“I spy, huh?”

“Dude, I’m going to fucking crush Emery,” Dulac said. “Those flamingos, man. That was fucking epic, right?”

“Definitely epic,” Somers said. “Too bad you missed something.”

“No way.”

Somers shrugged.

“No fucking way. I saw the flamingos. Even you didn’t see the flamingos.”

“Yeah, but. Well. You did miss something.”

“What? And it better not be some Emery Hazard bullshit like saying I missed your reflection or I didn’t carbon date the fence.”

Grinning, Somers said, “Go ask the neighbors.”

“Ask them what.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Then, after checking the booties and gloves again, Somers stepped inside the house. The competing noises were louder here—aggravatingly loud, in fact. But he lingered in the doorway, checking the jambs, the head, the strike plate, the door. No signs of forced entry. The deadbolt and the lock on the handle both bore signs of wear and tear, but nothing that Somers could point to as an obvious sign that they had been forced.

The apartment was small: a kitchen immediately to his left, the linoleum curling up under the cabinets; then a living area with a small CRT television and, on the coffee table, an iPad. The iPad’s screen was flashing in time with the synthesizer notes, obviously an alarm that Susan had set for herself. Beyond the coffee table, at the end of the living space, a glass slider opened out onto the tiny patio and backyard. On the right, one door led into a bathroom; a curling iron lay on the counter, unplugged, and a tube of lipstick had fallen onto its side. A second door led into the bedroom.

Somers checked the floor before moving forward; past the kitchen, the linoleum gave way to orangish laminate boards. He squatted until light hit the floor at an oblique angle. No visible footprints; dust bunnies and some loose hairs and fibers. Well, that was why he was wearing booties. Still, just to be safe, he kept close to the wall as he moved deeper into the apartment.

The stench stopped Somers at the bedroom’s threshold. Gore—some specks brown, some gray, some blackened from oxidation—marked the bedding, the pillows, the headboard, and a tiny crescent of wall. It was obvious from the angle that the Keeper had approached Susan while she was still asleep. Somehow, he had managed to get close without waking her. Then the Keeper had shot her in the head. Presumably, Somers thought with a kind of detachment that he had only gained over long years, the kind that he still scrabbled for in situations like this, presumably Susan had been turned toward the door, and the Keeper had fired directly into her face. The same way Phil Camerata’s face had been destroyed. The FBI would have a spatter analyst who could confirm that. Somers reached out and tapped the bedside alarm, which gave a final beep before going silent.

Footsteps pulled Somers’s attention away from bits of brain and bone and blood. In the doorway, Dulac hesitated.