“I’m here to see Hobie,” Doug said.

“I’m sorry,” the policeman said, blocking his way. “But you cannot move beyond the barrier.”

“I called him,” Hobie yelled from the doorway. “Goddammit! Let him in.”

Doug looked over at his friend. Hobie’s eyes were wide and wild, his short hair sticking out crazily in irregular clumps. He was wearing only Jockey shorts and a T-shirt, and Doug saw with horror that both were streaked with blood.

“Let him through,” Tim Hibbard ordered from behind Hobie, and the first policeman motioned Doug under the barrier. Doug ducked under the ribbon and crossed the yard. Sealed plastic containers and boxes marked “Willis Police Department” had been placed next to the walk, and from inside the house came the hissing of radio static, the beeping of electronic instruments, and rough voices ragged with frightened disgust.

“I didn’t do it, Doug.” Hobie’s voice was high and frightened. “I—”

Doug walked up to the door. “Don’t say anything until you get a lawyer,” he said.

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t say anything.” Doug put a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder, hoping he appeared calmer than he felt. Something worse than horrible had happened here, something that had turned Hobie into this frightened gibbering creature before him, and he wished for one cruel selfish instant that he had never met Hobie and that he could be one of the hundreds of other people in Willis sleeping right now, totally unaware and unaffected by what was going on. But then he saw the simple look of blind need on his friend’s face and was sorry such a thought had even crossed his mind. He turned toward the closest policeman, a middle-aged man with a mustache he had seen around but did not know. “What happened here?”

The policeman looked at him with barely concealed disdain. “You want to know what happened here? You want to see what your buddy did? Come into the bedroom.”

“I didn’t do it,” Hobie insisted. “I swear—”

“Shut up,” Doug told him. “Don’t say anything.” He followed the uniformed officer into the bedroom, where another group of policemen were looking through the closet.

The smell hit him immediately. A thick sour-sweet stench that sickened his stomach and made him want to gag.

Blood.

“Oh, God,” Doug breathed. “Oh, Jesus.”

The girl’s body was lying on the bed. Next to the knives. She was nude and on her stomach, facing away from him. The back of her skull was visible through the bloody hole that had been carved through her scalp. The bone had been chipped off in several places, revealing the pale red-tinged worm twists of her brain. Across her back were scores of stabs and slices, and the skin on her buttocks had been completely peeled off, exposing the wet muscle beneath. A stain of blood that took up half of the sheet spread outward from between her legs.