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remaining light showed the dark trail running down my arm. I dabbed at the wet stuff, then sniffed. My stomach pitched. There was no mistaking that sweet metallic odor.
    â€œGray!” I wasn’t even embarrassed about the panic in my voice
    â€œYeah?” His head appeared, followed by his shoulders and torso as he emerged from the basement.
    â€œB-bring your little light over here. Shine it on my arm.”
    He did so. “You scratched yourself.”
    I shook my head. “That’s the drip.”
    But it’s—”
    I nodded.
    â€œWhere did it come from?” He used the tail of his ruined shirt to wipe my arm clean.
    I pointed. “I was standing there.”
    His swung his penlight, and the beam picked out a red puddle on the floor, drops plummeting from above to splash in the viscous pool. A footprint repeated across the floor, getting fainter and fainter with each step until it was almost non-existent when it stopped at my left shoe.
    â€œOh, no! I stepped in the blood!”
    â€œYeah, but the question is whose blood?”
    He trained the beam overhead, and a woman’s pale hand appeared, flung out over the opening. Gray and I looked at each other in dismay, knowing that where there was a hand, there was a body attached.
    And the drip, drip, drip of the blood continued.

THREE
    â€œW e’ve got to get up there!” I cried. “Maybe she’s still alive.” Though remembering the man with the gun, gloves and mask, I doubted it.
    Already, Gray had grabbed the ladder lying on the kitchen floor and after extending it, leaned it against the opening at the end nearest the front door, away from the hand. He climbed quickly, and when he stepped off onto the second floor, I started up. I swallowed frequently, terrified of what I was about see.
    Help us, Lord, if we can help her. And help me to hold myself together.
    I found Gray on his knees beside the body of a woman wearing shorts and a yellow knit top. She lay on her stomach with her head slightly turned, one arm flung over her head, the other curled at her side. If it weren’t for the pool of blood that spread from her head across the plywood subfloor to the opening where it dripped, she might have been sleeping.
    Gray had his fingers on her carotid artery, seeking a pulse. He looked at me and shook his head.
    â€œDid you try her wrist?” I swallowed several more times against the sights and smells. And to think, I’d always prided myself on my cast-iron stomach.
    He nodded. “Nothing there either.”
    â€œMaybe we should turn her over to check some more?”
    Gray stood. “No. We’d be tampering with a murder scene if we did.”
    I shuddered. Murder scene! Shades of CSI. Lord, I teach intermediate school. I don’t do murder .
    Gray and I climbed down the ladder in silence. In the front hall Gray placed our second call to 911. The mention of blood and a body brought help much more quickly than a report of a departed masked man. Officers descended, lights flashing, radios squawking, climbing from several cars. Even though Gray stated clearly that the woman was dead, an ambulance was part of the full response team as was a fire engine, even though there was no fire.
    â€œShe’s on the second floor,” Gray said. “Right by the stairwell opening. We left the ladder we used in place for you.”
    The EMTs headed to the house immediately, equipment in hand. Two policemen followed. Other officers checked the grounds of not only the Ryders’ house but nearby sites. Two others, one an older officer clearly in charge, the other a young woman, stopped to talk to Gray and me.
    â€œI’m Sergeant William Poole, and this is Officer Natalie Schumann.” He peered at Gray with interest. “What’s that all over your shirt?”
    â€œNosebleed.”
    I felt the officers’ skepticism. Somewhere I had read the axiom that the police always assumed everyone