The Last Victim by Karen Robards

marine blue walls with a sailboat-themed wallpaper border at chair rail height. Glossy hardwood floors. A pair of twin beds with dark wood, ship’s wheel–style headboards, stripped of their mattresses. A matching dark wood chest with a small flat-screen TV on top of it. A tan corduroy armchair in a corner, facing the TV.
    The TV was on. Some weird dragon-fantasy thing filled the screen.
    A kid—the blond eleven-year-old from the autopsy photos—curled in the armchair, eyes fixed on the TV, a game controller clutched in both hands. Skinny and undersized, he was clad in soccer ball–dotted blue pajamas and had a determined expression on his face.
    Charlie watched as he busily punched buttons on the controller.
    “Damned TV keeps switching on by itself.” Haney’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with it.”
    Even as Charlie gathered her wits enough to realize Bartoli was watching her closely, Haney brushed past her to walk over to the TV and turn it off, stabbing the button with a little more force than the action called for. The kid looked around then. His eyes widened as they fastened on something. Charlie didn’t think it was any of the three of them, or anything at all that was still real and present. His gaze seemed to fix just beyond her. For a second he simply stared. Then, face contorting in fear, he cast the controller aside, leaped to his feet, and fled toward a white-painted door in the wall. A closet, clearly. He grabbed the knob.…
    Then disappeared. Gone, just like that. Not as much as a shimmer.
    Charlie didn’t even have time to brace for the wave of nausea before it hit.

CHAPTER SIX
    “Dr. Stone.” Bartoli’s hand curled around her upper arm. Charlie felt the warm strength of it against her chilled skin, glanced around to find his eyes on her face, and did her best to suck it up. So she’d seen a ghost, and now she wanted to hurl. Absent a convenient toilet and a little privacy, hurling wasn’t happening. And there didn’t seem to be a damned thing she could do about seeing ghosts. Sad as it was, it looked like that was her fricking fate.
    What’s up? Bartoli’s eyes asked, but he didn’t say it. Maybe because Haney was watching them. Maybe because Bartoli knew what she would reply: Not a thing . After all, they’d had the equivalent of this conversation before.
    “This was the boy’s room, right? Where was his body found?” Charlie strove to sound normal as she unobtrusively detached her arm from Bartoli’s hold. Her skin was cold and clammy; her pulse was jumping. As long as Bartoli was touching her, he was privy to proof positive that something in her world wasn’t all fine and dandy. It was always difficult, trying not to reveal what she saw. Which was one among a number of really excellent reasons she tried not to see anything everyone else didn’t see. Glancing around, she spotted the chalk outline between the beds on the hardwood floor, and hadthe answer to her question even before Haney moved to the foot of the nearest bed and pointed it out.
    “Trevor was found right there,” Haney said.
    Oh, God, I can’t think of the kid as Trevor .
    There were bloodstains on the floor where Trev—the kid had died.
    Charlie felt cold sweat breaking out around her hairline.
    “We think he was asleep when the unsub attacked him,” Haney continued. “The amount of blood on the sheets leads us to believe he was stabbed in his bed, then either managed to get up before collapsing on the floor—or rolled or was pulled onto the floor, where he died.”
    “Defensive wounds?” Bartoli asked.
    Haney shook his head. “None. Two knife wounds to the chest. Either would have been fatal.”
    “Where was the woman found?” Charlie asked as an excuse to turn away from the pathetically small outline on the floor, and was proud of how cool and steady her voice sounded. Inside, her stomach was roiling.
    “Master bedroom,” Bartoli