The scene struck him almost as hard going in this time as it had the first time. The contrasts, he decided—and the smell. Visually, the contrasts rocked him. The kitchen was like something from another era: old-fashioned painted cupboards, a cast-iron farmhouse sink, checked curtains, appliances that had to have been from the fifties.

It was the kind of kitchen that should have had June Cleaver or Aunt Bea in it. Instead, crime-scene techs bustled around like so many cooks, dusting this, photographing that, all working around the bloating, discolored body of a murdered woman on the blood-drenched Mexican tile floor.

Leone took in the tableau with a dark frown and his hands on his hips.

“She’s been dead awhile.”

“A couple of days, I’d say.”

“Maggots already,” Leone commented. “Has she been moved?”

“No. I didn’t let the paramedics touch her. There was no question she was dead.”

The victim’s throat had been cut so viciously she was nearly decapitated. Someone had painted her lips red with her own blood.

“And the little girl was where?”

“Laying with her head on her mother’s left shoulder. I moved her when I felt her pulse,” Mendez said.

“And what had been done to her? Was she stabbed?”

“I couldn’t tell. She was covered in blood. I couldn’t tell if it was hers or her mother’s. Looked to me like she might have been strangled, though. There were bloody finger marks on her throat.”

Leone took a handkerchief out of his pocket to hold over his mouth and nose as he moved closer to the body on the floor. He was careful not to step in the blood. He squatted down for a different angle.

The woman’s breasts had been cut off. There was no sign of them anywhere in the room. The killer had to have taken them with him when he left. A macabre souvenir. The gaping wounds were alive with fly larvae.

She lay spread-eagle, faceup, staring at the ceiling. She was naked. Wounds slashed her arms, her legs, her torso. She had been stabbed so many times in the lower abdomen, the area looked like a lump of ground meat, crawling now with maggots.

The blade of a butcher’s knife protruded from her vagina.

Leone arched a brow. “That makes a statement.”

“Have you ever seen that before?” Mendez asked.

“I’ve seen the blade inserted. Never like this. What do you make of it?”

Leone looked up at him, ever the mentor. He sure as hell had an opinion. The man was a legend. He probably had already begun to build the profile of the killer in his head. By the time they broke for coffee he would have decided the perp had a stutter and walked with a limp.