Officer Roland “Pickles” Shumaker arrived on the scene a few minutes ago. Wearing his trademark trench coat and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he looks like he’s just stepped off the set of some nuevo spaghetti western. He’s seventy-four years old, acts like he’s twenty-two, and doesn’t look a day over eighty. He moves a bit more slowly than the rest of my team, has lost a good bit of his eyesight and most of his hearing. But he has nearly fifty years of law enforcement experience under his belt. In my book, that alone makes him more valuable than some wet-behind-the-ears rookie who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

“Looks like a goddamn massacre,” Pickles says, settling into his grumpy-old-man persona as he enters the tack room.

He’s right. The corpses are a macabre sight beneath the harsh glare of the work lights. This is the kind of scene that affects even the most hard-nosed of cops.

“We’re not dealing with a murder-suicide.” Looking from man to man, I tell them about the bruising on Amos Plank’s wrists. “This is murder, straight up.”

“Times seven,” Skid mutters.

Pickles looks around the room, grimacing. “So the son of bitch who butchered these girls is still out there.” It’s a statement, not a question.

I can tell by everyone’s expression that’s where they want to be, on the street, hunting the killer. But we all know the investigation starts here, with the evidence. “I briefed the sheriff’s office. They’ve stepped up patrols. T.J.’s been apprised; he’s out there, too.” I direct my attention to Glock, raising my voice to be heard above the drone of the generator. “Did you clear the outbuildings and silos?”

“Clear.”

I look at Skid. “Did you search the creek area behind the barn?”

He shakes his head. “No one there.”

“Tire tracks? Footprints?”

“If anyone was down there, he didn’t leave us squat.”

“We’ll go over every inch of this place again once the sun comes up. No one does this kind of crime without leaving something behind.”

Though the barn doors are open, the diesel exhaust from the generator is thick enough to choke a rhinoceros. No one’s complaining. I think I can speak for everyone in the room when I say the smell of exhaust is preferable to the stench of blood.

“As soon as we finish here,” I say, “we’ll start canvassing and talking to neighbors. Hopefully, someone saw something.”

“You going to call BCI?” asks Glock.