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  “Nobody home,” the chief deputy said. “Figured I’d wait here for you guys to arrive, though.”

  “You’ve checked both houses?” I asked.

  “I think that old one back there is abandoned. Not even sure if that’s on the property, to tell you the truth. Might belong to the neighbors.”

  “Did you knock or ring the bell?” Beth asked.

  “Both,” the chief deputy said.

  I started walking toward the house. The place was a single story though I could see a cinderblock base and windows just below ground level, which told me it had a basement. The home was white with a gray roof that looked like it needed some repairs. The house couldn’t have been much over a thousand feet—two bedrooms, max. A pair of windows faced me, and the back door was dead center of the building.

  “What are you doing? I said no one answered,” the chief deputy said.

  “Just going to knock again. Is that a problem?” I asked.

  He went silent.

  I opened the aluminum screen door attached to the home and knocked on the brown-stained wooden back door. I didn’t hear anyone inside. I smelled something off but couldn’t put my finger on it—it was almost a perfume, or a floral bathroom-spray smell. No one came to the door. I let the screen door close and went to one of the back windows to look in. A set of curtains sat behind the blinds, blocking my view. I walked around the house and tried the front door—again, I didn’t receive an answer.

  I walked back around to Beth and the chief deputy.

  “Told you no one was home,” he said.

  I nodded and looked at Beth. “Let’s go see if someone is up at the other house.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she said and led the way.

  The driveway from the street to the smaller of the two houses was gravel and looked fairly well used. As the driveway continued toward the older home, it turned to mostly weeds with just two old sunken wheel tracks. We put a distance of fifty feet between ourselves and the chief deputy, who must have decided he was going to wait at the front bumper of his vehicle and watch us.

  Beth pointed down at the tire ruts as we walked. “Doesn’t look like this gets used, huh?” she asked.

  I looked at the overgrown driveway. The grass and weeds were almost knee high, burying a couple of old vehicles and agricultural equipment that sat, abandoned and rusty, off to the driveway’s sides. The gravel tire tracks we’d been walking down had turned to hard-packed and depressed dirt about twenty feet back. We still had a good seventy-five yards before the old house. “Nope. Doesn’t look too traveled at all.” I stopped dead in my tracks and grabbed Beth by the shoulder of her blazer.

  “What?” Beth asked.

  “Except for that.” I pointed down in the folded-over grass at what looked like blood droplets. I crouched to get a better look and found more. “Blood. Doesn’t look too old, either.”

  “You’re sure it’s blood?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I stood and hollered down to the chief deputy. “We got blood here!”

  “What?” he yelled.

  “Blood,” I said. “In the grass.”

  He pulled himself from the front of his vehicle and started up the old driveway toward us.

  “Oh look, now he wants to help,” I said.

  Beth and I waited while the chief deputy walked to us. “You said you found blood?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said and pointed. I motioned for the chief deputy and Beth to step from the path and keep following me toward the house. “Don’t want to disturb anything if it ends up being needed for evidence.” I walked a few more steps and spotted more blood, much more. The bent-over grass was more red than green. “A bunch more here,” I said and jerked my chin toward the area.

  “Could be from animals or something,” the chief deputy said.

  I continued toward the house without responding. Every few feet, I spotted more blood in the grass. The old, half-fallen-over house was within thirty feet. The building was two stories and leaning a bit to the south. A few windows remained, but more were shattered than were intact. The home had a front porch and a few stairs leading up to a front doorway, minus the door. The porch itself was in ruins. The wood was gray, half rotted away and missing from various spots. As I was surveying the house, I caught a smell that I’d unfortunately become familiar with. I reached into my jacket and pulled my service weapon.

  “That’s decomp,” I said.

  “What?” the chief deputy asked.

  I motioned for them to follow. The smell must have hit Beth after she took another few steps. She pulled her weapon. The chief deputy did the same behind her. I put my finger to my lips. As I looked back to do it, I spotted a car coming up the driveway—Agent Clifford. Beth and the chief deputy looked back. Tom parked near our vehicles and stepped from his car.

  I spoke quietly over my shoulder. “Chief Deputy, go down to him. You two keep eyes on that house. I don’t want someone slipping out from under our nose if they’re in there.”

  He said nothing but started down the old driveway toward Tom. Beth and I started for the porch—the smell getting thicker with each step. I took the lead up the old porch with Beth covering my back, each of our steps calculated to avoid the cracked, rotten wood underfoot. I got to the home’s doorway, dipped my head and weapon to the left, and got a quick look into the home. The scene came in a flash—a makeshift table, a body laid out on the top, limbs removed, blood everywhere.

