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night, one attack per week over the last three weeks. The first had been in Anacostia, and the victim had been so badly mauled he had yet to be identified.
    The second attack had occurred in Trinidad. The victim, Eddie Van Buren, was an unemployed former banker who’d been found near the National Arboretum. According to the article, Van Buren had been forty-three when he died, though the accompanying photo showed a man who couldn’t be more than twenty-five. In the photo, he was handsome and athletic-looking, and I had to wonder if they’d chosen to use the old photo because falling on hard times had stolen his good looks.
    The third attack had occurred in Ledroit Park, and the victim was Calvin Hodge, a criminal attorney. The picture in the paper showed a smiling middle-aged man with a neat black beard and a power suit.
    It was impossible to imagine that a pack of wild dogs could cover that much territory in the heart of D.C. without being spotted by someone. It was also impossible that they would randomly decide to attack lone male victims on Friday nights exactly one weekapart. The reporter who wrote the third article parroted the police’s assertions that, despite the improbability of it all, these killings were all the result of wild dog attacks, but I could almost feel the reporter’s skepticism.
    Either the perpetrator was a serial killer who owned a pack of attack dogs, or Phoebe was right and there was a Liberi behind it. I had to put my money on option number two, no matter how much I didn’t like it.
    By the time I’d finished skimming the articles, copies of all three police reports were in my in-box. Leo worked fast. And I didn’t want to know how he’d managed to get hold of confidential police reports within the space of an hour.
    I chugged down the rest of my coffee before it got cold, staring at my in-box, trying to work up the courage to open the first file. I gave myself a mental kick in the ass, took a deep breath, and double-clicked on the first attachment. There were several pages of notes, but I skipped immediately to the photos, knowing I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the text until I’d gotten this part over with.
    I managed to get through the first shot by almost convincing myself I was looking at special effects from some cheesy horror movie. I was less convinced when I peeked at the second one, and the third one made everything too real. I had to bolt to the bathroom, where I emptied out my coffee and my lunch. By the time I was finished, I was sweaty and shaking, my stomach still rumbling unhappily. I splashed coldwater on my face and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady.
    “Some kick-ass supernatural huntress you turned out to be,” I muttered to my reflection.
    The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go back to my computer and look at those photos again. What were the chances I’d spot something the police hadn’t and that whatever I spotted would lead me to the killer? Even given my own brand-new supernatural abilities, those odds were pretty slim. But I knew I had to look. If it turned out there was something I should have seen and someone else died horribly because I’d been too much of a wimp to look at a few nasty photos, I’d never be able to live with myself.
    It took several more tries before I could force myself to look at the photos for more than half a second at a time. My imagination was going to have a field day with these images if I let it.
    “Mind over matter,” I kept repeating to myself under my breath, then gripped the arms of my chair and forced myself to look.
    It wasn’t hard to tell why victim number one hadn’t been identified yet. Saying he’d been “mauled” was an understatement. Shredded was more like it. The crime scene was under an overpass, and there was blood everywhere. Blood painted the sidewalk and the street, dripped down the walls on both sides, and spotted the ceiling. Bits and pieces of him were scattered