Tomasetti emerges from the hall. “Clear.” He glances at the body and for a second I’m afraid he’s going to draw down and put another bullet in it. He motions toward the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table. “Looks like he got juiced up and took the easy way out.”

Neither of us has any sympathy for a man who drugged and raped a fifteen-year-old girl. But I didn’t want it to end like this. I feel as if someone yanked the rug out from under me. There’s no sense of justice. No closure. Just a dead man, a dead family and a hundred questions that will never be answered.

Trying not to think about that too much, I hit my lapel mike. “I’ve got a 10-84 at three five Decker in the Melody Trailer Park. Can you 10-79?”

“Roger that,” comes Lois’s voice.

“Deceased is Todd Long. See if you can find contact info for NOK, will you?”

“Sure thing, Chief.”

Movement at the door snags my attention. I glance over to see Glock enter, his eyes on the corpse. “Damn. Fucker bit it, huh?”

“Looks that way.” But the scenario troubles me in some vague way I can’t put my finger on. I thought this would feel better. Instead, it feels unfinished.

I look around the trailer. The place is messy. I don’t relish the thought of an in-depth search; there’s nothing I hate more than human filth mixed with a little biohazard. But I’m not going to be leaving any time soon.

For a moment, the three of us stand there, staring at Long’s body. It’s an anticlimactic moment; I’d been hoping for an arrest. I wanted to know what happened inside the Plank farmhouse on the night of the murders. I wanted to know why. I’m not proud of it, but a small part of me wanted to take my best shot at the bastard responsible.

“He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have an attack of conscience,” I say to no one in particular.

“More than likely it was the thought of going to prison that did him in,” Tomasetti replies.

“Going to save the taxpayers a bundle,” Glock adds.

Sighing, I look at Todd Long’s body and silently curse him. “Let’s gear up and see what he left us.”

In the sweltering heat of the day, Glock, Tomasetti and I thoroughly search drawers, cabinets, and any other conceivable hiding place. With painstaking care, we bag, label and box, preserving as much of the scene as possible. Our efforts pay off. By noon we’ve filled three large plastic storage bins with evidence, including photographs, half a dozen computer disks, two flash drives, several types of unidentified pills, a video camera, books on photography, pornographic magazines, clothing and a suicide note.