  I said the word body to Beth in a whisper over my shoulder. She nodded.

  “FBI!” I announced into the home—no response and no sounds of anyone inside.

  We entered through the front doorway. The home was silent aside from the buzz of flies and the creaking of the old wooden floors under our feet. In front of us, to our eleven o’clock, was a staircase leading up—most of the individual steps broken, with a large gap of two or three missing steps allowing us to see into what looked like a closet under the stairs. To our nine o’clock was what I figured used to be an old dining room. The room was empty aside from some garbage strewn across the floor. The window looked out from the room to the home’s front porch, boarded over from the inside. Beth and I went to the right. The body lay on a door sitting upon a pair of sawhorses. The floor beneath the makeshift table was brown with a layer of goo that I could only guess was old, coagulated blood. Flies buzzed and crawled across the remains. A pair of blood-stained and fly-infested five-gallon buckets stood at the table’s sides. Behind the body was an old fireplace. The room was devoid of furniture. We went to the woman on the table, quickly confirmed as deceased—her throat had been opened, and I spotted multiple stab wounds. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling of the room, both arms and legs gone. I stared at her.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said under my breath.

  “What?” Beth asked.

  I waved away her question and motioned that we were continuing to clear the property.

  Beth and I continued through the living room to the home’s kitchen, which had a dust-covered checkerboard floor—the appliances were gone, the pantry door removed. I had a quick look left and right. The cupboards hung open, a tree limb came through the void where the window over the kitchen sink had once been and touched the tin ceiling. A dingy old teddy bear lay in the right corner, covered in dirt with stuffing hanging out of it and a single black glass eye, the other gone. We continued around through a small hallway to our left that led us back toward the front of the home. Ahead and to our left, Beth pointed toward a single door, locked with a padlock that we wouldn’t be able to get through without a key or crowbar.

  I put my face near the door. “FBI! Is anyone down there?”

  I listened for any kind of response, but heard nothing. I looked down. A layer of undisturbed dust covered the floor in front of the door—no one had been through that door in quite some time. We continued on. To our right was an old bathroom, and I glanced in. The toilet lay on its side, and the tub had been removed. The bathroom’s single windo
w had been broken out. At the floor below the window, a two-foot-tall tree or weed was growing in a pile of dirt that had collected. The room was empty. Beth and I walked to the end of the short hall, which led us back to the dining room we’d seen when we entered. The first floor was clear.

  “Do we try to go up?” Beth asked.

  I shook my head. With the state of ruin the home was in, I didn’t feel like falling through the floor. I motioned Beth to the front doorway, and we exited. Beth left the porch, and I followed her off, walking backward, quickly glancing down with every step to mind my footing.

  I went to Beth’s side, standing in the grass out front of the home. “I saw that girl last night.”

  “What?” Beth asked. “When we were out?”

  “She was at the car wash talking with a big guy driving a Datsun pickup truck.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty damn certain,” I said. “Okay, we need into that other house and need to get everyone here.”

  “We’re going to need more than just locals,” Beth said.

  “I agree. I don’t want any of these people touching anything,” I said.

  “Ball can probably get a full team here from the Memphis office. It may take a bit, but I think that’s what we’re going to need,” Beth said.

  I nodded my head. “We still need into that other house.”

  “You do that. I’ll make the call to Ball and keep eyes on this place. We still don’t know if there is anyone upstairs.”

  “You’re good with that?”

  “If that house is anything like this one, I don’t want to see the inside,” Beth said.

  “Okay. I’ll have the chief deputy call in his guys just to secure the scene. Tell Ball we need whatever we can possibly get on Richard Kirkwood as well. They looked once already. We need them to look again.”

  “Yup,” she said.

  “Yell if you see anything.”

  Beth pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’ll do more than yell.”

  I nodded and started down the old driveway toward Tom, the chief deputy, and the other house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I approached Chief Deputy Whissell and Tom.

  “Damn horror scene,” I said.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, this is the place.” I looked at the chief deputy. “Your simpleton, poor abandoned Richard Kirkwood has been hacking girls to shit up in that old house, and I’m pretty damn sure the inside of this house isn’t going to be any better.”

  “What was up there?” Tom asked.

  “A girl we saw last night. Dead, dismembered.”

  Tom’s eyes bulged.

  The chief deputy said nothing.

  “Call in support to secure the area,” I said. “Strict orders to not touch anything. We have a team coming from Memphis. Get people on the lookout for this guy. I’m pretty sure he’s driving a blue seventies Datsun pickup truck.”

  “How do you know that? I didn’t even think this guy was capable of driving,” Whissell said.

