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drawers. He found mouse turds in one of the drawers.
    As he laid the knives out – twelve now – he found himself marveling at how Delaney had left him to this. Finding a murder weapon was priority one. Though since it wasn’t a gun, had Delaney deprioritized it? Had he expected – despite the fact that his list of instructions hadn’t included searching for a weapon – that Brendan would get to it quickly anyway? Some things about the older detective just didn’t make a lot of sense, but Brendan chalked most of it to the quirkiness/arrogance that came with seniority. Still, senior investigators were rarely sloppy. That’s why they were still around.
    Twelve sharp knives and he could find no more. He found that several of them were similar in appearance. They had the insignia of Royal Norfolk Cutlery etched in their steel blades. A heraldic lion pawed the air next to the name. There were four of these. Four knives and four slots. He slipped the knives in the sheath and stepped back. He heard someone behind him.
    It was Delaney.
    “How’s it going?” The big man darkened the doorway to the kitchen.
    “Good,” said Brendan. The excitement of the knife hunt was dissipating.
    “You get to talk to the Heilshorn kid further?”
    “A little, sir.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Checking to see if the murder weapon could have come from this collection of knives,” said Brendan. It was hard not to mask some bit of disappointment he felt.
    Delaney walked over at a leisurely pace. He stopped a foot away from Brendan, facing him. Brendan could smell the outside air on the man, and a trace of aftershave. Delaney reached past Brendan and pulled out one of the knives. He wasn’t wearing gloves. “They can clear my prints,” he said absently. He held the knife, resting the blade on one palm and pinching the handle between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. He rolled it over. He grunted to himself.
    “So you think a missing knife could be our murder weapon?”
    Brendan nodded. “Maybe. But this one set is all accounted for.”
    Delaney raised his considerable eyebrows and looked over the blade of the knife he held up to his face. “You think we’ll find a knife with a print on it. Run the print in the database, match it with a felon, and go pick him up.”
    “Could be.”
    Delaney nodded, slid the knife back into the sheath and stuck out his lower lip. Then he walked to the sink and turned on the water. He splashed some on his face. “Christ it’s hot out there,” he said.
    He turned and started walking out of the kitchen. “Go finish with the motorcycle rider. I’ll have CSI come down and bag that whole assortment of knives. They’re moving into the rest of the house. A K9 unit is en route.”
    Delaney walked out of the room.
    Brendan paused, and then pressed his palms to the wooden butcher’s block, and leaned forward. He let his head hang. He took a breath.
    Then he resumed walking around the kitchen. He stopped and looked at the refrigerator. It was an unusual red color, not quite matching the floor. It was an older model – the handles were chipped, the color dull in places on the face. There were a few magnets on the surface. One was a tiny lobster. One was the flat, thin kind, from a hardware store. There were no notes, no drawings or photos.
    Brendan stood looking at the half dozen magnets. A thought occurred to him and he turned and walked away from the fridge. He passed the butcher’s block, glancing at the array of knives he’d unearthed. Then he walked into the shadowy dining room adjoining the kitchen.

CHAPTER FIVE / THURSDAY, 10:35 AM
    Brendan wanted to keep close to the K9 unit, but first he wanted to examine the rest of the house himself. He smiled at the two women from the CSI unit, Alicia and Dominique, as he passed them on the stairs.
    In the bathroom, he went through the medicine cabinet. He found prescription bottles for Xanax and Klonopin, and a generic menstrual cramp