Elizabeth was engrossed in her notes on the case when, without warning, someone sat down on the edge of her desk and dropped another file on the piece of furniture.

She furrowed her brows and slowly raised her eyes until she looked into her wife's green-blue eyes. Her confusion increased, and she glanced at her cell phone only to realize that Maggie had tried to reach her several times.

"This comes courtesy of the lab," the doctor said flatly, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Elizabeth cleared her throat and carefully picked up the file that had been placed in front of her.

"First, we found a man's DNA at the scene in the Barbara Walton case. Jason Walton's."

Elizabeth looked up from the file for only a split second. "Yep, we're familiar with that. After all, Jason Walton lived in the same house. Also, there was a partial fingerprint on the mask. But I don't think it's likely that the other two, Joseph Hurts and Samantha Conway, live in any disused retirement homes or factory buildings. What about their DNA?"

Maggie took a deep breath and took her wife a long look before turning the page in the file. "We found DNA from a previously unknown male and a previously unknown female at the second crime scene." She paused for a moment. "We had already pointed that out in our first report, but you missed it or overheard it because of your coin search."

Elizabeth raised her eyes again, this time with furrowed brows. "Now, slow down. Without the coins and their symbolism, we wouldn't be where we are now."

The doctor nodded slowly and eyed the detective. "All right, let's leave it at that. According to the search warrant, in the suspects' apartment, Hurts and Conway, we tested razors and hairbrushes for DNA and matched it to the DNA found at the crime scene."

Elizabeth closed the file with the lab results and leaned back in her desk chair, running her fingers along her lower lip. Are we finally getting down to business? she thought, furrowing her brows to let her wife know she didn't have time for guessing games. "So?" she asked.

"We have a match."

Even though Elizabeth had quietly expected it, this news hit her like a blow. "That means the missing persons, Hurts and Conway, were present at the scene in any case? May have even been involved with the murder at the time in question?"

"That's exactly what it means!"

Elizabeth ran her hands down her face. "Thank you, Maggie."

Maggie stood up from the desk and put a hand on the detective's shoulder, squeezing it lightly. "You should eat something, Liz," she said before making her way out of the bullpen.

Liz looked after the redhead, frowning deeply.

The missing people! The relatives! They were perpetrators. Or witnesses. Or helpers. Or all three. In any case, they had to have seen the killer. They had to know who the killer was.

And if they weren't already dead, maybe they were the ones who could lead them to the killer.

But to do that, they had to find them as fast as possible. And while they were still alive.

If they were still alive.

That's why the food would have to wait a bit.

xxx

The blood was still on the walls.

So much blood.

It seemed impossible to Elizabeth that such a quantity of blood could have come from the lean body of the young man who had been hanging from the St. Andrew's cross on the wall only a short time ago.

Elizabeth had gone to the the latest crime scene once again. Now she stood there looking mesmerized at the once white tiles and the brown-red blood that had long since dried - dried on the walls and in the hallway after the red blood cells had died, gradually decayed and decomposed by bacteria. The metallic smell from the hemoglobin's iron ions had also disappeared.

Instead, another smell in the air wasn't going away anytime soon. A scent that only the cleaning teams, who would soon arrive, could get to grips with: the slowly developing stench of rotting flesh, combined with the sweet breath of death. The smell of evil.

Yet Elizabeth stood alone and silent before the bloody wall, like a museum visitor before a masterpiece. It was part of her job. And it helped her, just as viewing a masterpiece might help an art connoisseur.

For death was Elizabeth's masterpiece.

When she went to a crime scene alone, it helped her sort out her thoughts. It was almost like an addiction. She could look at everything again, undisturbed, and sometimes found clues she would have otherwise missed. But this time, it wasn't just the chaos of the investigation and the perpetrator's vague motive that she had to sort out.

It was also her inner life, her soul life, which had always been chaotic, but today, at this time, it seemed even worse and more disordered than usual - like the messy splatters of blood scattered on the wall in a mixture of apparent symmetry and order. Ordered chaos, they said to that.

The flies were gone.

Fortunately.

