It smelled like coffee this time when Elizabeth entered her sister's office.

Katherine stood in front of her desk, where she had spread out numerous papers and pictures. The side table behind the desk was also full of them. The younger woman was staring intently at said pictures and scratching her chin thoughtfully when the detective entered. A pot of coffee and a cup occupied the only space on the desk that was not cluttered with papers.

"I see there's work going on here," Elizabeth said with a hint of a smile."

Katherine glanced briefly over her shoulder at her sister. "Indeed," she countered, "Those marks on the body ... Somehow, I can't get them out of my mind." She raised her eyes again. "I've already read reports about the interrogation of this Akin guy. As you might expect, nothing could be gotten out of him, right?"

Elizabeth opened her mouth to object but decided against it. "True," she said, placing her briefcase in front of the couch in the back of the office. The sofa looked like Sigmund Freud's in Vienna, a behemoth of brown-red velvet, which was more intentional than coincidental. "All Cops Are Bastards; that's their motto. They don't share secrets with us."

"Then we'll have to figure it out for ourselves. After all, what are we for?" Katherine looked at her sister long and hard. "How was the visit with Maggie?"

Elizabeth looked at her sister as well. "Everything as we thought it would be. The perp killed the dog, bashed the man's skull in, gave him the cuts, and then took the heart that was cut out."

Katherine shook her head thoughtfully. "Took the heart with him. How archaic that sounds. But you know what bothers me the most? Those cuts he inflicted on the victim while the man was still conscious." She laid two pictures side by side. "Was it pure sadism, or did it have any meaning?"

"You said you had seen these cuts, these marks before." Only now did the detective have time to look more closely at the Bloody Mark. There was one each on the upper arm, just at the shoulder joint, one just below that, and finally, one just above the heart, directly adjacent to the yawning cavity where the killer had opened the chest. The mark looked like a rune.

Like a stylized arrow, sometimes the sign appeared singly, and sometimes they were one below the other.

"What is that?" the older woman asked, her eyebrows drawn together. "A Viking rune?"

Katherine took a deep breath, shook her head, and shrugged. "Could be possible. If it was a gang war, it could be some right-wingers. Neo-Nazis, bonehead skins, whatever. I've heard that the right-wing groups - Arian Brotherhood, White Supremacists, and so on - have now reached out their fingers in our direction."

"But would they go so far as to take a victim's heart?" retorted Elizabeth with furrowed brows.

"Good question. At any rate, taking the heart has some symbolic meaning, I'm sure. It would be atypical of gang warfare. Where something more likely to do sex killers or cannibalistic murderers. Perverts who want a trophy. I haven't heard of anything like that from right-wing radicals. And Arab clans in Boston don't alter the bodies either. They pop or stab people; anything else would be way too inconvenient."

Elizabeth frowned a little. "So we agree that the crime pattern is different than it would be in a gang war?"

Katherine took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "That's what I'm assuming."

"If it's not an act of revenge or gang crime, then it's a maybe a sexually motivated psychopath taking body parts or organs to do whatever else."

Katherine now finally looked at her sister." Yes. Like Jeffrey Dahmer."

"But killers like that, they look for victims to deal with. Who are weak, who they can easily defeat, and at whose expense they can live out their fantasies of omnipotence. Dahmer, after all, drugged his victims with roofies."

Katherine nodded slowly. "A Deathguard leader who is armed to boot, however, is not likely to be an easy victim. There are others in Boston and the surrounding area who are easier to kill."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows a little. "I suppose that's true. And most sex offenders are men and kill according to their sexual preference. And since most men are heterosexual, the victims of serial killers are usually women."

Katherine raised her eyebrows briefly. "That's right. However, there have been homosexual serial killers like the Jeffrey Dahmer I mentioned."

"Dahmer picked easy victims to defeat, though," Elizabeth retorted.

Katherine licked her lips. "That's true. But we don't know yet if this is a serial killer. So far, we've only got one homicide done this way."

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. "But if you've seen something like this before somewhere, and it was the same perpetrator, we'd be dealing with a serial killer, wouldn't we?"

Katherine licked her lips and nodded hesitantly. "If that's the case, yes."

Elizabeth looked at the pictures one by one again. "You know what I wonder?" she said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of Katherine's desk. "We have a blood trail that goes about a yard from the crime scene. Here." She pointed to one of the pictures. "And then this blood trail suddenly breaks off."

"And what does that tell you?"

"That he may have been up to something with the heart. The blood trail ends abruptly, as if he had wrapped it up to do something with. Or to take it with him. It's just a guess. Maybe I need to go back to the crime scene."

Katherine also glanced at the pictures again. "Could be. But I'm more concerned with these strange signs. I told you, I've seen them somewhere before, and I'm just not sure where anymore." She furrowed her brows and gritted her teeth. "Damn!" She looked out the window. By now, it had grown dark. "I still have some old files at home from my time in New York and L.A."

