First seconds on a scene were precarious and tense. And if you should be so unlucky as to come across a suicide, murder, or infant death, the emotional gut punch was inevitable. “When did you arrive?”

“Two hours ago. The renovation crew chief called it in. He’s still in his truck. Not happy about having to wait for a detective.”

“We all could think of better things to do, including the victim.”

A slight smile tweaked his lips. “That’s for sure. The crew chief figured the dead person was a squatter or drug addict who had died. It’s not rare in this area.”

“I was told the victim is female.”

“That’s right.”

“Any idea of the cause of death?”

“Offhand, I’d say suffocation. But who knows? It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen.” He shifted his feet and flexed his fingers.

“How long have you been on the job?” she asked.

“A year.”

This scene likely was now in the officer’s Book of Firsts. All cops had a book like that, and no matter how full it got, there was always room for a new horror. “Okay. Let me have a look.”

“Want me to come with you?” Officer Wilcox asked.

“Stay in the yard. Fewer people in the house, the better.”

His relief was palpable. “Understood.”

She slid her mask over her face and crossed the gravel driveway, and as she climbed the two front porch steps, the scent of decomposition hit her hard. She stopped, raised her hand to her nose.

“Jesus,” she muttered. Her first year on the job, she had swabbed Vicks under her nose but learned menthol did not conceal rot. These days, she sucked it up, knowing the brain would cancel out the smell after a few minutes.

“Detective Poe!”

She turned toward Andy Lucas, the senior forensic technician in the department. He was short, had a round face and belly, and his ink-black hair showed no signs of graying despite his recent fiftieth birthday.

“Andy.”

“When you get inside, follow the yellow cones to the body. There’s a lot of dust in that room, so I have a prayer of getting a shoe impression.”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, and thanks for the case of beer,” Lucas said.

“A man only turns fifty once.”

“Thank God,” he joked. “Took me days to get over the surprise party.”

She had helped host the event, which was just as much a department morale booster as it was a celebration of Lucas’s half-century milestone. Because she did not drink, she had left early, but the stories, some of which were pretty damn funny, still circulated two weeks later.

She stepped over the extension cord, walked heel to toe beside the yellow cones, which led her into the small main room. Artificial light shone on faded rose wallpaper peeling off old shiplap, four barred broken windows, and clumps of hay nestled in shadowed corners.