way patrolling, and they asked me to swing by. I come up, saw a car around back, but nobody answered. The doors were open and then, uh, I went around back and looked in through the back door and I saw the boy lying on the floor, and man, he looked like, you know, he was dead. He looked like a rag doll. Then I come in and found him and I got the heck out of there and alerted the sheriff.”

“Didn’t touch anything?”

“I been trying to think,” the deputy said, looking over at the house. “The door handle, for sure. And I think I put my hand on the door frame on the way out. The main thing was, I didn’t know if somebody was still in there, and I wanted to get outside where I could see somebody running, if they were. Then I stood here until everybody come in.”

“Sounds like you did okay,” Lucas said, and the deputy bobbed his head, taking the compliment. Lucas said to Nordwall, “We gotta have your guys figure out if they touched or moved anything. It’ll make things easier. We’re gonna be looking for DNA, and that’s a touchy thing.”

“I figured,” Nordwall said. He looked up at the house. “You gonna go in?”

“Just for a quick look,” Lucas said.

LUCAS HAD LITTLE FAITH in crime-scene analysis as a way of breaking a case, but it often came in handy after they caught somebody. He got thin vinyl throwaway gloves from his car, handed a packet to Sloan. They went in through the back door, since that entry route had already been contaminated, trying not to bump anything, or scuff anything. The door opened into a mudroom, six feet square with coat hooks on the wall, ancient linoleum flooring, then through a glass-paneled door into the kitchen. The boy was lying in the kitchen, a pool of dried blood around his head; he was wearing pajamas.

“Been there awhile,” Sloan said. He stepped closer, squatted. “He was hit on the head with something. Something crushed the skull.”

“He never moved, the skid marks lead right into the blood,” Lucas said. Lucas had a toddler at home, and swallowed, the bitter taste of acid in his throat. “Must have killed him outright.”

Sloan sighed, put his hands on his thighs, and pushed himself back up. “I’m gonna quit,” he said.

“Yeah, right.” Lucas led the way toward the next room, a hall. They could see the living room beyond it.

“I’m serious,” Sloan said. “I got the time in. I’m gonna put this guy away, and then I’m gonna do it. That dead kid is one dead kid too many.”

Lucas looked at him: “Let’s talk about it later.”

“Fuck later. I’m gonna quit.”

ADAM RICE WAS IN THE NEXT ROOM. He was naked, kneeling, his hips up, his head on the floor. He had duct tape on both wrists, as though they’d been taped together, and then cut loose. His body was a mass of blood, a hundred bloody stripes across his chest and stomach and thighs. Scourged, Lucas thought. Blood spattered the walls, a round oaken dinner table, two short bookcases full of books and china; and splashed across the faces of a dozen people smiling down from pictures on the living-room wall.

Sloan looked at him and said, “That’s our guy. No question about it.”

“No question.”

“None.”

RICE’S CLOTHES HAD BEEN flung in one corner, and were rags. The killer had cut them off with some kind of razor knife or box cutter or scalpel. He’d brought it with him, Lucas thought, and had taken it away with him.

“He’s got some muscle,” Sloan said, looking at the dead man. “The killer must have had a gun on him. Doesn’t look like he fought back much.”

Lucas nodded. “The guy comes in, he has a gun, points it at Rice, tells him it’s a robbery and that there’ll be no trouble if he cooperates. Rice is worried about the kid, who’s up in bed. He cooperates. He gets his hands taped up and then the shit starts. They’re struggling, knocking around, maybe, the kid hears it, comes down, sees what’s going on, and runs for the door. The killer gets him in the kitchen. Maybe whacks him with the butt of a shotgun.”

Sloan nodded: “I’ll buy that, for a start.”

“The thing is, the killer came for Rice, the father. He wasn’t pulled in by the kid. The kid looks like an accident, or an afterthought. Maybe the killer didn’t even know he existed.”

“Huh.” Noncommittal.

“Look,