Photos would not do the scene justice. The wall had been freshly repaired, freshly painted. There was still a faint odor to them of the dying paint. That odor now was all but drowned by the sweet iron stink of blood. The scent of blood added to the primitive fury of the drawings done on the corridors. Pictographs splashed hastily were of the most basic, the sun, stars, the symbol for infinity, fire, man, woman, the woman prone in death. When freshly done on the cream background, they must have been pulsating with redness. Now, as they dried and the wall absorbed them, they had begun to turn a rusty brown. Bauer. Bauer had drawn the pictures. They hadn't always been found at first, because he rarely left the bodies where the killing had taken place. When investigators were able to backtrack later, crude drawings had been found at the murder site. It had never been written up publicly, just as many of the actual atrocities done to the victims had never been released. One, to protect the integrity of the crime scene and evidence, two, to protect the families who'd already suffered enough. Carter felt his heart stutter, thump heavily once or twice, and then stagger back into its rhythm. His eyes shut involuntarily as he realized what he'd looked at.
