All in all, Alice figured she was pretty lucky. This transition into Fairbanks was easy, especially as compared to a few other missions she had been on before this one. She was fond of most of her fellow actors and co-workers. Of course, there were those that she did not like at all, but that was an issue she could deal with on her own, without her particular set of skills.

Whistling tunelessly to herself, she closed the door behind her and checked her list. Despite her painfully bright teal green shirt and slippery pants, she felt almost abnormally comfortable. Of course, she was fully settled in her role as Caitlin. That helped a lot; once she was comfortable in her personality, she was comfortable in whatever she was doing that matched the personality.

Still, to be comfortable in her job at Meadowbridge was unusual, especially with Bee around. Sighing to herself, Alice moved to the next room on her list and tapped twice on the door. “Housecleaning!” she called, tilting her head toward the door. “Though I’m not housekeeping,” she said sotto voce as she listened for any answer. “Just one little, bored courtesy van driver.”

Hearing nothing from the other side, she used her key and opened the door, keeping it open with her hip as she wedged the rolling cart against the doorframe. Trying to keep her long hair out of her face (she refused to tie her hair back at all at work; it was her little form of defiance), Alice walked into the new room and deftly tore the coverlet and blanket off the bed before taking on the sheets and mattress cover. Next was the pillowcases, the towels, the shower curtain, and whatever miscellaneous clothing she could find. Guests were so messy, but she never complained about stripping rooms. In fact, she liked it. It was a chance to get away from Bee and the stifling back office where it was all too easy to fall asleep from boredom.

Bee was a problem, too. If she were here in her normal capacity, Alice would be very tempted to tuck the fat woman into a very secret grave. The hills around Fairbanks were less populated than the rest of the city; there were lots of place to dig a grave that would not be found for years. It was not so much anything big she did. Alice just found the constant proddings toward doing stupid make-work irritating, along with Bee’s complaints about Alice not doing anything when really, there was nothing to be done.

Sighing and shaking her long hair back, Alice bundled the cloth into a thick bunch and tossed it into the laundry basket. Her hand absently rested on the radio attached to her hip by a thick clip and her leather belt. ‘Radios,’ she thought, amused. ‘Even the police force has upgraded farther than this by now. What’s wrong with this picture?’

Humming to herself, Alice moved to the next room on her list and went through her ritual. No one answered, so she pushed the door open.

The second the door swung open, a smell hit her nose, and her nostrils flared as her eyes narrowed. She knew that smell. It was a very familiar smell, but one she had hoped to escape by leaving home. Death, recent death. Turning and glancing up and down the halls, Alice made sure she was alone before pulling the laundry cart inside and closing the door behind her firmly. To make certainty double sure, she dead bolted the door and shoved the laundry cart under the handle. Once she was certain she would not be disturbed, she took a deep breath and turned to face the bed.

A lump lay in the center of the bed, covered with the coverlet. A causal observer, one who did not know the smell of death when it lingered in a room, would have thought that the lump was nothing but the blankets bunched up with the pillows. Even Alice was fooled for the briefest of seconds by the visual.

//“Never trust your eyes alone.” The small Japanese man paced back and forth in the small classroom, using his wooden pointer as a walking stick for the moment. “Your eyes can be fooled by the smallest things. Yes, we train you to observe everything and know all that goes on around you, but listen to your other senses too. If you are in a situation that feels wrong, listen to that sixth sense and use your other senses. Is there a strange sound? A strange smell?”//

Alice blinked out of that memory firmly. Yes, and she knew the smell. Glancing behind her at the door, the young woman walked to the bed and gently turned back the cover. A small girl lay there, her bright blue eyes open and her face twisted in an expression of horror and pain.

‘Were I a normal person, this is the time when I would turn and run screaming from the room,’ Alice thought bitterly. Instead of unreasoning panic or nausea, she felt a sense of coldness settle over her, a familiar, welcome coldness that turned her from a thinking, feeling human being into a coldly efficient machine.

Turning, she walked to the laundry cart and pulled out the knapsack she carried with her everywhere. The first item she removed was a pair of latex gloves; no sense in muddling the fingerprints. Before pulling them on, she tied her long hair back into a tight bun and clipped it firmly. Thus prepped, she walked back to the bed and carefully removed the tangled blanket from around the girl’s body.

The girl had been no more than eight years old, if even that old, with short black hair and a perfect complexion. Well, not quite perfect. Two red marks crossed her face from either corner of her mouth and went behind her head. “She was gagged,” Alice murmured to herself. That made sense. No one would want other guests to hear whatever was going on.

