The ten eighty-four call—a dead body—had come in that a victim had been found murdered in one of the apartments in this building. Matt knew he wasn’t going to like what he was about to walk into when he saw a rookie cop in the hallway tossing his cookies. He knew it was going to be bad. That was never a good sign. Matt nodded at the crime scene unit as he entered the apartment to an array of uniforms standing around the room, either talking to other cops or standing there looking at the dead body. He spotted his partner, Valentine, standing off to one side, talking to one of the uniformed men. The medical examiner was also there, already diligently at work. Matt cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the odor of death that was hanging in the air, threatening to make him queasy. He refused to end up in the hallway next to the rookie. He would never live it down if he got sick at a crime scene. But as Matt fought the foul taste in his mouth, he picked up a faint, underlying odor all around him and recognized that it was the same scent he had detected at the last crime scene.
