The feeling of leaning away from the cliff, pushing off the rock face, releasing my grip on the rappelling rack, falling a good fifteen feet before my boots hit the wall, then starting the whole process over again was still with me when I got out of my car and headed up the block toward the police lines.

It was July in DC, but it was strangely cool, low seventies, low humidity, with a brisk breeze.  The school came into view, shut and empty for the summer.  Jannie went to Harrison, and when I saw the circus of media satellite trucks around the school grounds, it made the scene that much more upsetting.

I skirted the trucks and pushed my way through the onlookers, hearing but trying to ignore the vicious gossip and speculation already spreading about the victims and the heinous crime.

In the past I had been both an FBI agent and a DC Metro Homicide detective, and now I was a consultant for both agencies.  I showed my identification to the uniformed officer restricting entry to the crime scene, and he let me duck under the tape.

I made it fifteen yards before an FBI agent asked me for my ID.  I gave him my FBI contractor's badge, and he waved me through.  John Sampson, my best friend and former partner at DC Homicide, came around the corner.

"FBI?" I said.

"Given the victims, not surprising."

"Right, but who's in charge?"

"Mahoney.  He wants you to look at the bodies before they're moved."

"How bad?"

"They weren't shot in the face.  You'll recognize both."

We walked around to the lot in the rear of the school, and I saw an FBI forensics van and a DC medical examiner's vehicle parked by the football field and track where my daughter had run some of her finest races.  There were at least twenty agents prowling the lot, looking for any and all evidence.  I could see a team of them on the field.

"Who found them?" I asked.

"School security guard," he said, gesturing toward dumpsters with yellow police tape around them.  "They're out back."

I said, "Time of death?"

"ME says four a.m."

We went over to the dumpsters to find the familiar powder-blue Bentley convertible cordoned off by more police tape, and agents, criminologists, and police detectives milling around the area.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Ned Mahoney, my old partner at the Bureau, separated himself from the pack, came over, and shook my hand.  "We've been waiting on you, Alex.  It's been photographed but not scoured by forensics yet."

"Okay," I said.  "Can I get some breathing room?"

Mahoney clapped and yelled, "All right, now, everyone back off, we need the scene to ourselves for a moment."

We got odd glances, but they walked off.

I took in the Bentley convertible and the victims in the back seat, and part of me wanted to sit down and cry.  But I'd spent the majority of my adult life confronting murder, and there was only one way to do it well: divorce yourself emotionally from the victims.  In this case, that was going to be difficult.

Mahoney, seeming to read my thoughts, said, "You sure you're up to this?"

"I'll deal with it," I said as I walked around the car toward the female victim.

I wanted to treat her as an object to be studied and evaluated, but I was having a hard time taking my eyes off Kay Willingham's face.  She was one of the most striking, most interesting women I'd ever known, and here she was dead, sprawled next to a man who had apparently been her lover, unlikely as that seemed.

I had to force myself not to look at her blank expression and instead focus on the two bullet wounds about four inches apart and two inches above her bare left breast.  Her rose-lace bra was on her lap; her black dinner dress was tugged down around her waist.

"No sign she had her hands up in a defensive posture," I said.  "I'm thinking she never saw her killer."

"Neither did he," Sampson said from the other side of the car.  "I think they had other things on their minds."