If anything, Jeffrey figured this case was opening up his olfactory sense to all different kinds of new experiences. The Cromwell house smelled like sweat and fried chicken, with a disturbing undertone of rotting meat courtesy of the room at the top of the stairs.

The landlady greeted him at the door with a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. She was a large woman with ample folds of skin hanging down from her arms. Jeffrey tried not to watch them sway back and forth as she talked.

“We never had no trouble from him at all,” she assured Jeffrey as she led him into the house. Deep green carpet on the floor had once been a nice shag but was now flattened down from years of wear and what looked like motor oil. The walls probably hadn’t been painted since Nixon was in the White House and there were black scuff marks on every baseboard and corner. The woodwork had been stunning at one time, but several coats of paint obscured the carvings on the molding. Incongruously, a beautiful cut-glass chandelier that was probably original to the house hung in the entranceway.

“Did you hear anything last night?” Jeffrey asked, trying to breathe through his mouth without looking like a panting dog.

“Not a peep,” she said, then added, “Except for the TV Mr. Harris keeps on next door to Chip.” She indicated the stairs. “He’s gone deaf over the last few years, but he’s been here longer than any of them. I always tell new boys if they can’t take the noise, then find somewhere else.”

Jeffrey glanced out the front door to the street, wondering what was keeping Lena. He had sent her to get Brad Stephens so that he could help process the scene. Along with half the rest of the force, he was still out in the woods, searching for anything suspicious.

He asked, “Is there a rear entrance?”

“Through the kitchen.” She pointed to the back of the house. “Chip parked his car under the carport,” she explained. “There’s an alley cuts through the backyard, takes you straight in from Sanders.”

“Sanders is the street that runs parallel to Cromwell?” Jeffrey verified, thinking that even if Marty Lam had been sitting on the front door like he was supposed to, he wouldn’t have seen Chip come in. Maybe Marty would think about that while he sat at home on his ass during his weeklong suspension.

The woman said, “Broderick turns into Sanders when it crosses McDougall.”

“He ever have any visitors?”

“Oh, no, he kept himself to himself.”

“Phone calls?”

“There’s a pay phone in the hall. They’re not allowed to use the house line. It doesn’t ring much.”

“No particular lady friends came by?”

She giggled as if he had embarrassed her. “We don’t allow female visitors in the house. I’m the only lady allowed.”

“Well,” Jeffrey said. He had been postponing the inevitable. He asked the woman, “Which room is his?”

“First on the left.” She pointed up the stairs, her arm wagging. “Hope you don’t mind if I stay here.”

“Have you looked in the room?”

“Goodness, no,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ve had a couple of these happen. I know what it looks like plain enough without the reminder.”

“A couple?” Jeffrey asked.

“Well, they didn’t die here,” she clarified. “No, wait, one did. I think his name was Rutherford. Rather?” She waved her hand. “Anyway, the one the ambulance picked up, he was the last. This was about eight, ten years ago. Had a needle in his arm. I went up there because of the smell.” She lowered her voice. “He had defecated himself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought he was gone, but then the paramedics came and toted him off to the hospital, said he still had a chance.”

“What about the other one?”

“Oh, Mr. Schwartz,” she remembered. “Very sweet old man. I believe he was Jewish, bless him. Died in his sleep.”

“When was this?”

“Mother was still alive, so it must have been nineteen…” She thought about it. “… nineteen eighty-six, I’d guess.”

“You go to church?”

“Primitive Baptist,” she told him. “Have I seen you there?”

“Maybe,” he said, thinking the only time he’d been in a church in the last ten years was to catch a glimpse of Sara. Cathy’s culinary arts gave her great sway with her girls during Christmas and Easter, and Sara generally let herself get talked into going to church services on these days in order to reap the benefits of a big meal afterward.

Jeffrey glanced up the steep stairs, not relishing what was ahead of him. He told the woman, “My partner should be here soon. Tell her to come up when she gets here.”

“Of course.” She put her hand down the front of her dress and rooted around, seconds later producing a key.

Jeffrey forced himself to take the warm, somewhat moist key, then started up the stairs. The railing was wobbly, torn from the wall in several places, an oily sheen to the unpainted wood.

The smell got worse the closer he got to the top, and even without directions he could’ve found the room with his nose.

The door was locked from the outside with a padlock and hasp. He put on some latex gloves, wishing like hell he’d donned them before taking the key from the landlady. The lock was rusty, and he tried to hold it by the edges so he wouldn’t smudge any fingerprints. He forced the key, hoping it wouldn’t break in the lock. Several seconds of praying and sweating in the dank heat of the house yielded a satisfying click as the padlock opened. Touching only the edges of the metal, he opened the hasp, then turned the handle of the door.

The room was pretty much what you would expect after seeing the front hall of the house. The same filthy green carpet was on the floor. A cheap roller shade was in the window, the edges pinned down with blue masking tape to keep the sunlight from streaming in. There wasn’t a bed, but a sleeper couch was halfway open as if someone had been interrupted during the process of unfolding the mattress. All the drawers of the one dresser in the room were open, their contents spilling out onto the rug. A brush and comb along with a glass bowl that contained about a thousand pennies were in the corner, the bowl shattered in two, the pennies flooding out. Two table lamps without shades were on the floor, intact. There wasn’t a closet in the room, but someone had nailed a length of clothesline along the wall to hang shirts on. The shirts, still on hangers, littered the floor. One end of the clothesline was still nailed to the wall. Chip Donner held the other end in his lifeless hand.

Behind Jeffrey, Lena dropped her crime scene toolbox on the floor with a thud. “Guess it was the maid’s day off.”

Jeffrey had heard Lena ’s tread on the stairs, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the body. Chip’s face looked like a raw piece of meat. His lower lip had been nearly ripped off and was resting on his left cheek as if someone had just brushed it aside. Several broken teeth dotted his chin, the pieces piercing the flesh. What was left of his lower jaw hung at a slant. One eye socket was completely concave, the other empty, the eyeball hanging down the side of his cheek by what looked like a couple of bloody threads. Donner’s shirt was off, his white skin almost glowing in the light from the hall. His upper body had about thirty thin red slashes crisscrossed all around it in a pattern that Jeffrey didn’t recognize. From this distance, it looked like somebody had taken a red Magic Marker and drawn perfectly straight lines all over Donner’s torso.

“Brass knuckles,” Lena guessed, pointing to the chest and belly. “There was a trainer at the police academy who had the same thing right here on his neck. Perp popped out from behind a trash can and laid into him before he could pull his piece.”

“I can’t even tell if he still has a neck.”

Lena asked, “What the hell is sticking out of his side?”

Jeffrey squatted down for a better view, still standing just shy of the doorway. He squinted, trying to figure out what he was seeing. “I think those are his ribs.”