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Hartwell glanced at his phone,saw the name on the screen and silenced it again. Eight missed calls. Jake Shepard was one persistent son of a bitch. But he would have to wait.

Cold bodies always took precedence over warm ones.

“This Grim Reaper must have one hell of a quota to meet,” Lennox said, standing over the mutilated body at their newest crime scene. Hartwell hadn’t even had time to take a shower between scenes. He could still smell the decay on him from Cash Holloway, and it was making him ornery.

“This isn’t the time to crack jokes,” Hartwell reprimanded.

Lennox looked down like a scolded dog. “Sorry, sir.”

“Tell me what you see.”

“Female, late twenties, COD exsanguination from throat laceration.”

“You mean estimated COD,” Hartwell corrected.

Lennox looked up at him expectantly. Teaching crime scene 101 to this kindergarten cop was not on his short list, but he did it anyway. Shoddy police work wasn’t getting another case yanked from Metro on his watch.

“Every scene gets examined with fresh eyes, zero bias, regardless of how similar it looks to any other. Assumptions lead to mistakes. Now, go again,” Hartwell ordered.

Lennox nodded, this time crouching for a closer look. “Female, mid-twenties, throat laceration, blunt force trauma to the skull and face, defensive wounds. Awaiting ME and tox screen to confirm COD.”

Hartwell nodded his satisfaction. He knew Lennox’s first assessment of the vic was correct. The sheer amount of blood loss meant she was alive when her throat was slit. But that was no excuse to get sloppy.

The possibility of copycat crimes was on the rise thanks to the news’ morbid obsession with sharing every detail they could get their hands on, and then some. If this case did go serial, he knew the agency in charge would leak false breadcrumbs to help weed out tips from people just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.

But in this case, as far as Hartwell could tell, this scene was the real deal.

Hartwell knelt near the murder weapon. There was no need for Dr. Gray this time. It was a scythe. He found himself uneasy with how comfortable he was becoming with the peculiar blade.

The same inscription adorned the bloody steel. Vita est morte est vita. The Latin riddle taunted him, as if to say death was inevitable and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

But he’d be damned if he didn’t try.

Reexamining the scene, Hartwell focused on the differences.

The MO had changed slightly, the killer choosing a female victim for the first time. Also, she wasn’t someone with political or celebrity status. The vic was most likely a runaway judging from the stamp on her hand—St. Jude’s, a halfway house on 5th and Lex.

Hartwell had worked that beat as a new boot. He knew the area well and was still tied into a few of the key players on that block. He briefly wondered if that would be enough to retain jurisdiction over this case.

Another change was the aggressive brutality evident from the scene. The defensive wounds indicated the victim fought back. Had that spurred the unwarranted bludgeoning after her throat had been severed? Or was this murder personal?

Either way, it was clear the killer was escalating.