“Has anyone been in there?” Hazard asked.
“I checked to make sure it was empty,” Engels said. “Krower’s boys were at school; they’re at the office now with a social worker. The wife isn’t in the picture, from what I understand. I’ll have Detectives Holliman and Reinbold take that part of the grid. This is their case, after all.”
Somers blinked, but all he said was “Right.”
As he and Hazard headed for the house, Hazard asked, “Since when does the Sheriff’s Department have detectives?”
“Since now, I guess.”
“It’s bullshit. Engels has got thirty deputies who couldn’t find their own dicks in the dark.”
“He’s making changes. That’s good. They need shaking up.”
“They need frontal lobotomies.”
Krower’s home was a brick ranch-style house with a single-car garage on the east end. The tuckpointing looked bad; the landscaping looked worse. Weeds grew in the flower beds under the windows. The windows themselves stared back blindly, their white curtains drawn. In one of the rear windows, someone—presumably one of the boys—had stuck a Pikachu sticker. It was the only thing that made the place look inhabited.
“Did Engels shut the curtains like that?” Hazard asked as they approached.
“He didn’t say he did.”
“What’s the deal with that?”
“I don’t know, but it gives me the willies.”
“Yeah,” Hazard said softly, still examining the house. “It sure fucking does.”
The deputy parked at the back door was a tiny white guy with bulging eyes. In one hand, he was holding his gun like it was a garden hose. In the other, he held a sack of sunflower seeds. While Somers watched, the deputy shook some of the seeds into his open mouth. Then he began to crack them between his molars, spitting out masses of half-chewed shells.
“Can’t go in there,” he said through the mush.
“Excuse me?” Hazard said.
“Sheriff Engels asked us to take a look,” Somers said.
“Brother Gary and Red, they said nobody in there.”
“Who the fuck,” Hazard weighed the word, “is Brother Gary?”
“Gary Holliman.” Apparently, Hazard’s reaction wasn’t sufficiently full of awe because the deputy added, “The detective.”
Somers checked the man’s name tag and said, “Deputy Glover, the sheriff asked us to take a look inside.”
“That’s not what Brother Gary said. Brother Gary said not a soul.”
“Numb nuts,” Hazard said. “Do you know who you’re talking to? Chief Somerset. Wahredua PD.”
“Easy,” Somers murmured.
“I know who he is. All y’all, I know who you are. Brother Gary says this is why the Lord has turned his back on America.” Glover smirked. “Red Alvin just says you two fucking must be like getting your wieners caught in one of them Chinese finger traps.”
“Listen to me, you little—” Hazard began.
Somers touched his arm. All of it—Dulac, Palomo, Norman and Gross and Keller and Yarmark, the sleepless night, Colt, Hazard’s unhinged reaction—seemed to hit him at once, and he started speaking.
“Deputy, get your ass away from this house. Go sit in your department vehicle. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t move. Don’t get out to take a leak. Don’t jerk off to your cousin. I don’t want to be reminded that you exist for the rest of this investigation. Do I make myself clear?”
“You’re not my commanding—”
“No. And you should thank the Lord that I’m not. Because if one of my officers spoke to anyone the way you just spoke to us, they’d be working overnights and weekends for the rest of their mortal lives. And if I ever saw one of my officers eating at a crime scene—not to mention spitting shells on the ground like an animal—I’d have them out of uniform and out of a job by the end of the day. Get out of here. And start thinking up a good explanation to give Sheriff Engels for why you contaminated the scene of a murder.”
Glover looked the color of dry toothpaste. He coughed, and half-chewed seeds came flying out. For a moment, he stared at Somers, as though he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Then, shoving his gun into its holster, he staggered off around the side of the house, throwing bug-eyed glances over his shoulder.
Hazard was looking at Somers
“What?” Somers snapped.
“You,” Hazard said with a tiny smile, “are going to be one hell of a chief.”
It was hard, but Somers managed not to grin like a teenager as he took the steps up to the back door.
They changed gloves, added shoe covers, and went inside.
The house was… fine. Somers had a hard time putting another word to it. They started in the kitchen, which was clean, with an older-model electric stove, a countertop microwave, an aluminum breadbox, and an avocado-colored Amana refrigerator. The dining area had a farmhouse-style table with plain pine chairs. The air smelled like rosemary or pine. Someone had wrung out a dishcloth and hung it over the lip of the sink to dry. A home security camera had been mounted on the wall opposite the back door, and Somers guessed that the angle and position allowed it to record most of the activity in the kitchen. A flight of stairs led down to the basement; Somers left that for later.
The living room at the front had ten-year-old furniture in plaid upholstery and unstained oak. The TV looked newer, but it wasn’t one of the ultra-thin QLED—or whatever—that Hazard kept researching and insisting they buy ‘for you, John.’ Vacuum tracks showed in the carpet. A rubberized tray waited near the door, but all the shoes were gone.
“John,” Hazard said. He pointed to an identical home security camera mounted high on the wall.
“Yikes,” Somers said under his breath.
The bathroom had probably a week’s worth of grime. Deodorant, soap, shampoo, toothpaste. All drugstore brands. The towels weren’t fresh, but that wasn’t exactly a capital crime. A smart speaker sat on a shelf above the toilet.
“Some of these devices record a lot of material,” Hazard said. “We might be able to pull something from it.”
“I’ll ask Engels to add them to the warrant for the bank accounts, his email, all that.”
Two bedrooms nestled together at the end of the hallway. One was larger, with an en suite bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it had decent, if outdated, furniture: the same unstained oak for the dresser and the headboard, a navy comforter on a queen bed, an early model flatscreen TV, what Somers guessed was twenty-four inches. A folded piece of paper next to the television drew Somers’s interest. When he opened it, he could read the looping cursive letters that took up most of the page: STAY OFF MY PROPERTY!!!
“Ree?”
He glanced at the note. “So much for cousins sharing their land.”
The clothes in the dresser were consistent with what Krower had been wearing—cheap, sturdy, unremarkable brands. The clothes in the closet were similar. On the closet’s upper shelf, someone had left the key in the lock of a fire safe. Social Security cards, birth certificates, bank accounts—Krower had a couple thousand stashed away—and medical records. The bathroom had a mirrored medicine cabinet where Somers found prescriptions for lisinopril, atorvastatin, and sildenafil.