“This is fucked…” Ben spat, shaking his head in a display of disbelief and looking upward as he spoke. “This S.O. B is just plain sick.”

It was just after four a.m. by the time we arrived, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of Locust Street downtown. We had signed in on the scene log with Felicity and me listed as consultants and allowed in only by Ben’s graces.

Stepping onto the active participant side of the bright yellow strip of barrier tape that cordoned off the street was akin to entering another world. I glanced around, feeling both out of place and right at home in the same instant. In the past two years, I’d visited more active homicide crime scenes than many cops see in their entire careers, and I didn’t even have a badge. Something seemed very wrong about that, but it was a fact I simply could not change. I didn’t find it reassuring at all that I was becoming so accustomed to it.

Cold wind sliced in a linear gust down the thoroughfare, flaring the band of plastic tape as if to highlight the repeated imprint of block letters along its length. Bold strokes formed words that had become all too familiar to me-CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. The temperature was settled for the moment at an even thirty-six degrees, but the computed wind chill pushed the overall feeling downward into the range of the mid-twenties.

There were a half dozen crime scene technicians milling about on the ground, while another handful could occasionally be spotted working on the roof of the building that was before us. The medical examiner’s hearse had already arrived, and the area was illuminated by the visual insanity of flickering light bars on idling emergency vehicles.