Page 32 of Fatal Pattern

“Look at her,” Tori murmured, nodding toward the receptionist. “Nine to five, same desk, same view every day. I’d lose my mind.”

“Some people like routine.”

“Some people like vanilla ice cream too. Doesn’t make it interesting.” Tori shifted in her chair. “You ever think about what you’d do if you weren’t a cop?”

“Nope.”

“Come on. Not even when you were a kid?”

Blade considered this. “When I was eight, I wanted to be a gator wrestler.”

“Of course you did.” Tori grinned. “Very practical career choice for a boy from the Everglades.”

“What about you? Before the whole criminal profiling thing?”

“Marine biologist. Wanted to study sharks.” She paused. “Guess I still do, just a different kind.”

His phone buzzed. Gino’s name flashed on the screen. CSU. About time.

“St. James.”

“Blade, it’s Gino. Bro, I couldn’t rest until I figured out what was on that blotter because, dude, you know I love a puzzle.” The CSU had that electric edge he got when he’d cracked something. “You got a minute?”

Blade glanced at Tori, then held the phone between them so she could hear. “What’d you find?”

“It was an indentation created when someone wrote on a paper that was sitting on top of the blotter. We used electrostatic detection apparatus. Basically runs an electrical charge across the surface to reveal pressure marks. Like a high-tech version of rubbing a pencil over paper to see what was written on the page above it.”

“And?”

“I just texted you the image. Take a look.”

Blade pulled up his messages. At first glance, he saw a complex web of lines that formed a six-pointed star.

He showed the screen to Tori, who furrowed her brow and shook her head.

“Looks like some kind of symbol,” Blade said. “Any idea what it means?”

“Honestly? Could be anything. Maybe just a doodle. We can’t tell who made it. Could’ve been Florek, absentmindedly drawing while on a call. Or it could’ve been the killer.”

“Why would the killer draw something?” he asked, more to himself than Gino.

“That’s the million-dollar question. And if it was the killer, he took the drawing with him because we couldn’t find the paper anywhere in the house.”

Blade studied the image again. The star wasn’t flat. The intersecting triangles created a three-dimensional effect. Was this a wireframe for a physical object? Something about it nagged at the back of his skull.

“You find anything else? Prints? DNA?”

“So far, no prints anywhere. We’re still processing samples. Should know more in a few days.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Will do.”

Blade disconnected and took another look at the image on his screen. “Ever seen anything like that before?”

“Not exactly. Reminds me of those three-dimensional stars I used to draw on my notebooks in elementary school.” She tilted her head. “Here, gimme your notebook.”

He pulled his notebook from his breast pocket and handed it over. Tori flipped to a clean page and drew a giant plus sign. She turned the notebook sideways and drew a smaller X through the center. To Blade, it looked like an uneven asterisk, but he watched as Tori connected the tip of each shorter line of the X to the top of the plus sign.