The dead woman’s name is Margaret McCoy, 31, brunette, face like a freshly excavated Roman mosaic. A sales executive at Scarlet Management, she was shot to death earlier this morning in her own apartment, 703 Adams Terrace. Lying on her back at the foot of her bed, an oval of red chalk surrounds the body. It means one of two things. Either there’s a ritual element to this killing, or Starch Kola’s Enforcers are terrible at drawing outlines.
I’m performing a ritual of my own, one that doesn’t involve candles and an unfortunate goat. Check the body, ID the victim, check the phone, check the safe. Father Phil Noir is an anointed member of the priesthood of private investigators, and while my rite won’t bring McCoy back from the dead, it might summon the demon who killed her.
Casting my runes yields two good clues and four good leads. The clues are a size-12 bootprint that matches none of McCoy’s shoes, and a fingerprint lifted from the safe keypad that matches none of McCoy’s digits. Alongside the Type-M print, I’ve got McCoy’s address book, her place of work, a printed V-mail of a dating site match