“Crumbs can leave a mark.” They know that now, from Linda Brown.

Emma spreads out her pages. “Seven teenage victims. They all had different doctors. But at least five of the seven consulted another clinic, and saw someone different from their primary doctor, in the last six months. Lamar Davis went to the University of Mary Washington student clinic. Sienna Ramirez had an appointment last February at an upstate medical center. They each saw alternative doctors on occasion.”

“For emergency treatment?” Bell clambers up and dusts off his chinos.

“I’m thinking for something personal—sexual health tests or birth control, maybe. Something they didn’t want to get back to their parents through a family doctor.”

Bell props his hand on the back of her chair as he examines her notes. “Can we narrow down which practitioners they saw?”

“We only have access to partial records. But of the alternative clinics we know about, I found one other detail—they all used the same MT service.” She looks up at him. “Medical technicians take blood samples, Bell.”

“What?” He seems less tousled now, more directed. “Lewis, that’s no crumb, that’s big. That’s the first real point of commonality we’ve found. Which medical technicians are on the service register?”

“It’s a long list. Sixty-two med techs, who were all rotated around half of Virginia.”

Bell chews his lip. “The stakeout yesterday… I don’t have a transcript, but Cooper said something. He said the Butcher knew the hospital.”

“Fairfax?”

“Yeah.” Bell’s mind is working, his eyes moving across her notes. “Try something for me. Cross-check the medical technicians on the service register against records from Fairfax. How many of them worked or still work at the hospital?”

Another series of phone calls, to dig up the information that the FBI has already gathered from Fairfax, but it gets results. When Emma taps her pen to get his attention, Bell’s just finished hauling the last file box back into place.

“Did that help?”

She nods slowly.

“How many also worked at the hospital?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve.” He comes forward fast. “Show me.”

Emma’s written out the names she circled from her original list on a fresh sheet of paper. Bell’s hand shakes a little as he holds it up.

“I already crossed out the female names,” Emma says. “With them, it was fourteen.”

Bell reads aloud. “Robert Fortescue, Raffaele Carozza, Anthony Hoyt, John Frankel… Lewis, the Butcher could be on this list.”

“Maybe.” She takes a steadying breath—she doesn’t want to give in to excitement yet.

“So who do we hand this to? Do we trust Martino?”

“Martino, or maybe Cooper’s second-in-command, Howard Carter.” Every agent they contact is a question mark, though. How far does Raymond’s influence extend? “Whoever we tell, we’ll have to hope they’ll do something useful with it.”

“We need to go see Betty to find out if Martino’s around, or at least get his phone contact,” Bell says. “You return your lanyard yet?”

“No.”

“Then come on.”

They leave the Cool Room and walk back through the gerbil run. Even though Bell is taller, they keep step with each other. It’s one of the things about being around him that Emma’s going to miss.