Before leaving New York, he’d made arrangements by phone with Ulrich. He had claimed to be writing a book about Jessup. Ronny was old news in this darkening world that produced greater horrors by the week, and the house had long ago ceased to draw the morbid curious. Ulrich smelled a revenue stream and wanted five thousand dollars for a first tour. He settled for twenty-two hundred, which David had wired to the man’s account prior to flying west.

Now Ulrich arrived in a Ford pickup and parked in front of David. The driveway lay between their vehicles. They met at the gate.

Ulrich proved to be about forty, maybe two inches short of six feet, lean and sinewy, with a high brow and a low, wide jaw like a scoop. He was as solemn as if he were an animated cadaver. When they shook hands, his was cool and moist.

“Any photos you put in your book, I’ll need a separate fee.”

“I don’t intend to take photographs. I don’t have a camera.”

“You got yourself a smartphone, sure enough. I’m just sayin’, so there’s no argument later.”

“I understand.”

Ulrich keyed open the padlock on the gate. “We’ll walk from here. I don’t allow no one to drive right up to the house. Too damn easy to sneak some souvenir into their car and drive off with it.”

The long, rising driveway was hard-packed earth with embedded gravel, stubbled with weeds that crackled underfoot.

“Not that there’s any crap left worth stealin’. Sold off the furniture, dishes, all that. Only thing brought any real money was from the cellar. An armoire, chairs, a few headboards from beds he had down there. Doors from the rooms where he locked them women.”

David wondered what kind of dark-minded people wanted items from the abattoir of a rapist-murderer and how Stuart Ulrich knew where to advertise to attract their attention.

“Had some damn serious offers, could’ve made good money from his mattresses. But the FBI hauled ’em out to some lab to test ’em for who the hell knows what and never did give ’em back.”

Hidden crickets sang in the tall brown grass, and small clouds of midges danced across the ragged lawn, sparkling like specks of glitter in the morning sunlight.

“What’s the FBI doin’ anyway, bustin’ in here after Jessup’s been found out and arrested by the sheriff? He weren’t a threat to no one by then.”

“It was their Critical Incident Response Group,” David said. “Behavioral Analysis Units Three and Four. A few times Ronny Jessup crossed state lines to snatch his victims. The Bureau is tasked with putting together the evidence for the federal prosecutor.”

As they stepped off the driveway and onto the lawn, moving toward the porch steps, Ulrich said, “Shit, Jessup pleaded guilty. It didn’t go to no damn trial. But they never did bring back even one of ’em valuable mattresses.”