“You got an interpreter coming?”

“Yeah, ETA,” he looked at his watch, “maybe five, ten minutes.”

Colt looked away, tearing his fingers through his hair and swore, “Fucking hell.”

“Yeah, you’re sayin’ that now, wait until you get a look at the body.”

Colt turned back to Sully and gave the front door a lift of his chin. Sully nodded and led the way. They grabbed cotton covers for their boots and plastic gloves and pulled them on before they went in.

Colt saw immediately that the place screamed money. He knew Denny was a computer programmer, designed some software that hospitals all over the country used and he made good money but this place said more than that. Marie Lowe had good taste. It was sheer elegance.

Except, of course, the path of blood that stained the foyer and all the way up the wide, curling staircase that was accompanied by the sick smell of death.

Sully led Colt up the stairs while he talked. “Did her in the bedroom in bed, at least that fits the MO. Though he dragged her there, it started in the kitchen, blood all over the place.”

“No one reported her missing?”

“While investigating him we found out she doesn’t work. Don’t know if she missed a nail appointment,” Sully said. “She’s not a local, no family close we know of but haven’t looked into her much. Know she was forty years old. They been married a good long while, no kids. Maybe she met him at Northwestern.”

They hit the bedroom but Colt saw it before he got there because the blood was all over the walls.

Definitely rage-driven.

“Holy f**k,” he whispered when he saw what was left of Marie Lowe’s body.

The Mexican cleaner was going to have nightmares for years.

He turned to Sully. “Get the interpreter to call the cleaner’s family here. Talk to them about assistance. This is gonna f**k with her head for awhile.”

“Got it,” Sully replied and Colt walked fully into the room.

The boys were working the bed still taking photos. Andy Milligan, the coroner, already had the body bag spread out on the floor. How Andy was going to scoop up that mess and get it into a bag was beyond Colt but he was f**king glad that wasn’t his job.

Colt skirted the bed and saw a big, elaborately framed photograph on a bureau and he got close. Wedding picture. Denny and Marie, Marie smiling like it was the happiest day of her life. She looked young in the photo, maybe early twenties. She was pretty, blonde, dark brown eyes, tall, good figure that Colt could see even trussed up with all the material of her dress. Someone had spent some cake on the wedding if that dress and her flowers were anything to go by. Far’s Colt knew Denny didn’t come from money though his Dad didn’t do bad as he was the local pharmacist, which meant probably Marie’s family was loaded.

Colt’s eyes moved to Denny in the photo.

Denny looked like he had a secret. He wasn’t smiling near as wide, he didn’t look relaxed and happy; he looked formal and stiff.

He’d settled for second best.

Colt hadn’t noticed it when he’d seen them around in town because he didn’t pay much mind to Marie Lowe but she looked a f**k of a lot like Feb.

“I know,” Sully muttered from beside him, reading his mind.

Colt turned to Sully keeping his body aimed away from the mess on the bed.

“Chris and Marty got witnesses at Feb’s place,” Colt stated because he knew this to be true, Chris had called him.

“Yeah, another f**k up,” Sully replied. “I don’t know, maybe he thought senior citizens take naps all the time instead of being nosy as shit, but got four folks who saw a man of his description go into Feb’s house. One lady, name is June Wright, says she saw him twice and once, she reports, it looked like he was having trouble with his key. Or at least she thought so at the time. She thought he was Feb’s boyfriend.”

That comment made Colt’s stomach give a sick churn.

“Picking the lock?” Colt asked.

“Probably. Don’t know if you looked, her lock isn’t great.”

“Yeah, it isn’t because she lives in a small town where this shit isn’t supposed to happen. Most the population have locks like that.”

“We better call Skipp, his hardware store is gonna get overrun.”

“Already is,” Chris said, getting close, “day Angie died.”

“Chris,” Colt greeted him.

“Heya, Colt,” Chris replied and looked at Sully. “Got somethin’ interesting.”

“That is?” Sully asked.

“This place has five frickin’ fireplaces. All of them burn wood, not gas, not fake, real wood fire places.”

Colt knew where this was going.

Chris continued. “They all got stacks of wood beside them, all of them, and a big row of wood down the back of the house, three rows deep. So much wood, shit, they’d need five years to get through it all. There’s also a stump for choppin’. Looks like Denny Lowe chopped his own wood and it looks like he did it like a freakin’ hobby. A hobby he liked, like, a lot.”

“This guy is whacked,” Sully muttered.

“Yeah, choppin’ wood as a hobby puts the icing on the cake of this guy bein’ whacked,” Chris said and jerked his head toward the bed.

Colt was thinking of a man who earned a better than modest living but chopped his own wood. He could have had the wood delivered but instead he had to have to have full logs delivered. This neighborhood, the cops would have heard about some fanatical log-chopping neighbor who was cutting down all the trees. Folks in this neighborhood didn’t mind complaining. They paid big taxes and they felt they should get their money’s worth. They called the cops if a neighbor’s kid was playing his stereo too loud at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Hell, it was a miracle they hadn’t received a complaint about the noise made by Denny chopping wood all the time.

Most men chopped wood because they had to, not because they wanted to. Seemed to Colt, Denny Lowe had a lot of rage he’d been workin’ out for some time.

“We need this place combed, someone needs to talk to the neighbors,” Sully said to Chris. “You need reinforcements, let me know, we’ll call ‘em in. The Feds are heading back here and I’ve no doubt they’ll get men on it too.”

“Gotcha,” Chris said on a nod and took off.

“Strainin’ our resources, you on ‘consultative capacity’, Marty havin’ half a brain and needin’ to pull the boys from the task force in every few hours. No cops on the street, we’re gonna miss our quota this month of speedin’ tickets,” Sully joked.