"We caught a case," the new medical examiner assigned to their unit said, breezing into the room, and moved off without waiting for them to react.

She was a vampire and looked about twenty despite being almost two hundred years old. Judging from the way the guys responded, Gillian surmised they found her attractive, even though she strongly reminded her of a mischievous pixie.

The somber shadows playing in the doctor's eyes spoke of hard times, and a life lived. She ignored the lukewarm reception of her new human colleagues and Gillian and Elissa's reserve. Gillian's brow furrowed, but no one said a word as they grabbed their stuff on their way out the door.

Although dispatch texted them directions, they merely followed the red vintage MG, speeding almost recklessly through traffic. She smirked despite herself; working with Dana Danvic promised to be an experience.

"So, who's the victim?" she asked, and Elissa read the texts with a slight scowl.

"Janet Cross Fine..."

It took Gillian a moment to remember why the name seemed familiar, although Elissa didn't seem to know it.

"Wasn't she the bright spark attorney that got McKenzie Hail's murder charges dropped?" she asked, dread settling in the pit of her stomach. This act of violence stood to escalate the situation out of control.

"The lady had a plan for her life, and she already got herself promoted to assistant district attorney on the back of her victory," Elissa said after a quick internet search.

They turned into the driveway of quite an impressive-looking modern house. At least a thousand square feet in an expensive neighborhood with a garden stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Impressive for a farm girl from Iowa. Her former job getting the scum off the earth free of death row must have paid well," Elissa commented.

They got out and flashed their badges at the uniformed police—the instant wariness and slight aggression from the uniformed officers spoke volumes.

"It seems word travels fast," Elissa said as they stepped inside the shady coolness of the marble entrance hall through those massive glass doors.

They did not need to ask where the victim was. A small mahogany table with ivory inlays stood against the central wall. The cut crystal vase, usually adorning the antique, lay shattered at its feet, strewing red roses on the ground and pools of water interspersed with droplets of blood. The white wall behind the table was also covered in artistic splatters of reddish brown.

A foot and ankle, detached below the knee and put up like a display of fine art, caught Gillian's gaze.

"There are pieces of her all over the house. The killer thrashed her priceless art and replaced it with bits of her to form a macabre display. Whoever did this had all the time in the world.

"Her alarm was never set, the guards are missing, and the dogs. I'm glad this is your baby and not ours," the detective that secured the scene admitted, nodding at them as he made his way outside.

A feeling of foreboding curled in Gillian's stomach and settled like a lead weight as they stared at it all. The scent of vampire permeated the house, and this crime scene's atmosphere seemed eerily different. Off, in some indefinable way.

"Come see the head," Dana enthused, her chipper voice garnering her more than one angry stare from their colleagues, but she clearly didn't care. Gillian followed wordlessly with Elissa in tow, and when curiosity won out, the others trailed behind them.

***

It was a sight that could not be unseen. Not that his other crime scenes were not the stuff of horror movies, surreal in their arranged perversity, but this was the killer mocking them.

In the center of a beautiful atrium, encompassing the whole center of the house, stood a statue of the lady of justice. He had glued Janet's head to the neck, mouth closed, her face eerily blue, and her lips covered in bright red lipstick.

It took a second or two before Gillian noticed the unfair scale of justice in her hand. On the left, her heart lay suspended, and on the right, a pristine pack of hundred-dollar bills still bound as the bank issued them but covered in splashes of blood. The blood money weighed heavier than her heart.

The pond of water at its feet flowed fast beneath the surface like a river, making a rushing noise that echoed through the atrium. The liquid traveled in a little canal to the other side of the room, where it disappeared mysteriously into the ground.

Under different circumstances, the sound of the water, like a brook gurgling along a forest floor, would have been soothing, but instead, it was chilling.

The killer used dye to turn the water blood red, and the room's temperature had been lowered dramatically, not to preserve its contents, but for effect. A chill skittered down her spine.

"Okay, this nightmare's becoming a little much," she muttered.

"Hell no, it just started—some asshole leaked photos of the crime scenes. The public's out for justice, and the Governor himself is leaning on us like a thousand-ton brick.

"Panic has set in; people are either too afraid to leave their houses or protesting on the doorstep. Someone gave them the address," Colt said. She hadn't seen the detective enter, too transfixed by the horror of this scene.

