The black nighttime storm clouds were unleashing, and a colossal downpour was falling as Elizabeth and Maggie arrived in the driveway of their home.

Elizabeth opened the front door and walked straight into the living room, quirking her eyebrows as she saw the fleeting glances her daughter was giving each other.

Katherine came out of the guest bathroom and smiled broadly. "There you are."

Elizabeth looked at her sister and daughters in turn. "Here we are." She straightened as she heard shuffling footsteps coming from the direction of the laundry room and quirked her eyebrows, pointing at the creature coming around the corner. "What's that?" she asked when she saw the Blue Fawn pit bull.

Ashlyn jumped up from the couch and walked over to the dog, which had stopped in front of the detective, tail wagging, and stroked his head affectionately. "This is Blu."

Maggie stood next to her wife and looked at her sister-in-law, who just shrugged.

"Why is there a dog in our house?" Elizabeth wanted to know with a serious face.

Ashlyn's eyes widened, and she looked first at her sister and then at her aunt for help, but she quickly realized that she shouldn't expect much support from either of them. She licked her lips before answering, "Blu lives at a shelter where I volunteer after school. I mainly take care of Blu, bathe him, feed him, and walk him at least once a day because no one else does."

Elizabeth nodded slowly and eyed the animal that had now sat down at her feet skeptically. "And today, you forgot to take him back to the shelter after you walked him?"

Now Nikki stood up from the couch as well. "I ... suggested that we take Blu in until we find him a good family to stay with for the rest of his life."

The detective blinked slowly and took a long look at her older daughter. "I'm sorry, what?" She looked slowly at her wife. "Did you know about this?"

Maggie pressed her lips together and slowly shook her head.

"Don't look at me like that," Katherine said as her sister's gaze turned to her. "I've never seen that dog before, let alone heard of it."

"It's only temporary, Ma," Ashlyn said, her eyes wide.

Elizabeth looked at Ashlyn and then at Blu, the pit bull, and took a deep breath before setting her briefcase down on the couch and going to the fridge to take out a bottle of beer. "We're need to talk about this, Ashlyn," she said, looking at her sister. "Let's go to my study."

Katherine nodded with her lips pressed together, picked up her wine glass, and followed her sister.

"You could have warned me," the detective growled as she climbed the stairs.

"I did," the doctor replied with a smile. "I sent you dozens of texts."

Elizabeth growled again and pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. Katherine hadn't lied; she had sent several texts that the detective hadn't read. Then she opened the door to the study and let her sister go first.

The study was full of books and papers. A sizable video library of DVDs, many of which report on serial killers.

"I found some stuff," Katherine said as she sat down on a small couch against the wall, a hint of pride in her voice.

Elizabeth sat down behind the desk with a sigh and explained everything succinctly.

Katherine looked at the detective for a long time. "You found parts of the missing heart?" Katherine finally summarized Elizabeth's explanations.

Elizabeth nodded slowly.

"And you think the perpetrator bit into his victim's heart in the apartment?"

"Yep."

"And there was muscle fiber tissue with saliva in a furrow in the carpet?"

"Yep."

"And Maggie says tomorrow the DNA traces will be analyzed, so we'll be able to tell then exactly whether the muscle flesh came from Foreman's heart and the DNA in the saliva came from the killer?"

Elizabeth nodded again.

"Okay." Katherine rose from the couch and paced the study. "Funny how no one noticed that before."

Elizabeth wondered about that, too. Not too much, though. She had gotten into the habit of often doing everyone else's work. Because then she sometimes discovered something the others didn't see. And because for her, the result was only finished when the killer could no longer cause mischief and not when it was closing time, as it was for many of her colleagues. "It probably didn't occur to anyone in Forensics to go up there and look at the carpet."

Katherine raised her eyebrows briefly. "A typical thinking error. The murder happened downstairs, so there's no need to look upstairs."

