It was another bad one, another hanging. Two hangings, actually.  Jamilla and I split up as soon as we arrived at the murder scene in Mill Valley. We had different ways of doing things, different crime-scene techniques. Somehow, though, I thought we would arrive at the same conclusions about this one. I could see the signs already - all of them bad.
The two bodies were hung upside down from a rack used to hold copper pots. The scene of the murders was a contemporary kitchen inside a large, very expensive house. Dawn and Gavin Brody looked to be in their mid-thirties. Like the other victims, they’d been drained of most of their blood.
The first curiosity: although the Brodys were naked, the killers had left behind their jewelry. A pair of Rolex watches, wedding bands, a large diamond engagement ring, hoop earrings studded with countless small diamonds. The killers weren’t interested in jewels or money, and possibly they wanted us to know it.  So where were the victims’ clothes? Had they been used to clean up the mess, to mop up blood? Was that why the killers had taken the clothing with them?
They seemed to have ............