He didn’t need to go inside to know what had happened. The ground was inked with streaks of blood, oozing out from under the bottom of the waterproof dome. Several bloody partials of shoe prints formed a trail from the door flap to the edge of the drop. Decker chalked them and looked over the escarpment. No continuing trail down the mountainside as far as he could see, but that meant nothing. Someone would have to climb down there and check it out, because from the way it looked, it appeared that the shoe print went over the edge. Weird, but not impossible.

Gingerly, he trod on the dusty ground below, watching where he stepped. He opened the door flap and lowered his head. Then, trying not to breathe too deeply, he peeked inside.

The wind of death registered first. It stank of blood and guts, reeking like the back of a butcher shop. The stretched fabric walls had been bombarded with splatter marks; on the ground were puddles of crimson and brown plasma. Once there was a double bedroll, but now it was a blotter of blood-soaked sheets. The two bodies lay on the ground, side by side, both doubled over. No arms hiding their faces: they didn’t even have enough time to assume protective positions. Ernesto had been bare-chested; Baldwin had on an undershirt. The rest of the clothes lay in a heap near the entrance to the tent.

Decker closed his eyes in order to think. A tinge of nausea made pinpricks in his stomach, but he swallowed it down. If the victims’ state of dress implied that this meeting had been more than just therapy, it put a different cast on Dee Baldwin’s disappearance. Was she running from the bad guys or hiding from the cops? Or maybe she had just gone grocery shopping at seven in the morning.

He opened his eyes. The scene did not improve. The faces were bluish white and streaked with blood. They had been shot repeatedly and, from the bullet holes that dotted the bodies, they’d been shot impulsively. No execution-style shooting, this was rage, giving full meaning to the word overkill. Exit holes from the shells had made Swiss cheese out of the tent walls. Judging by the sizes of the apertures, the weapon was probably a .32-caliber. The assailant must have had a silencer, because otherwise there would have been lots of noise. If the couple had been awake and had been seized with such firearm force, there would be no way for them to fight back. If they had been asleep, they wouldn’t have known what had hit them.

The coroner would determine a range for the time of death. In this case, Decker’s knowledge as a detective would be just as accurate. The bodies were still warm. At this elevation, things cooled off at night. The murders appeared more recent than not.