Lucas said, “Huh.” He looked back at the Poole house. “No lights?”
“That’s another thing. They got those fake anti-burglar lights, you know, that automatically switch on and off with timers? They always use those when they’re gone, and there haven’t been any lights at all.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Listen, I’ll call somebody. See if there’s a way to check.”
“I’d appreciate that, sir,” she said.
—
LUCAS WENTback to the Benz, started it up, and called Adams, the TBI investigator he’d spoken to on the phone. Adams was at home, babysitting for his wife, who was out with girlfriends. Lucas outlined the problem, and Adams said, “You could go into the house withouta warrant, on the basis of a neighbor’s legitimate statement of concern... but... jeez, I can’t leave right now. I’m stuck here with the kids. I could call the office and see if we could get a couple guys down there.”
Lucas remembered the two highway patrolmen and suggested that he call one of them. “One of them said he lives out here, so he’s probably close by.”
“That’d work,” Adams said. “They’re authorized to do anything we do.”
Lucas found the patrolmen’s cards and called the short one, whose name was Manny Dean.
“Manny? This is Davenport, the marshal you talked to earlier today.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s up, man?”
Lucas gave him a quick summary, and Dean said, “I can be there in fifteen minutes. Gotta put some pants on. Meet you out front.”
—
LUCAS WENTback to the Poole house. Under the nervous eyes of the woman across the street, he rang the bell again and knocked for a while, but got no response. Dean showed up, wearing civilian clothes but driving his patrol car. He got out with a flashlight and asked, “Nothing?”
“Nothing. Let’s see what we can see.”
The drapes had been pulled on the front picture window, so they went around the house to the master bedroom and guest bedroom, where the drapes were open, but both bedrooms appeared to be unoccupied. There was a tiny porch on the back of the house, leadinginto a kitchen. Dean shone his light through the window, looked around, stepped back, frowned, went back to the window, and said, “Hey.”
Lucas was on the burnt-out lawn, looking up: “See something?”
“C’mere. Right over there by the archway going to the front... is that a leg?” Dean asked. “There’s no body or anything, but... is that a leg going across there? Could be a rolled-up piece of carpet, I guess, but it kinda looks like a leg.”
Lucas looked, then turned and said, “You got a tire iron in your car?”
“Yeah, and a crowbar.”
“I think it’s a leg. We may be too late, but we gotta go in.”
—
THEY WENTthrough the front door. Dean cracked it with the crowbar and Lucas pushed the door open with a knuckle and the smell of death hit them. Lucas turned and said, “Don’t touchanything.”
The house was dark and Lucas shone Dean’s flashlight across the living room: a man was lying on the floor, his head propped up against an eighties stereo cabinet, a short-barreled revolver lying on the floor a yard or so from his right hand. There was a bullet hole in his forehead. Scanning across the room, Lucas spotlighted a woman’s body, which had been cut into pieces, fingers, thumbs, both feet, one hand... at which point she must have died from shock, before the torturers could get the other hand. They’d quit there, leaving her on a blood-soaked shag carpet.
Dean said, “That’s not something you see on a routine basis.”
Lucas glanced at him: “If you’re gonna barf, do it outside.”
Dean said, “I got a hundred automobile accidents a year. Blood doesn’t bother me none, not anymore.”
“Okay. Let’s get the local cops over here and the TBI,” Lucas said. “Back out—you get the locals, I’ll call my guy at the TBI.”
More cops began arriving within five minutes of the call. First the local cops, then the sheriff’s deputies, and finally, a TBI investigator named Lawrence Post.
Post looked over the scene, asked the La Vergne cops to set up a perimeter, and got a crime scene crew moving. He took Lucas aside and asked, “What’s going on?”
