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and folded, as if set carefully aside. It looked incongruously pristine, as if it were on sale at JCPenney’s amidst a display of blood and flesh. The sheets were gathered at the foot of the bed as witness to a session of violent sex. Bloody sex. The killer was either monstrously large or had used an object on the woman. The blood from the wound that had most likely caused her death – the deep razor cut to the top of her spine – had spread to a diameter of four or five feet and looked black against the dark blue of the carpet. Paris noted that the death blow could have easily been dealt from behind in the throes of passion.
    He slipped on a rubber glove and began to look through the woman’s purse as the forensic activity in the room died down and the lab boys and the team from the coroner’s office wrapped up, taking the body with them. Paris pulled out a small, red leather wallet, bulging with plastic, the snap all but torn off. He looked at the driver’s license and was once again taken aback by the woman’s face. She was striking, even in the blurry little picture laminated in clear plastic.
    The dead woman was Karen Schallert, twenty-three, five six, one-twenty. Lived in Lakewood on Bunts Road. Paris pulled out a small stack of business cards. All belonged to men. Andy Sipari, attorney-at-law. Robert Hammer, theatrical management. Joe Najfach, Prestidigitator Deluxe! Marty Jevnikar, Lakeside Lexus.
    Paris searched her purse further. A half-finished bag of peanut M&Ms, a pair of matching combs, different widths. There were a few cosmetic basics like lipstick and a perfume atomizer. Paris found no mascara, no blush, no powder.
    Because
, he thought,
the killer carries his own, doesn’t he? And he is putting it on these women after he cuts them
.
    Paris made a note about funeral parlors, and drove back to the Caprice.
    Drunk. Staring at the side of the Red Valley Inn. Had to be four, four-thirty. Long after the crime scene techs had left, long after the yellow tape had secured the crime scene until morning. This one, it appeared, even rated a cop at the door, stationed there to protect all the juicy evidence that wasn’t going to add up to shit. Paris parked his car alongside the motel, cut the engine, dimmed the lights, unscrewed the cap on his fresh pint of Windsor. He flashed his badge to the uniform, who nodded in deference to Paris’s gold shield, his seniority.
    Paris stared at the door to 127 and tried to imagine the scene from earlier in the night. According to the desk clerk, a tall white man had rented the room. Thirtyish, mustache, tinted glasses. He wore an Irish tweed walking-hat that covered most of the upper part of his face. There was, of course, no register to sign at a place like the Red Valley Inn. The Valley was strictly pay and play, no questions, no paper. The night clerk had gone to the room after receiving a number of complaints about the TV being on full blast. He knocked on the door and found the body a few minutes later.
    Paris sipped from the bottle. The liquor warmed him. He closed his eyes, imagined the man opening the door, all charm and compliments and cologne, letting Karen Schallert, twenty-three, late of Lakewood, Ohio, into the room. His abattoir. Paris imagined them making love, Karen Schallert a bit nervous at first, but soon becoming aroused.
    Had she enjoyed it? Did she think she had made the right decision, making it with this guy who was, most likely, a total stranger?
    What did she think when she saw the blade?
    Paris hit the bottle lightly, replaced the cap and stepped out of the car. The night was clear and still, the traffic had diminished to a procession of only the most desperately addicted – food, cigarettes, dope, sex, booze. He walked to the back of the motel parking-lot and ran his flashlight around the base of the two giant Dumpsters parked there. Beer bottles, a few candy wrappers, fast food detritus.
    He directed his light along the crumbling concrete