What Lies Behind. J.T. Ellison

her body out of here an hour ago. Why?” he asked slowly.

      “Do you know where she’s from?”

      Fletcher’s dark eyes were troubled. “We don’t know much at all. Just the basics. It’s early days in the investigation. I figured her family can fill us in.”

      “I’d like to be there. To talk to them, I mean.”

      “Sam, what aren’t you telling me?”

      Sam ignored him. She bent, looked closer at the small breakfast bar. “Here,” she said quietly. “It started here.”

      Fletcher nodded, ran a hand across his chin. He hadn’t shaved and the hairs rasped against his palm. “That’s what my blood spatter analyst said, too. First strike left that lovely castoff.” He pointed at the ceiling. Spots of blackened blood speckled the white. “I’d say whoever killed her was in a rare temper.”

      Sam could envision the knife, gliding silver through the air, an overhand arc. Landing with a thunk into the woman’s neck, the arterial spray shooting. Souleyret’s screams, if she had screamed, would have been cut off as quickly as they started. And then he’d stabbed her again and again, driving her back into the bedroom, where Cattafi had tried to defend her, had put himself in the killer’s path.

      She admired him for it. It would most likely cost him his life, but at least he’d die a hero. A waste, either way.

      “Tell me what you know, Sam.”

      “I don’t know anything, Fletch. For a moment, the scene seemed familiar. Just to satisfy my curiosity, when we finish up here, let’s stop back at my place. I’ll take a look at my files, see what’s niggling at me about this.”

      He took her word for it. She tucked the odd feeling of familiarity away. She’d look at it later. There were other questions that needed to be answered. Most importantly, what was an undercover FBI agent doing in the apartment of a Georgetown University medical student?

      She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head. Smelled something off, something close. Deeper than the tang of blood and the effluvia of dead bodies. Sweet, almost flowerlike, but not. She couldn’t place it, had never come across the scent before. It wasn’t pleasant, and it wasn’t a natural part of the crime scene, she was sure. It smelled a bit like overripe honeysuckle, but sharper, with some mint, perhaps, both scents overlaid with a sickly rot that made her gorge rise.

      Where was it coming from? She saw nothing unusual, or out of place, except for the copious streaks of blood.

      “Fletch, come here. Do you smell anything?”

      Fletcher breathed in deep. “Blood and gore and carpet cleaner. Maybe some old pot smoke. Bacon grease.”

      “Nothing flowerlike? Like old flowers left to mold in a vase of water?”

      “Like the way patchouli smells? I’ve never liked it, but I can’t say—”

      “No, that’s not it.”

      Fletcher came closer, sniffing. “Ugh. Yeah, I smell it now. What the hell? It wasn’t here earlier.”

      Sam edged to the breakfast bar, wrinkled her nose as the smell grew stronger. She looked closer at the bar. Runnels of blood had come off the counter, streamed down the paneling. There was a break in the blood, almost as if a ruler had been placed in the down flow and the blood had run over it in a perfect line.

      “Do you have a Maglite?” she asked.

      “Sure,” Fletcher replied, handing her the flashlight he’d stuffed in his jacket pocket.

      She shone the light on the edges of the counter, then down into the paneling. In one small area, about twelve inches across, the blood dribbled into nowhere, just plain disappeared. There was an edge here, a break in the wood. It was almost indistinguishable from the other panels—it looked like a normal seam where the pieces met. She reached out and pressed the edge, and a panel popped open. The scent gusted forth, and she stepped back, gagging.

      “Christ, what is that?”

      Sam pulled the waist of her T-shirt up to cover her nose. She flashed the light into the small space. Saw a silver handle. Using her gloved hand, she pulled it open.

      And immediately began backing away again.

      Son of a bitch.

      “Fletcher, alert HAZMAT. Now.”

      His head jerked toward her. “What is it? What’s in there?”

      “It’s a wine refrigerator, but the power’s been cut.”

      “Let me see.”

      “Don’t—”

      He stepped around her. “What is this stuff? Some sort of science experiment?”

      Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, toward the front door. “Without examining it closely, I can’t say for sure. There’s a bottle labeled Vibrio cholerae.”

      At his blank look, she explained. “Cholera, Fletch. And there’s more than one vial in there. Cattafi has an unsecured refrigerator full of transmissible, possibly deadly bacteria and viruses. Ones that shouldn’t be anywhere but in a secure lab.”

      “What do you mean, deadly bacteria and viruses? What the hell?”

      She glanced back at the refrigerator. “It looks like Thomas Cattafi was being a bad, bad boy.”

Chapter 11

      McLean, Virginia

      RILEY CALLED ROBIN just past ten. She was still at the house. She’d called in sick, which raised a few eyebrows, but to hell with them. She hadn’t had a sick day since she’d woken up in Ramstein, Germany, three years earlier, pumped full of shrapnel from the remnants of a roadside IED. A blindingly red day, it was all she could remember, a fog of puce, sucking at her, draining her dry. Later, when she was healed, she remembered the screams, and was happy the fog had taken away the memories.

      She rubbed her left side, where the scars were the worst. She couldn’t be upset about them. She was the only one who’d survived intact. Another five feet and that wouldn’t have been the case. She’d be missing legs and arms, like the rest of the team, not just her spleen and a kidney. Aside from the lingering headaches and occasional blackouts and swirls of colors when people talked or were emotional, she was just fine. Mostly fine.

      She answered the phone with trepidation, wondered where her nerve had gone.

      “What’s happening?”

      “A lot. The police just called HAZMAT to Cattafi’s apartment.”

      “HAZMAT? What in the hell?”

      “I don’t know. Was Amanda still on that vaccine scam?”

      “I think so. She was working it hard a few months ago, I know. But, Riley, seriously, we hadn’t talked in a few weeks. I don’t know if it has anything to do with her. Might be the boyfriend’s troubles.”

      “Speaking of, Alicia traced the call made to your cell phone this morning. It pinged off the tower closest to Amanda’s town house on Capitol Hill.”

      Robin pulled a cup down from the cabinet, the delicate china from her parents’ wedding set, went about making a cup of tea. “As far as I know, she has that place rented out to a couple of congressional aides. She wouldn’t go there if she came to town. She’d just grab a hotel room, or stay with me.” Or go stay with a boyfriend Robin knew nothing about. “Someone should do a welfare check, just in case.”

      “I’ll send Lola.”

      Lola Jergens was Riley’s particular pet. Petite, wheat blonde, small enough to fit in his pocket, attractive in a bland, generic, easy-to-forget-her-face way, he’d been grooming her to handle the