And then he’s gone, leaving the room deathly still in his wake.

The next moment, Lorenz has me by the sleeve, dragging me over to the corner. His voice barely a whisper. I half expect him to chew me out, so his real motive comes as a shock.

“I don’t get it.” He casts a glance over his shoulder, making sure no one’s listening. “What’s the deal with the rope?”

It takes me a second to find my voice. “They’re restraints, J One at each corner, like somebody was tied spread-eagle to the bed. The blood on those sheets, it’s probably from two victims. Morales and somebody the shooters took with them, after cutting her loose.”

“Her?”

“Just a guess.”

He takes all this onboard, then backs away, patting me on the front of the shoulder. But the pat feels like a push, too. As if he’s distancing himself from me. Or from his own ignorance.

“All right,” he says to the room. “Here’s the situation.”

Before he can launch into his speech, I’m out the door. One of the advantages of invisibility.

Outside, layers of garbage tamp down the knee-high grass out front, some bagged but most of it not: sun-bleached fast food packets, thirty-two ounce cups, empty twelve-pack beer boxes, all of it teeming with flies. The house is broad, one of the street’s larger residences, complete with a double-wide carport and a driveway full of cracked concrete, rust stains, and a shiny black Escalade. The keys are probably still in Morales’s pocket.

The perimeter line is being held by one Sergeant Nixon – Nix to his friends – a cop who can remember back far enough to the time when Texas produced lawmen instead of peace officers.

“Look who it is.” He gives my shoulder a pat, but it’s nothing like the heave-ho from Lorenz. “What are you doing at an honest-to-God murder scene? I thought you were putting in time with the cars-for-criminals team.”