“It’s a grim crime scene, Sergeant. This person has been dead for some time, and little animals have been eating the lips and eyes and probably the brains and so on. After you get the body to your medical examiner, you can deploy all the sarcasm you want against me.”

“Oh . . . right. I’ll let the sheriff know—you’re in his jurisdiction. And then you and I will have our chat, sarcasm and all, about what you’re really doing here in Lawrence and how come bodies are stacking up around you. Ken Gisborne, he’s the sheriff, been in office a lot of years, was a deputy first, so he knows his way around a crime scene.”

Even someone who knew all the roads in the county couldn’t travel them in the dark at the speed of light. While I waited for Gisborne, I went back inside for a circumspect tour of the house, keeping Peppy on a tight leash. Crime-scene protocol meant I should have left her outside—dog hair and paw prints would contaminate the evidence. Only a really chicken detective would need the comfort of her dog to go through a house with a dead body in it. I couldn’t possibly be a chicken, so I must have felt I needed her expert tracking skills.

Although the victim had been dead for some time, at least a week, I returned to the car for my gun first. Leaving my running shoes by the back door to minimize the dirt I was bringing in, I tiptoed around the edge of the kitchen, flipping on an overhead light with my gunstock. Peppy was on hyperalert, her ears cocked at the sounds of critters scurrying from the body—roaches, slithery animals. I tried not to look, but my gorge rose anyway.

I stood with my hands on my knees, breathing hard, risked messing up evidence by running my face under the kitchen tap and gulping down water with my cupped hands.

“Okay, girl?” I chirped at Peppy.

She was whining and straining on the leash, wanting to go after the rats and roaches, but I forced her to stay with me. I turned on lamps and overhead fixtures in the rooms as I came to them but didn’t find anyone. No more bodies, no lurking assailants.

The place had been searched—drawers were open and papers and books scattered about—but it wasn’t like August’s apartment in Chicago since no furniture had been destroyed. Whatever they wanted, the invaders must have found it. Jewelry to feed a local meth habit? The women at the church had suggested that the nearby missile silo might have been taken over by meth heads.