At least, there was none until her eyes fell upon a stack of magazines. They all declared things like Cottage Living and Lifestyle. Ruby's brow furrowed. This was almost too much. The evidence against Delko was stacking up just like the magazines.

“He goes to Pearl's house, kills her during her own party, then brings her magazines home with him?” Ruby wondered out loud, pointing out the stack to Gabe.

Even he took a moment to shrug off the strangeness.

“There's plenty of other stuff to get off to if that's what he's after. He took pictures of her,” Gabe said. “Yeah, it feels a little off. I get it.”

A little off was an excellent way to describe it. It was a nebulous gut feeling that ate at her, but Ruby couldn't give a distinct reason why it didn't feel right or what was wrong. A couple magazines in a living room full of burning candles did not constitute a conviction.

So far, everything they'd seen was immensely gross, but it was technically not illegal. They could maybe get him on a stalking charge.

“Something weird is going on here,” Ruby said. “I just can't put my finger on it.”

Unlike Thorne, they weren't catching Delko in the middle of something. It was just a stage full of deranged obsessional evidence.

“I've been on one case here and already I've seen a guy squirt fake blood all over his girlfriend while he pretended to murder her and a candlelit altar of arts and crafts,” Gabe said. “Everything is weird. Is it always like this with you? Does Bellisario just have a gut instinct for the especially deranged and put you on the case?”

“Honestly, this is my first collage shrine,” Ruby said. “Can we just find something else here?”

Everywhere she turned, it was just signs of a bachelor bad. She ducked her head into the bathroom, empty toilet paper rolls just collecting on the back of the tank. The kitchen was equally depressing. The only thing the guy seemed to eat were cuts of meat, butcher paper still left on the counter, and cheap TV dinners.

She moved slowly, despite her certainty that no one was home. There was still the slightest possibility he had holed up in a closet to wait them out.

She worked her way from the back of the house to the front, coming to the entryway last. In the ajar closet, she saw them. Heavy boots, tracking in red footprints.

“Gabe,” she called him over.

He took one glance at them.

“Size 11,” he said. There was no need to check. They both knew.

“Butcher shop. Now,” Ruby said. They couldn't wait around for Delko to roll on home.

Gabe nodded immediately.

They hurried back to the SUV, Gabe starting the engine before they even closed the doors.

Ruby was back on her phone, dialing up local support.

“I need additional back-up to rendezvous at Berkshire Butcher,” she said.