Dupree snorted like a bull, seized her by the arm, and perp walked her outside.
She tried to explain. “I couldn’t get in. Agent Emerson left me behind, the hallway was blocked, and I took a moment to—”
“I am not interested in excuses,” he snapped. “Emerson is an idiot. But I made a big gamble bringing you here, and I didn’t do it just to show you how we work. I wanted you to keep your eyes open. Get in there and try to understand that family’s terror! I want to know how the Composer thinks. Don’t let them intimidate you. I’ve got your back.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and went inside.
Amaia bit her lip, exhaled through her nose, and followed him in.
The techs had finished uncovering the bodies, and the FBI team was squatting to watch as they listened to the medical examiner’s first impressions. Amaia walked over to stand directly behind him.
“They’ve been dead for less than five hours. No hematomas evident yet, but there are traces indicating they were tied up. Surprisingly little loss of blood, considering the extent of the cranial injuries.”
Agent Tucker spoke. “So the head injuries were inflicted postmortem?”
“Can’t be sure of that yet. We’ll have to wait for the autopsies. But what I can tell you is that these are fatal injuries.” With two fingers the doctor delicately pushed aside the smaller boy’s hair so they could appreciate the violence of the blow that had deformed his skull.
Tucker persisted. “They were all fatally wounded the same way, their skulls crushed. Were they killed in this room?”
“Well, you saw how they had to be dug out from the debris. But the fact that they gathered here doesn’t prove they weren’t injured elsewhere in the house. I’ve seen similar situations in house fires. When panic hits, family members look for one another, it’s normal. And all too often they die together as a result.”
Dupree added a note. “With all heads oriented toward the north.”
The medical examiner shrugged. “Okay, well . . . that’s unusual, but . . .”
Amaia shook her head and joined in. “There’s no blood anywhere in the rest of the house. I checked.” She was speaking only to Dupree. “Not a single drop to suggest they could’ve been hurt elsewhere. With head injuries this serious, they’d have bled profusely; there’d be a trail of blood.”
Johnson followed up. “There’s nothing on the clothing. If they’d been upright when struck, staining would have been inevitable.”
Amaia stepped forward and leaned over the youngest victim. She pointed to the mass of gore covering the back of the boy’s head. “If you look closely, you’ll see there’s a bubble maybe half an inch below the point of impact.”
The medical examiner pushed aside the boy’s hair there. “Could be a blood clot.”
“It’s not,” she contradicted him. “That’s a gas bubble. Examine the very edge of the wound, on this side, and you’ll find two little black spots. That’s residue typical of the collar of abrasion formed from a gunshot at point-blank range. It’s almost invisible because of the battering. But a skull is hard bone, and it prevented the gas from dissipating within the body. That’s why this bubble formed.”
Dupree nodded in satisfaction.
“You might be right,” the medical examiner acknowledged reluctantly.
“They all died from shots to the head, shots disguised afterward by these blows,” she asserted.
Johnson intervened. “While there are many similarities with the other cases we identified, we still haven’t found the pistol. And there’s no grandmother.”
“The family took shelter in the cellar which can be accessed from the kitchen.” Amaia still spoke only to Dupree. “They were prepared. They had water, food, batteries, a transistor radio, and flashlights, all sealed in plastic bins. The gun was kept down there. I couldn’t locate the firearm, but I saw an oiled cloth, a cleaning brush, and several boxes of twenty-two-caliber ammunition. They spent the night down there, but I don’t think they got much sleep. The bedrooms up here are a mess, but it’s obvious the beds weren’t slept in. There are six sleeping bags downstairs and open drinks. The beers were probably for the father, the diet drink for the mother, Coke for the kids, and water for someone else. A sixth person.”
Emerson appealed to the others. “It’s pretty damn reckless to assume that an extra sleeping bag and bottle of water prove the presence of a sixth person. They could’ve put down all the sleeping bags they had, and any of them could have been drinking water.”
Dupree’s look invited her to respond.
She did. “On the floor by the sleeping bags there’s a little cloth case full of pills and tablets, the sort of medicine a senior citizen would take. Blood thinners, blood pressure medicine, tablets for arthritis, sleeping pills. The elderly carry their medicines with them wherever they go, and they take their pills with water. Add to that the fact the water bottle has obvious lipstick traces. Neither the mother nor the girl is wearing lipstick.”
“There’s a problem, though,” Tucker objected as she pushed herself to her feet. “There’s not a trace of this person. According to their files, neither spouse had living parents. Both were orphaned at a young age, and they were in foster care in their teens. Neither had any other family.”
Amaia left the house. Winding her way through the vehicles blocking the drive, she got far enough away to get a wider view of the property. The dirt road to the Allen farmhouse connected it to a state highway about two hundred yards away. From the edge of the highway, she scanned the rolling plain.
The crop, probably soybeans, had been harvested, so the absence of machinery wasn’t unusual. She remembered seeing a fridge magnet from the Alvord Farmers Co-op. The only structure in sight was the ravaged farmhouse, and they’d been told that the closest neighbors were more than two miles away. She looked up at the passing clouds and started back toward the house.
A state trooper was leaning against a patrol car. She gave Amaia a friendly look and nodded toward the farmhouse. “Unbelievable, right? Looks like a turtle with its shell ripped off.”
Amaia’s lips twitched in a faint, wry smile. “I thought the same thing when I saw it. Too bad there’s a threat of more rain.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. A company from Oklahoma will be here in an hour or two with an industrial tarp to cover it. After the examiner takes the bodies out, we’ll go through the place room by room and inventory everything. It goes to a warehouse until the case is closed. After that it goes to the heirs. That is, assuming there are any.”
Amaia gave her a real smile this time. “Pretty efficient!”
The friendly woman extended her hand. “Alana Harris, state trooper.”
“Assistant Inspector Amaia Salazar.” She touched the FBI badge pinned to the front of her baggy jacket.
The trooper grinned at her. “They didn’t take too much trouble getting you the right size, did they?”
Amaia returned the grin and pointed toward what was left of the farmhouse. Dupree stood with a Texas Ranger on the front porch watching them. “Any idea where the roof wound up?”