Gravel crunched under her boots as she stepped out of the car, her thumb brushing her badge and then her gun as if making sure they were both secure. Annette Langly, 32, a nurse at East Los Angeles Children's Hospital, was thawing against the tree in the back. Dani Reese watched the crime scene unit and the medical examiner's team move carefully through the house, which was neat and orderly. Nothing seemed out of place inside the home, save for the shattered cup of coffee that had soaked through the magazine Camilla Langly had dropped when she had caught sight of her daughter's body. A camera flashed, drawing her contemplative gaze toward the tree itself. The body wasn't visible from anywhere but from the back porch door-something that struck her as odd. It was as if the perp had crafted the moment as private between the mother and either himself or Annette.

Camilla had been taken to the hospital moments before Reese had arrived. From the radio chatter, it sounded like she'd had a seizure of some sort. Reese didn't blame the woman one bit, considering it must have been the shock of her life to wake up and find her only daughter murdered like that. Jim, the father, had gone with her in the ambulance. Reese mad a note to stop by and see how they were both doing and if they could stand an interview. Crews said Jim been shocked silent and hadn't said a thing since the body was discovered, but Reese needed the man talking. They'd been the first on-scene and she needed their statements-especially the mothers, if the woman remembered.

Her partner stood on the porch, his head tilted slightly.

"It took alotta time," he said, not glancing away, but instinctively knowing who was standing behind him without a glance. Crews spoke quietly, carefully, and not precisely at her. "To get her set up like that. It must have taken him a long time. I'd have taken a long time to get it just right." And then, after a moment of silence, he sighed. "That's a long, long time for no one to see him, Reese."

"Most people are asleep," Reese said with a frown, already striding forward to get a look at the body. "Never know, someone might have seen something." It just meant that they'd have to canvas the neighborhood later after the initial paperwork had been filed.

"It reminds me of art." Crews hung back just a little and she angled him a fleeting glance. "The way she's sitting there." He pointed as he squatted down next to the body. Reese did the same, letting herself take in the scene. It reminded Reese of a mannequin, which in turn reminded her of zombies and horror films. Both were surreal enough in comparison to this case that the thought made her skin crawl.

Annette Langly had been wrapped from neck to foot in lace (minus her hands, which were left free, and the nails were painted bright red). Her toes were wrapped individually, but the nails were painted the same color as her fingers. The delicate lace was then followed by bright red ribbon wound neatly around her body in x shaped patterns set equidistantly up each leg, a larger one wound across her chest, and tied off in perfect bows at each of her wrists. In her hair were flowers-tiger lilies, daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, and white roses-which made her look like some wild wood nymph who had been caught in a sudden, deadly, frost against the tree.

Her partner shifted and leaned forward.

"Try not to break this one," she said dryly.

"I'm not going t-" Comprehension dawned on him and he looked vaguely guilty for a quarter of a second. "Oh." But he still wanted to touch the body, she could tell. It was in the way he kept shifting forward, trying to figure out something that had struck him as weird. Eventually, he'd do it anyway. Reese decided she was going to pretend not to notice this time.

"What is it with you two and jacked up murders?" Tidwell, looking harried as if someone had dragged him away from his coffee without a sip, stood over them, his arms folded. "Do you pass out cards or something? 'Please leave your mess in our yard, hugs and kisses L.A.P.D Homicide'?"

"Yes, that's exactly what we do," Reese said. "In fact, my nights are spent wandering the streets looking for particularly noteworthy creeps and handing them my card." Crews opened his mouth and promptly shut it, raising his latex gloved hands.

"M.E. wants to move the body," Tidwell said, just shaking his head, "you guys finished with it?"

"Yep," she said, rising. The still pale morning light caught the tiny circular pendant she wore as she turned to sweep a glance across the yard. "It looks like he came in from the side, there. Probably through the woods." It was a gated community, though, and supposedly safe. She wondered if anyone was truly safe in this world-people liked the the illusion of safety with locked communities and locked houses, privacy screens, and a thousand prisons of their own making. The fact of the matter was that you could put up a thousand safeguards, but if someone was determined to do you harm, there really wasn't all that much to stop them. Determination and ingenuity in the hands of someone smart enough to couple them together were disturbingly all a perp needed to commit a crime like this. She felt the chill work itself down her spine.

Whomever this asshole was, he'd done this before or he'd practiced.

"He took her eyes," Crews said, his voice soft, but loud enough to pull her from her thoughts.

Reese looked back at the body and realized that Crews had carefully peeled back a thawed eyelid. So much for not touching. Settled in the empty socket was what looked exactly like a peeled grape. In fact, that was exactly what it was-a bloody, peeled grape.

"Jesus," Tidwell said, visibly shaken as he took a step back and nearly knocked into the medical examiner's team as they showed up to retrieve the body. "I want this solved. Now."

She stood there for a moment, staring, and then wordlessly headed back to her car.