The current wisdom and protocol of his colleagues in the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit was not to send profilers immediately to the scenes of the crimes they were called to consult on. The procedure was to review all available information on the case at Quantico in their subterranean offices known to the agents as the National Cellar for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

There, removed from the emotion and other influences at the scene of the crime, the entire team could review the case objectively and brain-storm ideas, combining their individual experiences into a dynamic group effort. It was a system that worked very well and allowed them to take on more cases at once. Vince had worked within that structure for years, but it had never really suited him.

After years as a homicide detective, he still liked to walk a scene, see it in three-dimensional reality as opposed to videotape or photographs. He wanted to be aware of everything in the surroundings, including that last, lingering tremor of energy in the aftermath of death.

It was his unique mix of experience and education that had made him the profiler he had become: a homicide cop/FBI field agent with a degree in psychology earned on the side.

He went to Marissa Fordham’s bedroom. The sheets and mattress had been taken from the bed to be sent to the state crime lab. Everything else remained as it had been.

She had been attacked here first. Cast-off blood spattered the ceiling from the killer yanking the knife out of her body and over his head only to plunge it down into her again. The ransacking had come later when Marissa had either been dead, or lay dying on the kitchen floor.

Had she been attacked as she lay sleeping or in the aftermath of sex? By an angry lover or a jealous would-be lover? By a stranger or a friend?

In his mind’s eye he pictured the scene over and over, each time with a different person in the role of killer. Zahn, Rudy Nasser, the faceless form of Haley’s father, Steve Morgan, even Sara Morgan—taking the advice he had given Mendez, unlikely as it was for a woman to murder another woman in such a violent manner. Women usually reserved rage like that for abusive or faithless husbands.

What had been the motivation here? Rage? Jealousy? A flashback to another crime?

Had Haley witnessed this early part of the attack? Had she watched in horror as her mother ran from the room, naked and bleeding with a knife-wielding killer chasing her?

Her bedroom was directly across the hall. It was the room of a fairy princess, frilly and pink. Her mother had covered the walls with a mural of a magical land full of magical creatures. A winged fairy rode on the back of a unicorn. A smiling tabby cat looked down from the branches of a lollipop tree.