"Do you have an explanation for why the killer would stand on the balustrade upstairs, where he can overlook the apartment?" the detective asked, taking a sip from the beer bottle.

"Classic dominance fantasy," Katherine replied. "He stood in an elevated position and looked down at his opponent's body. The opponent he defeated."

"Maggie says the human dentition is incapable of biting raw muscle meat, and you must cook or fry the meat to change the structure so you can chew it. Even predators don't bite the flesh of their prey; they tear it apart."

Katherine nodded slowly. "That might explain why he took the heart home and maybe prepared it there." She took a small sip of red wine. "But before that, he had to savor the feeling of power by looking down at the body and completing his victory in a primitive, symbolic way by biting into the heart. It's the moment of absolute victory, of complete triumph."

Elizabeth pictured the killer as he sank his teeth into the heart, his jaws grinding as the blood and his saliva dripped, staring down at the corpse of his slain opponent. It would have fit if he had masturbated on the spot while doing so, but she had detected no traces of semen on the carpet. Nor had Maggie's analysis revealed such hints.

"Something like cannibalism?" asked Elizabeth then.

Katherine nodded slowly. "Yes. Medically, it's also called anthropophagy, the eating of humans. In the animal kingdom, it exists anyway. There are even sharks that eat other shark fetuses in the womb, so sometimes only two sharks end up being born."

"Why two? If one eats all the others?"

"Sharks have two separate wombs."

Elizabeth pulled the corners of her mouth down. "There, I've learned something again."

Katherine sat back down on the small couch and frowned a little. "Supposedly, the word cannibalism comes from Columbus. He had observed that the inhabitants of the West Indies were afraid of the Caniba, the man-eating inhabitants of a neighboring island. They spoke of 'Cariba' in Spanish, which then became Caribbean. In English, the term cannibal became common."

"Is our killer cannibal?"

"Possibly. This is by no means a new phenomenon. The fictional character Hannibal Lecter ate other people to rid the world of rude or incompetent characters. Then there was Peter Kuerten in Germany and Albert Fish or Jeffrey Dahmer in the U.S, and we had talked about those some time ago."

Elizabeth recalled. "And this Haarmann in the nineteeb-twenties in Germany? He was a cannibal, too, wasn't he?"

Katherine nodded again and raised her brows briefly. "Yes, and a butcher at that. He murdered over twenty boys in Hanover, all between the ages of ten and twenty-two. He made them into sausage, ate some of them himself, and sold some. People called him the 'man-eater'. There were quite a few cases of cannibalism in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A particularly nasty contemporary was Alexander Speziwtsev. Together with his mother, he had kidnapped, tortured, killed, and eaten almost twenty young girls, including four children. However, the authorities didn't take the matter seriously at first. Moreover, everything was corrupted by the Russian mafia. Bribes were flowing, and the police were afraid to unravel the web. Eventually, they did take action, and the remains of the bodies were found in the basement of the house."

"But there have been cases here in our country," Elizabeth replied. "That James Scanavino in Nebraska, for example."

Katherine's expression brightened as if it were a particularly gratifying story. "Oh yeah, that guy. I looked at the case files back then. And I can still see the headlines. Scanavino had read Robinson Crusoe as a teenager. The account of people being slaughtered and eaten. That's when it clicked for him, you might say."

Elizabeth looked at her sister for a long moment and drew her eyebrows together. "But the case was quite different. Did Scanavino's victim, this man, not want to be eaten? Isn't that why he came to Nebraska to see him?"

"Yes. An engineer from Miami. He had the desire to disappear without a trace. The man had probably searched on relevant forums beforehand. He had even asked several hookers to mutilate and eat him. Scanavino asked to grind and destroy his bones after his death. All memories of him were to be erased. That's what is called Oblivion."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, brows furrowed. "I find it hard to imagine that Steven Foreman would have wanted anyone to eat his heart at all costs. And he certainly didn't want to disappear, either."

