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incompetent to you, Special Agent Cole?”
    “It’s not a question of competence, it’s a question of experience.” Jake slipped back into character. “You mind if I have a few minutes in here with Madame X and the child?” he asked. “By myself.”
    Hauser swallowed for what must have been the hundredth time in two minutes and nodded. “Sure. No problem. I give out tickets. Sometimes I see accidents. Drunk kids in fights in town. Killings? Sure, this is America, there’s enough of that shit to go around. Shootings and stabbings and beatings and drownings and suicides. But I have never even imagined that people do this kind of shit to one another. Not once.” He glanced over his shoulder and his Adam’s apple Ichabod Craned again. “Why would anyone skin a child? I can’t…I just…I don’t…”
    Jake cut the sheriff off to prevent him from crying in front of his people. “I’d like Dr. Reagan’s photographer to stay with me. Shoot what I ask him to. On my own flash card. You can have copies, of course. I’ll also expect copies of your protocols.” The ME’s office had already gone through the place. Blood spatter patterns had been recorded, the crime scene cataloged by a photographer, and every surface dusted for prints or genetic evidence. But Jake wasn’t looking for the things that the ME would be interested in—or even able to see. What Jake Cole wanted was to reach inside the fear he felt pulsing through the house and speak to the dead with that part of him that he never really understood.
    Hauser snapped back to the here and now. “I’m staying.”
    “It’s your investigation.”
    The sheriff lifted his head. “Everyone outside. Conway?”
    A small man in one of the ubiquitous spacesuits with an expensive Nikon dangling from his neck came over, his feet swishing on the carpet. “Yeah?”
    “This is Special Agent Jake Cole, FBI. Cole is doing us a favor here, so shoot whatever he tells you— however he tells you. Understood?”
    Conway nodded. “No problem, Sheriff.”
    The house began to empty, the sheriff’s people filing out with the ME’s people in a silent white-suited crowd. Conway changed memory cards in his camera and adjusted the big Sunpak flash.
    When they were alone, Jake leveled his gaze at Conway. “Let me poke around a bit but keep me in sight.”
    Conway shrugged like a man used to taking orders and cycled up his flash.
    Hauser stepped back like he was at a nature preserve observing wildlife. He cocked his head to one side and watched, hoping that this would somehow put what had happened into some sort of a rational context.
    Jake walked to the bedroom and stopped at the threshold. On the floor were the scabbed skinless sprawled-out figures of Madame X and her little boy. He walked through the door for a second meeting with woman and child. Mother and son.
    These are not people , Jake told himself.
    This is not a family.
    This is a set of clues.
    Left by an artist.
    An artist you know.
    You’ve seen.
    This is his palette.
    He stopped just inside the threshold and the jagged peal of the bells of bad memories started clanging away in his head. For an instant he wanted to reach out, to grab something for support, but like his brain, his muscles had frozen, the machine of his body unplugged from his CPU. He stood there, his eyes locked on the bodies spilled out of their skins onto the floor, his lungs cocked in a half-breath.
    It is him , the voice in his head said, matter-of-factly.
    And he was surprised that he was calm. That his feet were welded to the floor and that he was stronger this time. He felt Hauser’s presence in the empty space behind him, a cold spot in the room. He could tell that the sheriff was holding his breath.
    Jake filled his lungs with the sickly sweet air and for a split second it got away from him and he thought he was going to throw up. He didn’t fight it, didn’t try to suck it back or push it down, just let the feeling rumble around inside