Uribe calls up onto his own laptop the video from his examination of Nathan Davis, the New York victim. Sure enough, the identical “LV” appears in the identical location, equally prominent and unmistakable. Even to a non-medically-trained observer like me, it’s clear that this mark has not occurred naturally.

URIBE

And on the Russian corpses too.

Twenty minutes later Michael Justman’s skull has been cut, the blood has drained. We can see the killer’s finger marks on the strap muscles of the throat.

URIBE

Cause of death: asphyxia due to tracheal compression. Crushed windpipe. Same as New York. Same as the two in Russia.

The discussion continues for several moments, including both Stellabotte and the two Metro D.C. detectives. All of them cite the skull fracture (or what they believe will be proven to be a skull fracture) on the victim. Couldn’t that be the COD?

Dr. Carter says no. She directs the group’s attention to several figures in a statistical column on the screen. Not only was the larynx crushed, she says, 7.9 seconds before the skull fracture, as indicated by tissue oxygen depletion, but, judging by the angle of collapse, the victim was lifted off the ground vertically by the throat. She points out the killer’s finger marks—thumb and four fingers, which somehow have left no prints. These indicate with 99.9 percent certainty that the lift was accomplished with one hand.

DETECTIVE STELLABOTTE

Then the “LV” is just bruises. The killer bounced this bastard off the stainless steel fridge, for Pete’s sake!

Uribe indicates the matching “LV” sign on his laptop—beneath the skin on the forehead of Victim #1, Nathan Davis.

DETECTIVE STELLABOTTE

What are you saying? Somebody “branded” them both by rupturing specific capillaries? How could anyone do that? And why?

URIBE

I don’t know.

Forty-five minutes later, Manning, Uribe, and I are back at the townhouse watching Uribe’s techs wrap up the digital reconstruction of the crime scene. Conventional CSU has completed its workup. It has drawn a blank. For the assailant: no prints, no foot tracks, no DNA. Even more extraordinary is the video evidence. CSU has examined the community security cameras and Dr. Justman’s own in-home security video. Both show Justman. Both show the Rhodesian ridgeback.

But no assailant.

Uribe cues up his team’s preliminary profile on his laptop. Manning stands at his shoulder.

Uribe is explaining about respiration. DCSR detection gear can pick up presences as minuscule as ten parts per billion. Not just breath but epidermal and follicular exudations.

URIBE

For this crime scene today—and for Davis’s in New York—we got nothing. Other than the victims’, and here the dog’s, the sheet is blank.

Uribe indicates a column of figures on his laptop screen.

URIBE