Katherine leaned back on the couch and crossed her legs. "With that sense of entitlement? He sure didn't. And it certainly wasn't voluntary here, either. The Scanavino case, on the other hand, raised an entirely different question: is it murder when someone desires their murder and the other person only carries out that murder as instructed? Such a dark form of euthanasia. According to the court record, the man took about twenty sleeping pills and drank half a liquor. Then Scanavino was supposed to cut off his penis and eat it, which he did. He even filmed it. Someone wants to become a part of someone else by being eaten. And the other wants to take a part of the other into himself. Often these cannibals want to use it to fill the inner emptiness inside them."

"Jesus. And they do that by eating someone?" asked Elizabeth, stunned.

Katherine nodded with her lips pressed together. "Yes."

"Well, I prefer to read when I feel emptiness."

"There was also a movie about it, Bellevue, deliberately misrepresented. Scanavino sued it, and the film was banned. But then it went on appeal, and now the film does exist. Much more interesting, however, is the film From the Diary of a Cannibal. It depicts everything almost exactly as it happened. It was banned right away, of course."

Elizabeth looked at her sister for a long time. "But you have the movie anyway?"

Katherine smiled wryly and raised her shoulders. "Of course."

"Scanavino is still in prison?" the detective asked.

"Yeah, he'll never get out of jail."

"And he didn't eat the heart? Is it for a cannibal not the most important organ? That's what the Aztec rituals were like, wasn't it?"

"No, Scanavino didn't eat the heart, although he wanted to eat it gladly."

"Then why didn't he?"

"He was afraid it might contain germs of disease."

Elizabeth looked at the psychiatrist in confusion and tucked her chin. "In the heart? Germs of disease? But not in the penis, huh?"

Katherine took a deep breath and raised her shoulders. "You must get out of asking for logic with people like that. The moment gives them the kick. Scanavino later testified that it was fascinating that the man became a part of him. Whenever he thought about it later, he would have an orgasm."

"I see," Elizabeth murmured. "Well, our killer didn't have that feeling. There were no traces of semen on the balustrade at Steven Foreman's apartment."

Katherine took a long look at her sister and raised her eyebrows briefly. "Good point. The motive here is different, too, and not sexually connoted cannibalism like Scanavino's, where someone wants the other to become a part of you."

"But?"

"As far as I know, there are different kinds of cannibalism. From all these excesses, you have to distinguish cannibalism in extreme situations, when people eat other people because otherwise, they starve to death. Like the Japanese in Papua New Guinea in 1942, who first ate the Australian soldiers and then looked for their food in their ranks, so to speak."

"And the other forms?"

"Sexual cannibalism existed among the Aztecs. Some priests dressed in the flayed skin of a woman they had previously eaten. Freud even goes so far as to consider the sucking of the infant on the mother's breast as an early form of cannibalism." She smiled a little and shook her head. "Even the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, when the faithful eat the body of Christ as a way of taking in the divine, is not that far from James Scanavino's motivation."

Elizabeth looked at her cell phone to see it was late. "And our killer is motivated differently? I'm sure Steven Foreman didn't want to be eaten."

"I'm sure he didn't. With our killer, it may be ritual motives, and he wants to absorb the power of the other to validate himself without desiring the other."

Elizabeth thought for a moment and furrowed her brows. "And there are these cannibalism forums, where people ... how shall I say --"

"Have dinner dates?" Katherine smiled a little pained smile and nodded. "As far as I know, yes."

Elizabeth looked at her phone again. "I'll have Nick look at that first thing in the morning. Maybe he'll still be awake, and I'll send him a text in a bit."

"Nick is sure as hell still awake. Jalen's not sleeping through the night right now unless," she pointed to herself, "he's been put to bed by Mama."

Elizabeth looked at her sister with raised brows and smiled wryly. "You're a devil."

Katherine smiled herself. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much."

Elizabeth chuckled and shook her head.