb, cold.

The frame slid from his fingers and thudded to the carpet.

There are no coincidences, Spencer’s tinny voice echoed through his head.

Then everything slipped off the edge of the world and went cold as he hit the floor.

Jake knew her.

34

“Jake? Jake?” Hauser’s voice cut through the static brazing his circuitry and the sheriff’s face materialized above him. His breath smelled of vomit and his thousand-yard death stare had been pushed aside with concern. “Jake?”

Jake lifted himself onto his elbows and groaned. “Sorry about that.”

Hauser was eying him suspiciously. “Did you faint?”

Jake shook his head. “It’s not drugs or booze or anything you’d understand.” He stood up, consciously avoiding touching anything.