There was one interesting piece of evidence suggesting that the killer drove to the house and parked behind Victoria’s white Mercedes coupe. Two drops of blood were found on the brick drive. Forensics concluded they belonged to Victoria. They were located where the passenger door of another vehicle may have been. No tire marks, no other indication of who had been driving the second vehicle. But someone had driven the killer.

Or picked him up.

From everything she heard about Victoria, Lucy didn’t think she would be irresponsible enough to show a house at night to a stranger. Not in this day and age when there were so many reports of real estate agents being attacked.

She looked through the reports again because something was missing … and then she realized what it was. There was absolutely no blood found in the house. The killer didn’t exit through the house. He left quickly—that was Lucy’s educated guess—rinsed his knife and hands in the pool and walked out through the side gate.

But there was nothing to indicate whether the gate had been swabbed or inspected.

She tracked Ash down. “Ash, did you process the Victoria Mills crime scene?”

“No. Not my case. Why?”

“It doesn’t say whether the side gate was inspected for evidence. But there was no blood in the house, I don’t think the killer left that way. Even if he rinsed off in the pool, there would be trace on the doors, water in the house, something to tell us he left that way. And the front door was locked, but the side gate didn’t have a lock, just a latch. That gate went out to the driveway, and there was a small amount of blood found on the driveway.”

“I can ask Kyle. He was in charge.”

“And?” It was his tone that had Lucy curious.

“He has seniority, but I was promoted over him because he’s lazy. Don’t repeat that. He’s not incompetent—he just doesn’t like being in the field. Give him a microscope and he’s great. But collecting evidence? We butt heads.”

“Would you mind reviewing the forensics and seeing if anything else was missed? That’s the only thing that jumped out at me, but there could be more.”

“Yeah, but you really owe me, because if I find anything wrong I’m going to write him up and then our working relationship is going to be worse than it already is.”

“You are the single most meticulous CSI I have ever worked with. We need more of you, and I would be happy to tell your boss that.”

“Actually, your boss already wrote up a commendation for my file on the last case we worked on. That must have come from you.”