The articles hadn’t speculated whether the women had died here, but having seen the blood pools under them I was going to take the leap and say yes.

I tried to imagine what might draw me here. For Ginny and Brandi, the possibilities were endless—anything from a drug deal to a party to a hookup. If they were willing to trade a blow job for a hit, this would be a good place to do it.

The problem was Claire Kennedy. A college student on summer break, according to the paper. Honors student. Arts major. Wrote for the college paper. Quiet and straitlaced was the impression I got from the account. Looking around, I couldn’t imagine anything that would bring me to this place—and straitlaced has never been an adjective applied to me. So what brought Claire?

That led to the bigger question. What brought a girl like Claire to Columbus at all? According to the article, she’d been here two weeks, coming right after her finals. Short of two broken legs, nothing would keep me here that long. Hell, with two broken legs I’d drag myself the twenty miles to the highway and hitch a ride.

I took out the crime-scene photos. Unlike the other two, Claire wasn’t lying in her own blood. So shot and moved seemed a reasonable assumption for her. If she’d been killed elsewhere in the building, there would be blood trace—I couldn’t imagine the owner had sprung for much in the way of cleaning afterward. I could search, but the cops would have already done that. I’d get the details from them.

When I finally located the basement door, I cast the sensing spell again. There was no sign the cops were still securing the scene. Jesse said they’d been here only yesterday, though.

My spell did detect small presences, but that was to be expected in a rat hotel like this. I searched for the big “ping” that said human and ignored the rest.

At the bottom of the stairs, I realized that finding the basement didn’t mean finding the crime scene. I should have stopped at the police station first to let them know I was in town, so I could have sweet-talked some cop into telling me exactly where in this basement the bodies had been found.

I took out the photos. Concrete floor. Concrete wall. Yeah, that narrowed it down.

I started walking, the light ball illuminating the photos as I compared them to my surroundings, as if I were a TV detective, able to identify a speck of Flora whateveris on the photo and match it to one on the floor. I scanned the floor, searching for ... oh, I don’t know, matching dirt patterns? Then I caught sight of a torn piece of yellow plastic taped to a pillar.

“Or you could just look for crime-scene tape, stupid.”