Except that there had not been any other guests in the rooms adjoining this one. Alice’s brows furrowed a little as she accessed that part of her perfect memory. When she arrived to start her shift that morning, the front desk clerk on at that time had complained about two of the rooms booking in advance but never showing up. Alice had thought that curious at the time, but did not think any more of it at that time. Now it came back to her, and she made a mental note to check on who had reserved those rooms. But first things first. She turned her attention back to the girl.

Possibly the most curious thing about this scene was that there was no blood anywhere. Except for her expression of pain and horror, the girl looked unmarked. ‘How did she die?’ Alice asked herself. The expression let out natural death, as did the marks on her face. But there were no gun marks, no knife wounds, no strangulation marks, nothing that indicated how she died. Working with care, Alice began stripping the girl, working on a sudden hunch that chilled her to the bone.

The girl was too skinny, her hipbones showing plainly. Bruises darkened her skin above her ribs and stomach. One looked like it had been done with a stick. And that did not quite fit either. So far, all the evidence pointed toward kidnapping and murder by blunt force. ‘Except that doesn’t work,’ Alice thought, her mouth tightening in irritation. Something was really wrong here. She thought she smelled another familiar smell, but could not quite place it.

As she searched the girl’s body, her eyes caught and held on a small mark on the inside of the girl’s right thigh. Her eyes narrowing, Alice turned the girl’s leg so she could see better. It looked like a mosquito bite, but that did not seem right. The snow was prepared to fly any day and it was too cold for small flying insects to survive easily. Besides that, it was too cold for anyone to run around in the kind of clothing that would allow a bug bite right there. Even the native Alaskans agreed with Alice on that subject.

Reaching into her knapsack, Alice pulled out a jeweler’s glass and gently placed it against her eye as she leaned over the girl again. “Yes,” she murmured as she focused the glass. “Yes, it’s a puncture wound all right.”

Lethal injection. Those two words pierced her brain and stuck with all the force of a thrown blade. Her brow cleared even as cold anger began to fill her. Getting up, Alice looked around, her eyes dangerous. There was a familiar smell here, under the smell of death. Closing her eyes, Alice exhaled slowly before beginning to sniff, allowing her sense of smell to work without interference from any other part of her brain.

Following her nose, she walked right into a pocket of stagnant air. There it was, that familiar smell. With her eyes closed and her memory working double-time, she knew immediately what it was. Her eyes snapped open in horror and fury. “Not here!” she hissed. “Not here!”

Taking a quick step back, Alice forced herself to calm down. She could do nothing when she was angry, one of the first lessons she had learned so long ago as a child trying to stay awake through lectures. “All right,” she said quietly once she was collected and calm again. “First things first.” Moving back to the girl, Alice dressed her again and carefully placed her in exactly the position she had found her in. That only took a few moments. Then she made sure she had left no fingerprint inside the room before putting her equipment back in her knapsack, tucking it under the sheets and towels already in the laundry basket.

All that done, she opened the door carefully and looked up and down the hall. The proper housekeepers were a bit late today; there was not a sign of them or the cart they usually used in the hallway. Working silently, Alice pushed her cart out into the hallway, closed the door behind her, then knocked on the door again as the elevator bell dinged and the doors opened to allow the real housekeepers out. “Hey, guys,” she greeted with a bright smile.

“You’re way too awake this morning, Caitlin,” Cassandra, the senior of the pair of housekeepers, grumbled as she wearily waved. “How do you do it?”

“Well, I have been awake for, what? Four hours?” Alice smiled. “I do get here a lot earlier than you guys, so I have more time to wake up.”

“Ugh. Not a good trade. You’re stripping rooms for us?”

“Yeah. I guess no one’s in here.” Alice used her key and opened the door. “Man, it smells rank in here. Any idea who was last in here?”

Cassandra (Cassie to her friends) might have responded, but Alice allowed her eye to land on the bed. “Why do people bunch the covers so weirdly?” she asked, allowing a tone of whining to enter her voice as she walked to the bed and pulled the covers down firmly. She gasped and screamed as she saw the little girl again.

Cassandra entered at a run and screamed as well. “Oh my God!” she shrieked.

Alice sighed and rolled her eyes inwardly as the analytical part stepped aside from the rest of her mind and let the performance of hysterics take over. ‘Why invoke a cruel god whenever possible?’ she asked, watching herself grab for the radio at her hip, missing a couple times before getting it and stammering a message to the front desk that would set all of hell loose on the hotel. ‘But that’s irrelevant.’ Her first order of business was to find out about the renters of these rooms. It would be good to know the name her compatriot was currently under.