Page 21 of Fatal Pattern

No pause, no hesitation, he’d picked the case over Kiara. He wanted the crime scene. Wanted Tori at his side. Even knowing Kiara waited with sunsets and takeout, he stayed with the mess.

What did that say about him? He shoved the thought down before it could take root. Some questions didn’t need answers.

His phone vibrated with a new text from Kiara:

Don’t forget to eat something. 😘

He tucked the phone in his pocket and climbed into his car.

6

The rear door of Donald Florek’s house opened into Florek’s kitchen. Tori stepped into the open-floor-plan home behind Blade. Granite countertops gleamed under the afternoon light streaming through plantation shutters. Everything pristine, untouched. The contrast hit her before they’d even entered the living room.

“Gloves,” Blade said, pulling a pair from his jacket pocket.

Tori snapped them on and followed him down a hallway lined with expensive artwork. The house whispered money. Persian rugs, crown molding, furniture that cost more than most people’s cars.

The smell hit her.

Blood had its own signature. Metallic, organic, impossible to mistake once you’d encountered it as many times as Tori had. But this wasn’t just blood. This was violence soaked into carpet fibers and drywall, the kind that lingered weeks after the scene had been processed.

Tori stopped in the doorway and let her eyes adjust. The blood spatter painted the walls in arcs that told a story of movement, brutality, and overwhelming force. Dark burgundy streaks climbed halfway up the cream-colored walls, some reaching toward the ceiling in perfect parabolas that mapped the killer’s swing patterns.

An overturned coffee table lay on its side, one leg snapped clean off. Glass from shattered picture frames crunched under her feet as she stepped carefully into the room. A broken lamp sat askew near the fireplace, its shade torn and hanging at an odd angle.

But something felt wrong.

She crouched near the largest blood pool, where Florek’s body had been found. The stain had darkened to an almost black color. She studied the spatter patterns on the wall above it, noting the height and angle of each arc.

“Blade, how tall was Florek?”

“Five ten, according to his driver’s license.”

She stood and moved to the opposite wall, where more blood had sprayed in a different pattern. Lower. More horizontal. “And the killer was swinging down at him?”

“That’s what the ME figured. Defensive wounds on Florek’s hands and forearms suggested he tried to block the blows.”

Tori walked the perimeter of the room, tracking the destruction. The overturned furniture, the broken glass, the blood covering nearly every surface. The scene screamed rage, a chaotic frenzy. But it was a performance. She could feel it. The rage was real, but the mess was for show.

“You said no forced entry?” she asked.

“Front door was unlocked when the neighbor found the body. Back door was still locked from the inside.”

“So Florek either knew his killer or—”

“Or the killer picked the lock and waited until he got home.”

Tori knelt beside the coffee table and examined the broken leg. Clean break, recent. She looked up at the blood spatter on the wall behind it, then back at the table’s position.

“This is overkill,” she said, more to herself than to Blade.

“What do you mean?”

She stood and brushed off her knees. “Stabbing someone this many times, that’s a crime of rage. It’s about making someone pay.”

“Pay for what?”

“That’s the question. Whatever Florek did, the killer believed he deserved every single blow. But look at this scene. It’s too messy. Too . . . theatrical. Like someone wanted us to think it was a crime of passion.”