He was unaware that he’d been holding his breath until he exhaled explosively once in the open air. The bodies had no smell. He wasn’t sure how that was possible. If they’d been in the garage for more than a day—and he suspected they had—the stench of death should have been unbearable, but there’d been no advance warning about what was in the garage. His phone was in his hand and he was dialing 911 even as Nick was asking why he’d been pushed out and what was in there. Somehow, the boy hadn’t seen the bodies, and for that Kyle was grateful, because it was a sight he would never forget as long as he lived.

A dispatcher answered. “Nine one one. What is your emergency?”

“Dead bodies,” he said. “Murdered. They’re all cut up.” He’d planned to be more clear and articulate, but those were the words that came out.

“Murdered?” Nick shouted. “Victor?”

“What is your location,” the dispatcher said at the same time.

He shook his head. “No,” he told Nick. “His parents, I think.”

“Location?” the dispatcher repeated.

Kyle ran into the front yard, looked at the black metal numbers nailed vertically to a porch post. “Six eleven Pinyon Drive,” he said. He closed his eyes, saw in his mind the bodies, the blood, the organs. “And hurry.”

2

“Should we move the car so the M.E.’s wagon can get in the driveway? Sheriff? Sheriff?”

Brad nodded absently at Hank, waving him toward the street. His head was pounding like a mother, and he tried to remember if he had a bottle of aspirin in the car. It hurt badly enough that he was even tempted to see if the Clarks had any in their medicine cabinet, but he knew that was unprofessional. This was a crime scene, for Christ’s sake.

There’d been too damn many crime scenes lately, and he was pretty sure that the stress from dealing with so much violence and death was what had caused his headache. This was the worst one yet, even more sickening than what had happened to the bank manager. That had looked like the work of a crazed killer, someone completely out of control. Even now, he could see that caved-in face, recall the putrid stench of decaying flesh. But this was methodical, and that made it seem all the more evil. The Clarks hadn’t been stabbed in a frenzy, their heads crushed in a rage. They had been killed somehow and then sliced open, their organs removed from their bodies and piled up on the cement next to them. Blood was everywhere, but even through the wash of red, it had been easy to see that the bodies had been laid out like specimens, as though the killer had dissected them and taken them apart to study how they worked.