She hated flies.
The smell thickened as she approached the doorway to the living room. Breathing through her nose and clamping her mouth closed, Bree suppressed a quick, reflexive gag. At the threshold, surprise stopped her cold. She froze, her feet rooted to the worn linoleum as she took in the scene with disbelief.
She’d expected to find the homeowner dead of a fall, heart attack, or stroke, but the image in front of Bree was so unexpected, she couldn’t move. Her brain didn’t want to accept what it was seeing. She squeezed her eyes closed for a few seconds, then reopened them. Nothing had changed. The scene was still horrific.
Two bodies slumped, tied securely to straight-backed wooden chairs. The chairs had been placed side by side a few feet apart and turned in the same direction.
Like an audience facing a stage.
The first victim was an elderly woman, her head hanging sideways at an unnaturally relaxed angle. Ms. Brown, Bree guessed. A bullet hole marred the center of her forehead. Flies hovered around the wound, her eyes, nose, and mouth. Bree’s throat went dry and she swallowed. She saw no other injuries on the old woman’s pale blue cotton blouse or jeans. A cell phone poked out of the front pocket of her blouse. Bree made a note to have it bagged and tagged before the ME removed the bodies.
The second victim was male, and his body seemed younger. His head lolled forward, so Bree couldn’t see his face. But he was clearly dead. Unlike the woman, he’d been shot multiple times. Patches of dark dried blood bloomed on his plain gray T-shirt and jeans. The blood had dripped to the floor and puddled under the chair. Bree noticed that the blood had had time to dry.
She closed her eyes. At the age of eight, Bree had hidden her two younger siblings under the back porch of their house while their father shot their mother and then turned the gun on himself. She hadn’t seen their bodies. Had their deaths been this bloody?
A scraping sound brought Bree back to the present. She whipped her head around. Her hand automatically went to the butt of her weapon. Homer stood in the kitchen doorway, his tanned face as white as raw flour.
“Stop!” Bree commanded.
He didn’t move, but she doubted he could hear her. His gaze was locked on the bodies, his eyes wide with disbelief and horror. Nothing short of physical intervention would break his shocked trance.
Bree stepped in front of the carnage, blocking his view. He blinked and stared at her, slowly returning to his senses. His mouth opened, then closed again, and he looked as if he might be sick. Not wanting the scene to be contaminated, Bree commanded, “Do not come into this room!”
He flinched.
Recognizing the harshness of her tone, Bree lowered her voice. “Back out of the house carefully. Do not touch anything. I’ll be out shortly.”
Homer’s Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed hard, visibly composing himself. Then he followed her orders.
Bree drew her weapon. These deaths were clearly not fresh, but that didn’t mean the killer couldn’t still be here. She’d seen weirder things in her law enforcement career. Once, she’d arrested a man who’d killed his wife and lived with her dead body for two weeks, until the smell was so bad the neighbors called the cops.
She cleared a formal parlor and study in the front of the house, then went up the stairs to the second floor. She stopped on the landing and listened but heard nothing. Turning left, she went into the primary bedroom, clearly occupied by the old woman. Bree opened the closet. Church dresses and shoes were lined up on the left. Working clothes hung neatly on the right. Everything had been ironed, even the jeans. Bree stooped to check under the bed. In the attached bath, she pulled aside the shower curtain that hung around a huge claw-foot tub. Then she retreated from the main bedroom into the hallway.
Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as a floorboard creaked under her weight. One glance told her the hall bath was empty. The second bedroom held a twin bed and appeared to be unoccupied. In the third bedroom, suitcases, boxes, and masculine clothing indicated the male was in the process of moving either out or in. She looked in the closet and under his bed as well. But as she’d suspected, the killer was long gone. Easing her weapon back into its holster, she returned to the first floor. Passing the dead in the living room, she went through the kitchen and out the back door.
For a full minute, she stood on the porch and gulped fresh air.
Homer was doing the same, leaning forward, his hands on his thighs. “Who would do that to her?” His voice was weak and sad, but he no longer looked as if he were going to vomit.
“I don’t know. It was definitely Ms. Brown?”