Ellie entered the house for a second time, only now she was wearing a white bunny suit that covered her from head to toe. Kelly was wearing the same kind of suit.

The inside was cool and still reeked of cordite from the gunfire. Ellie caught the half a dozen or so forensic techs in the living room and adjoining kitchen flick their gazes between the commissioner and her, as though the two of them were invading their turf—which they were.

Kelly carefully made his way to the staircase, watching where he stepped. Ellie took in her surroundings.

The living room had high ceilings and a gray stone floor and white walls, the furniture modern—the type that was more artistic than designed for comfort. Numbered neon evidence markers sat next to each shell casing on the floor. The pattern indicated that Gingerbread Man had fired while he was inside the house, kept shooting on his way down the hall, to the door leading into the garage.

The second floor, Ellie noticed, felt considerably warmer. Or maybe it was just her nerves.

Detective Alves was waiting for them in the brightly lit hallway, standing next to a tall white wall holding an enormous painting of a nude woman crawling through a desert, toward a bloodred sun. He was a short, angry Portuguese man with gray hair that was cut close to the scalp. He looked five ten but was probably closer to five eight. She’d heard he wore shoes with lifts, to give him a couple of extra inches.

Alves’s gaze screamed, What the hell is she doing here?

“Our two vics,” Kelly said. “Have you identified them yet?”

“No, sir, not yet,” Alves replied. “And it’s going to take some time. Both victims, their fingerprints were burned off some time ago—acid, judging by the scarring. The tech assigned to our unit has already collected their blood samples and is on his way back to the lab to start preparing them, add ’em to the List.”

The List, Ellie knew, was a new and ever-growing database containing the names of missing and dead carriers. Almost all of the names on the List were of people in their early twenties and younger.

For years, the LAPD had wanted to identify carriers living in the state, but everyone jumped all over it, citing medical privacy and possible conspiracy scenarios where officers sold the names of carriers to the blood cartels. The LAPD backed off, but the current president had recently made statements about the importance of identifying carriers within communities so the police could better serve them. There were rumblings about passing a federal law making carriers come forward and sign up, but privacy and civil liberty groups kept shutting it down.

“I’ve spoken to the husband,” Alves said. “He’s in London, visiting his daughter, Luciana. That’s her bedroom down the hall, where the two vics are. His wife stayed behind—came down with food poisoning, he said.” Alves swung his attention to Ellie.