Eve stepped into the master bedroom. The bedding was missing from the king-size bed, the blood-soaked mattress was hacked to shreds, and the headboard was speckled with blood. She crouched down, peered under the bed, saw nothing but a pair of women’s slippers and a small marijuana pipe, then moved to the closet, nudging it open with her shoe. It was filled with clothes, belonging to a man and woman, but nobody was inside.

“Clear,” Eve said and returned to the hallway.

The other door was open to the garage. Duncan came back in, holstering his weapon.

“The garage is empty, but there are some drops of blood leading to where a car must have been parked.”

Eve swallowed back some bile and cleared her throat. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

Duncan shook his head. “Thanks a lot.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If we’d taken the dead guy in the truck, Crockett and Tubbs would have got this call,” Duncan said, referring to the other team of homicide detectives at the station. “But you had to point out the pine needles.”

Duncan marched back to the kitchen and out into the backyard, where he stopped to get some fresh air. Eve followed him out and stood beside him, neither of them visible to the deputies, Alexis Ward, or anybody else in the cul-de-sac.

After a long moment, Duncan spoke again. “There’s going to be a shitload of desk work and legwork on this case.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Eve said, irritated. “The other case would have been a lot less trouble.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ll take the desk, you take the street.”

She looked at him. “You’re the senior detective. You should take the lead.”

“I just did by dividing the workload.”

It took her a second to figure out his angle. “You’re making me the face of the investigation.”

“And the first set of eyes,” he said. “My sight isn’t so good anymore. I missed those pine needles, didn’t I?”

“That’s not it,” she said. “What’s the real reason you’re putting me in the spotlight?”

He sighed and glanced back at the house. “This case is going to get very big and very ugly very fast. It won’t make or break my career, and I sure as hell don’t need more nightmares to take with me into retirement.”

He was telling her, honestly and directly, that he was done. Eve respected him for that and didn’t blame him for his decision. He’d put in his time. It was going to be her neck and soul on the line from now on.

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll call in CSU and get a warrant started,” Duncan said. “You should find out what you can about the kids and the boyfriend.”

She nodded. The enormity of what she was taking on was beginning to sink in and it left her momentarily at a loss for words. Something awful had happened in that house and it was going to be her job to find out what it was, seek some measure of justice, and live with the horrors that were revealed.