The detective needed a cigarette. She wasn't allowed to smoke at the crime scene, so she went outside. She lit a new cigarette. Her gaze followed the blue vapor rising to the sky, as symmetrical and chaotic simultaneously as the blood splatter on the wall.

She thought about the state of the investigation.

The DNA of the relatives that the lab had found at all three crime scenes. With Jason Walton, it was no surprise; after all, he was married to Barbara. In the case of the other two, it was more unusual since it was hard to expect Joseph Hurts to live in an old swimming pool and Samantha in a disused factory building.

Jane had then brought into play the term 'first order victims' and 'second order victims'. The first-order victims were those who were dead at the scene, and the second-order victims were the relatives who had to watch them die and then hold a bizarre form of a wake.

The reasoning of Elizabeth, Katherine, and Jane that the relatives had been at the scene, so they were the most likely to know who the killer was, had convinced even Bell, the Chief of Police.

Now, these people had to be found first. So a large-scale search had been launched for the cop, the lawyer, and the psychiatrist, even more significant than the missing persons report that was already running. The whole thing was garnished with a massive press campaign.

Carl had agreed to get the BOLO out there.

He had also set up an e-mail address and a website so that citizens who discovered the missing person anywhere could quickly and easily contact the police. For this purpose, Carl received a unique set-up laptop from Nick so that he could process incoming tips from anywhere.

At the same time, the BPD's mainframe was harnessed, using metadata and cross-links to see if there were any commonalities in which the people they were looking for, the first- and second-order victims, had anything to do with each other, any commonalities whatsoever.

Perhaps, it was believed or hoped; this trail would eventually lead to the unseen killer.

Elizabeth smoked another puff and stomped out the cigarette.

The sun was still burning from the blue sky, but clouds were already gathering on the horizon, and it was impossible to tell if they were blocking out the sun or bringing a storm. Every summer carried its winter, every light its shadow, every beginning its end. And every life its death.

Autumn, thought the detective. It comes faster than you think.

And then winter came already. The end was always more inevitable than the beginning. And the darkness was always faster than the light.

Summer and light, beginning and end, she thought.

A poem by Shakespeare crossed her mind.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Maggie, she thought. She had ended up in bed with Maggie on Tuesday night and couldn't for the life of her remember it.

Of course, she'd had sex with the redhead from time to time that had involved alcohol, but never so much that she'd had a blackout, couldn't remember if she might have said or done things during sex that she would never have done when sober.

Even in the past, with her first wife Sarah, she had suffered from this kind of blackout when she was on a case and decided to stop at a bar with her colleagues to numb the frustration.

The morning after, Elizabeth tried to get an idea of what had happened that night, but Sarah had kept her distance then and had dodged Elizabeth's questions, putting on a forced smile and assuring the detective that everything was fine, but in her eyes, Elizabeth could see that her wife had something on her mind that she couldn't or wouldn't say.

After the fourth blackout, Sarah had withdrawn into herself much more, and the detective had caught herself wondering if she hadn't gone one step too far that one night and forced herself on Sarah and coerced her into sex. After all, she knew from professional experience that behind every bourgeois facade of a person, an abysmal monster could lurk that could only come out at the best possible opportunity.

Today Elizabeth knew that at that time, her behavior was only one of the many other triggers, which had nothing to do with herself, that had driven Sarah to suicide.

And Maggie was nothing like Sarah, and she and Sarah couldn't have been more different.

If Elizabeth had done something the redhead didn't want orforced herself on her sexually, Maggie wouldn't have brought her coffee this morning but instead confronted her before opening up to the detective that she was filing for divorce.

Yet not knowing what was said or done the previous night drove Elizabeth crazy, as that was precisely how her first marriage began to fall apart back then.

Elizabeth had washed down her frustration with alcohol back then, had drifted away from Sarah, and eventually, Sarah was gone. She wouldn't survive that a second time.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Elizabeth breathed the smoke deep into her lungs before tossing the cigarette on the ground, getting into the car, and driving back to BPD.

The butt smoked for a while longer.

And then went out.