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around the strong smell of violent death. Tom checked out the bathroom, and after a thorough search he bent over the sink and splashed some water onto his face. The coffee felt like acid in his gut.
     
    Afterward he joined Roy in the kitchen. “Anything?”
     
    “This guy was a boy scout. No booze, no smokes, no drugs, no fatty foods in the fridge. A ton of books, not one of them with dirty pictures. What’d he do?”
     
    “Librarian.”
     
    “Figures. You find any girl stuff?”
     
    “Nope. If he had a girlfriend, they weren’t intimate. At least not here. No women’s clothing, no extra toothbrush.”
     
    “Found his wallet. On the computer. Sixty bucks inside. Poor guy just turned thirty. Hey, ain’t your big three-oh coming up this week?”
     
    Tom frowned. “Thanks for the reminder.”
     
    He looked in the cabinet under the sink and found half a box of garbage bags. They were the more expensive brand with the built-in handle—no twist tie needed. The perp must have brought his own to the scene. An earlier check of the front door didn’t show any signs of a break-in. Someone Jessup knew and let inside?
     
    Tom went back into the living room. The asses-and-elbows atmosphere of a murder investigation was in full swing, with almost a dozen professionals stepping over each other to do their jobs. A guy with a portable vacuum picked up hairs and fibers. A woman dusted for prints. A team armed with a spray bottle and an alternative light source illuminated blood droplets on the ceiling. All while a crime scene photographer snapped away and another techie videotaped everything.
     
    In the center of the action, the Medical Examiner—a pale, thin, cadaverous looking man named Phil Blasky—was orchestrating the removal of the body. The duct tape was carefully unwound, cut into one foot strips, and bagged. It would be examined back at the lab. A stretcher, complete with body bag, was wheeled in. Once the body was freed from the chair, two cops donning plastic ponchos lifted it onto the cart.
     
    “Now this is interesting.”
     
    The ME was bent over the legs, examining a bare foot. Tom got a closer look.
     
    “I thought it was something he stepped on, but apparently it’s a tattoo. It looks old.”
     
    “A tattoo? Where?” Tom’s voice came out higher-pitched than he would have preferred.
     
    “It’s on the pad of the left heel. A blue number, about an inch long. The number 7.”
     
    Tom looked at the foot and paled. A lump in his throat made him unable to speak.
     
    “I wonder what that means.”
     
    Me too,
Tom thought.
     
    He’d seen a similar tattoo. Also blue, about an inch long. The number 5.
     
    He’d been seeing it on a daily basis for almost thirty years.
     
    It was on the bottom of his own left foot.
     

Copyright © 2009 Joe Konrath
Cover art copyright © Carl Graves
     
    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors.
     
    Edition: February 2011