It was the first time since they left the police boardroom that the detective spoke directly to them, but the distance between them seemed insurmountable, and Gillian's heart ached at the loss of her friend.

"I would like to see any of them do better," Elissa forced the words out between clenched teeth. She wasn't talking about the public or the governor.

The police solidly placed the blame for this case constantly becoming a dead end on their heads—albeit not publicly. This whole circus was revenge for them not rolling over and playing dead, for them pointing fingers and getting people fired.

"Doesn't matter, Senior Detective. Either way, we are fucked. Unless, by some miracle, there's some insignificant piece of solid evidence here or something to give us a clue, no one in this room will still be in the police force's employ next month." Elissa's reigned in anger, carried no blame.

Colt was probably the only one in the room not willing to pin all of this on Gillian and Elissa.

"Oh, yeah, of little faith," Dana declared, seeing to appear beside them like vapor while staring fixedly at something Gillian could not discern.

Dana retrieved a pair of tweezers from her bag, climbed on the edge, and walked on the pond's side like a cat strolling on a rooftop before stepping onto the middle portion without getting any of the red dye on her two-inch high suede boots.

Dana teased something from the glue seam with painstaking care and magicked a small looking glass from some hidden pocket. She examined whatever she found, and Gillian realized she was holding her breath. A fleeting grin tugged at the coroner's mouth, but it was an unexpectedly cold expression.

"Hair, human, Caucasian, male. Light brown, almost blonde. In excellent condition for a man, almost appears salon styled, but no follicle," Dana placed the hair into a tiny plastic vial and continued her examination.

It was something and nothing.

"This is high-end glue—none of the cheap stuff would have held. The kind you find at a specialty store, definitely not supermarket junk," Dana motioned at her two white-clad assistants.

They were not as graceful as their boss at getting up on the pond and bringing the tools she would need to capture the crime scene.

***

"Enough gawking, Stevens. Get these people out of our crime scene, and get all of their names. I want to know who was here and when, where they were, and what they touched. They should not have come in here and disturbed the scene. Get all of their gloves, their shoe covers, and all of their evidence bags, along with every photograph.

"No one leaves here with my evidence or leaks it. Get their cellphones too," Gavin Boss's voice held the authority to make everyone in the room freeze, and Elissa understood why Gillian respected this human so much. Stevens didn't look happy at being sent into the lion's den.

"Senior detective Drake, you go with him. This is our scene and our jurisdiction; you do what you must, but quietly and quickly," Boss stared her right in the eyes, and she nodded, accepting his order.

The senior detective bit was still new to her, but it didn't matter. Just like it didn't matter that she was not used to taking orders from men other than her father and grandfather. Even though she didn't enjoy taking direction from a mere human.

"This will make us enemies," Colt murmured, unexpectedly calm with the traces of a smile on her lips.

"They had orders to secure the residence and wait outside. They were implicitly told no one was to enter the crime scene and that it was protocol from now on.

"They violated protocol, and unless we stand our ground, they will do it every time." Anger emanated from Boss, but he was too annoyed to realize that Colt didn't give a damn about making enemies out of her former colleagues. It intrigued Elissa that the detective seemed to think that boat had already sailed.

She followed Stevens with a glance at Gillian; her sister seemed worried, and so was she.

***

Boss purposefully reigned himself in and took a deep breath, allowing his gaze to take in the statue.

"Colt, Beaumont... Drake, whatever you are called. I want every item in this house moved to our warehouse after you finish the preliminary evidence.

"I want it all reconstructed perfectly. This time it's all in our hands, and I want this son of a bitch stopped. I don't care if he's some kind of vigilante. I don't care if some of the morons out there think he's doing our job. He will not keep killing in our city and get away with it."

They nodded curtly and moved off to do their jobs.

***

The distance in his attitude toward Gillian made him a stranger, marking her as no longer a part of the group he considered his kin. It hurt more than she thought possible.

She fought the pain to regain her focus and pushed it all away, tackling her job with single-minded determination—it was all she could do not to think about what she had lost.

"Beaumont... Drake, whatever you are called." He could not have made himself clearer.

She never noticed the way Colt glanced at him nor the way he avoided her eyes.