“The porn?” Vince said, pouring two cups of black coffee. “You’ll see.”

He doctored his coffee with four plastic thimbles of fake cream, stirring as he came over to the monitor. In the other room, Sells went over to the wall, looked at the porn for a minute, looked at the other photographs, and walked away.

Mendez opened the interview room door and let Vince back in. Vince handed a cup to Sells. “I brought it black. I didn’t know. Me, I’ve got to load up the cream. Bad stomach.”

Sells took the coffee and sipped at it.

“See, I said to Detective Mendez you wouldn’t be interested in anything like that,” Vince said, hooking a thumb toward the photos. “That’s not what you’re about. You’re not a violent man. You don’t want to hurt women.”

“That’s right,” Sells said. “I never hurt nobody.”

Vince went back to the wall and took down all the photographs. He replaced them with three photographs of a twelve-year-old girl, her unripe body naked, just beginning to bud into something more. She looked at the camera as she touched herself provocatively.

Vince went back to the table and promptly knocked over his coffee.

“Oh, shit! Look at that! Oh, man . . .”

He scooped up the file, the jacket dripping coffee. “Shit. Excuse me. I’ve got to get some towels.”

He went back out the door and across the hall, dropping the file jacket into the trash. He joined Dixon, Hicks, and Mendez at the monitor, and they all watched as Gordon Sells went to the door and glanced out to see no one in the hall. He went back to the wall to stare at the photographs. Not thirty seconds had gone by before he began to fondle himself through his baggy pants. Another thirty seconds and he was fully aroused.

“Barnum and Bailey could pitch a tent on that pole,” Vince said. “He’s not your guy.”

But before Dixon could say anything, Detective Trammell hustled into the room.

“We’ve got something at Sells’s place,” he said. “Bones. They look human.”

Chapter 39

39

The search for Karly Vickers ceased to be the lead news story of the day. Word that skeletal remains had been found in the hog yard behind Gordon Sells’s salvage business shot through the media like a bolt of lightning. Mendez and Hicks had to fight through the crush of reporters and their support staff to get to the yellow-tape barrier.

The hogs were highly interested in the fuss and in the people in crime scene jumpsuits and knee-high rubber boots wading through their territory. They stood off to the side with individual members of the herd occasionally rushing toward the people, snorting bravado then rushing back to the safety of the group. Their squeals were ear-splitting.

“This smells almost as bad as the trailer,” Mendez said, wrinkling his nose.