Elizabeth looked at her sister with furrowed brows. "Do you think it has anything to do with that?"

"I hope so. Otherwise, we're completely in the dark. The killer leaves fingerprints everywhere, and the DNA isn't stored anywhere. He's like a goddamn phantom." She looked at the detective. "Or have we been able to match the DNA yet?"

The detective shook his head. "No, neither BPD nor FBI has a match."

Katherine made a face as if something hurt her and took a sip from her coffee cup. "Great." She glanced resignedly at the pictures, then looked at Elizabeth with a furrowed brow. "Oh, sorry, would you like some coffee too?"

Elizabeth gave her sister a long, almost worried look but shook her head. "No, thank you. I've got a better idea. I'll go back to the crime scene in a minute. You check your records at home. And then we'll go from there. It's best if we meet at Foreman's apartment."

Katherine nodded slowly and took another sip of coffee. "Sounds like a plan."

xxx

Nikki looked straight ahead with wide eyes, frowning very profoundly, just like her mother. "Ooooh," she said at length, "you're in a hell of a lot of trouble."

Ashlyn looked closely at her sister and frowned as well. "Why am I in trouble? It's just nursing, temporarily."

Nikki looked at her sister for a long moment. "Just like when you picked up that neighbor cat off the street and hid him until Ma found him in the kitchen?"

"I picked him up from the street after he was hit by a car and took him to the vet. That's when I thought Simba didn't have any owners."

Nikki rolled her eyes and nodded slowly. "The neighbors put up flyers, Ash." She knew her sister only meant well, and for creatures that couldn't stand up for themselves against people in ways they didn't understand and then were labeled aggressive simply because their owners couldn't or wouldn't recognize that the animals were being kept and treated wrongly. If she was honest with herself, she was a little envious of Ashlyn's empathy for the animal world.

"I'm just taking care of Blu for a while and walking him, after all. No one else is doing it, Nikki," Ashlyn replied with a twinkle in her eye that would have made even Elizabeth melt. She frowned a little as she watched the blue and white pit bull named Blu lay on his back in front of her, all four paws sticking up in the air as he begged to be scratched on the belly, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, floppy ears resting on the ground, making him look like he was almost grinning comedically in a cute way.

At that moment, she couldn't understand why this breed of dog was considered bloodthirsty and a killer of children. Unfortunately, when the media reported that a 'bloodthirsty' Pittbull had once again mauled a child or adult to death, each time, it was omitted why this tragedy had occurred. Often the animals misbehaved, fitted with shock collars that caused them to be overprotective about people and then go berserk when some sort of punishment was due, just because they behaved like dogs with a higher hunting instinct, like a Chihuahua that you could easily carry in a handbag.

Some people kept Pittbull Terriers in a kennel in all weather and did not even consider it necessary to walk them at least once a day for an hour or two.

Or the dogs were bought because they were "hip," and then there was an addition to the family, and the animals were shoved off because they bared their teeth at the child after the child had pulled on their tail one too many time.

The list of why one acquired such a dog and then shoved it off into an animal shelter was more than just long.

The list of why such and similar dog breeds, considered fighting dogs, were disreputable, and some animals were so messed up that no one wanted to adopt them anymore was just as long.

They were abused for breeding, used as birthing machines because the puppies brought in a stack of money, or were abused for drug smuggling. Or the previous owner was more out in the country than at home.

Nikki looked at the happy face of the dog named Blu and took a deep breath. If it were up to her, she would take him home and save at least one of these poor creatures from a lethal injection. But her mind advised against that decision. She carefully reached out her hand and held it in front of Blu's nose. To show him she had no ill intentions; she let her scent penetrate his brain before gently scratching his belly. "And after the next walk, you'll bring him home by accident and keep him there for an hour. And then again and again until he's used to our house. Do you realize what you are doing to the animal? What are you doing to him by bringing him back to the shelter over and over again?"

Ashlyn took a long look at her sister and raised her shoulders. "I have my website called "Save Blu" through which I hope people will see what a good boy he is and maybe find him a forever home. I post videos and updates on his progress."

Nikki's eyebrows drew together, and she looked at Ashlyn for a long moment. "About the dog?"

"Just about the dog," Ashlyn replied, crossing herself to swear she was telling the truth. She knew what her mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmothers had to contend with when fighting cybercrime.

Nikki sighed again, somehow knowing it would come down to Blu becoming a new family member.

"Please," Ashlyn pleaded, "can't you drive me here three times a week?"

Nikki looked at the Pittbull while scratching her belly and nodded slowly. "Alright."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Ashlyn said and would have loved to throw her arms around her sister's neck, but she decided against it as Blu raised his head during her outburst. "Thank you."

"It's okay," Nikki muttered, meaning the dog much more than Ashlyn.