I catch Barclay saying something to them about their mother. He’s asking about her in a way that makes me suspect he was asking earlier. They shake their heads, and if there’s a father in the family mix, I’ve yet to hear a mention.

“She usually asleep this early … at eight thirty?” Barclay says.

“It depends.”

“Sometimes.”

“When she doesn’t feel good.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s not answering the phone …?” he asks, and I can’t tell which girl is responding to him.

“No,” one of them says. “Don’t wake her up if she’s asleep. She won’t like that.”

“When she doesn’t feel good she doesn’t like it,” the other echoes, and I sense they’re accustomed to taking care of their mother.

I can catch only snippets of the conversation but it’s enough to indicate trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mom is divorced, and the reason she’s not answering the phone is because she’s drunk. She probably hasn’t a clue that her daughters haven’t returned home, and I hope I’m wrong. I unlock my phone and I send a text to Harold:

Heading your way.

I say to Marino, “I think we’ve seen enough for now. Let me make sure Rusty and Harold are on the same page with us about how to set up. I’ll be right back. Then we can suit up and hopefully get the lights turned on in a few minutes.”

Marino stares in the direction of crime-scene tape in the woods, about the length of a football field from where Rusty and Harold are waiting. Then he looks at the twins some fifty feet ahead to the left, at the outer edge of the grassy clearing, close to trees. Their eyes dart around restlessly as Barclay continues saying things I can’t hear.

“I’m going to wander over and talk to them,” Marino lets me know.

“I’ll meet you there.” I look at the twins looking at us. “It would be very helpful if they told me in their own words what they might have done out here. That’s what I’d like to find out before anything else if you have no objections.”

“Yeah,” Marino says. “I think we already know there’s something they’re hiding. Like why the dead lady was dragged, and why her shit’s everywhere or missing.”

CHAPTER 18

RUSTY AND HAROLD ARE THE CFC’s Odd Couple. My two top autopsy technicians are so different from each other they shouldn’t get along.

Rusty in his surf pants and hoodies looks like a hippy leftover from the golden era of tie-dye and Woodstock while Harold is a former Army man who eventually became a funeral-home director. He has thinning gray hair, a neat mustache, and lives in suits, single-button conservative ones in solid subdued shades of black and gray.