The elevator doors sigh open on twenty-four. Cabot Beard steps out into a hallway that smells like bleach and old fear. The carpet is a dark thing soaked with something darker. He tastes metal in his mouth before he sees the blood — a red smear the width of a shoe on the runner leading to 24B. Somebody dragged them here, or somebody ran out with shoes like a bulldozer across tile. "Call it in," he tells Marcelo without looking at him. Marcelo's fingers are already working his palm-sized unit, jittering like he's trying to text a thing into being before it becomes real. Marcelo's badge is new and shiny enough to blind. Cabot takes two steps, and the blood makes a fan against his boot. He can feel the print on the sole, the way the tread tried to lift the stain off and failed. He hates that detail. He hates being the kind of cop who notices details and then has to make them into stories. He hates that he likes the details. He hates most of the time that the city keeps handing him other people's worst. "Jesus," he says, because the word is the only thing that fits. The door to 24B is ajar. Forensics tape flaps like a nervous mouth across the handle. Someone's left a roll of it on the landing, half-unspooled like a white tongue. Cabot steps in. Fluorescent light throws the living room in an