The last time Milo had faced madness, he’d been caught off-guard and I’d saved his life. That didn’t fit the script of seasoned cop and shrink and despite his acknowledgment, it would scar him.

Maybe that’s why this time he was ready.

One of his hands clamped like a bear-trap on the wrist of Donny Rader’s gun-arm, pushing down and twisting sharply as his foot shot between Rader’s bare legs and kicked laterally to the left. As Rader lost balance, Milo’s other arm spun him around and by the time Tyler O’Shea was ready with cuffs and a now snarling Sally, Rader was down on the ground and the .22 lay safely out of reach.

Rader foamed at the mouth, turned dirt to chocolate soda.

The girl in the bikini whimpered.

Milo said, “Ty, take care of her.”

O’Shea checked out the tight, tan body. “You’re a pal, El Tee.”

He cuffed the girl displaying no particular reverence. Something to the left caught his eye. “El Tee, you better look at this.” Something new in his voice. Fear.

Milo hauled a struggling, howling Donny Rader to his feet. “Hold still and shut it.”

“Fuh you.”

O’Shea walked the girl out of the house. He looked stunned. “You got to see this.”

Milo said, “Check it out, Alex.”

The house was a sty. Piles of trash blanketed the floor and the furniture. The air was putrid with rotted food, body odor, weed, a medicinal smell that might’ve been poorly cut cocaine.

A cat-urine stench that might’ve been cats or crystal meth.

O’Shea had seen and smelled worse, so that wasn’t it.

Not wanting to disturb potential evidence, I stepped carefully over the garbage. Then I saw it. Hanging from a low rafter, the feet dangling a few inches from the floor.

A human skeleton, wired and braced by a steel rod running parallel to the spine.

Stripped and clean but for hair left on the head. Long hair. Dark, curly.

Full-sized skeleton. I guessed it shorter than me by at least six inches.

The pelvic arch left no doubt: female.

The jaws had been positioned to create a gaping cartoonish grin. Exaggerated glee that was the essence of horror.

I made my way through the slop-heap, got right up to the skeleton. Sniffed.

New smell.

Pleasant, sweet. Herbaceous.

Honeybees buzzing in the hive.

CHAPTER
55

Milo plastic-tied Rader’s ankles and belted him into the brown van’s second row. Tyler O’Shea positioned Sally up front as a sentry. She enjoyed snapping and growling at the now cringing, weeping actor.

Allowing himself the luxury of an unlit cigar clenched between tight jaws, Milo played the phone, calling in jail transport, crime scene techs, the coroners.

The chief’s office, almost as an afterthought. The boss was out; Milo declined to leave a message.

Tyler O’Shea continued to guard the girl in the bikini.