  “I think I saw him picking up the girl, who’s now dead up in that house, last night. Just make the call.”

  Whissell called it in over his shoulder radio, and the station confirmed. He looked at me. “I never would have imagined this,” he said.

  I let out a quick breath and shook my head. “Probably why it’s been happening under your nose for who knows how long. Tom, you ready? We’re going in here.” I pointed to the house.

  “Yeah,” Tom said.

  “Be prepared for what you might see in there.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Shouldn’t we have warrants or something?” Whissell asked.

  “No,” I said. “Go to the front of the house and make sure no one comes out when we make entry into the back.”

  “Sure.” Whissell walked toward the front.

  Tom and I went to the back door of the property, service weapons drawn. I pulled open the aluminum screen door and tried twisting the inner doorknob—locked. I looked back at Tom. “Hold the screen door with your foot. Keep your aim into the house. You announce our presence, and I’ll kick the door in.”

  He nodded, held the door open with his foot and kept his sights on the door. I took three strides back and pulled in a deep breath. While I was fairly confident that I’d be able to get us inside, having booted my fair share of doors in the past, it had been a while. My old partner, Kane, was a bit of a brute and had handled the door-kicking-in duties over the last few years. I looked at Tom and gave him the nod.

  Tom banged his fist on the door. “FBI!” he shouted.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, I took a few strides and delivered a front kick to the edge of the door just above the knob. The door flew in, slammed against the home’s interior wall and came back. Tom shouldered the door out of the way and entered the property, announcing our presence once again. I followed him in and across the wood splinters from the door frame. The foul odor of decomposing bodies hit me like a hammer.

  “What the hell,” Tom said. He covered his mouth and nose with his free hand while his other kept the barrel of his weapon pointed into the home.

  I caught movement to my left and jerked my head and weapon to the area. A cat walked low along the wall and ran outside through the busted open door.

  The sound of flies filled the room, a continuous buzz from their wings and a constant ticking from them bouncing off the kitchen window.

  We stood in a path of garbage leading into the kitchen. To our left was a kitchen table, covered in blood with a pair of severed arms and a pair of severed legs directly next to them. I tried to hold my breath as we took another few steps inside. I looked to our right and stopped cold. The scene from the ruined house on the property paled in comparison to what I was looking at. I took my eyes away from what I seen, hoping it was a figment of my imagination and would be gone when I looked back. I glanced down at the area of garbage-free floor in the kitchen covered in still-wet blood. The blood continued up the cupboards to the countertop. What was on the countertop, which I’d first seen, remained. I felt my mouth filling with saliva, which was common before I retched.

  I motioned for Clifford to continue on, saying nothing, for fear that if I opened my mouth, my gag reflex would kick in. The two of us walked around the blood on the kitchen floor toward the living room. A single door stood to our right, padlocked, but not latched. Beyond the door was an empty bathroom. Tom and I continued into the living room itself. An old television in the corner was on, playing a fuzzy game show. The room was empty aside from some old dirty tables and a Chesterfield couch that looked as though it had seen better days. Off of the living room was a single bedroom. We headed in. The bed was unmade, the white sheets stained yellow. Garbage and miscellaneous junk covered the floor. The dresser had a few drawers standing open—it was made of hardwood and looked antique. The closet doors were open. Tom and I took a quick look inside and saw three plastic garbage bags filled with something sitting in a corner. Flies buzzed around the bags, but neither of us were about to look at what was inside.

  We walked back the way we’d come, quickly checked the basement, which was empty, and walked back into the kitchen.

  I tried to not look at what was on the kitchen counter but found my eyes glued to the area. A severed foot and what I could only assume was part of a calf sat nearest the refrigerator. From my vantage point, I could partially see into the kitchen sink—it looked to be filled with skin, bone, blood, and an off-yellow substance I couldn’t identify. My eyes went farther left across the blood-covered bit of counter to a brown-stained wooden cutting board—a section of leg roughly ten inches long sat on top the board, and I identified the joint in the center as a knee. A bit farther left still, my stomach turned, and the salivation resumed. A large brown flower-patterned Crock-Pot, covered in blood and a film of brown was clicked to On. Steam was rising from around the glass lid. One gag came and then another. I rushed past Tom, out the fron
t door, and managed to make it to the side of the home before the vomit came. I leaned over, hands on my knees. I retched again. The sound of me becoming sick must have triggered the same reflex in Tom because when I looked to the side, he was in the same position as me. I spat numerous times before regaining my composure. Then I removed my hands from my knees and stood.

  Tom motioned me toward his car and opened his trunk, so I walked to his side.

  “Here,” he said. He reached into the trunk, opened a small cooler, and pulled a water bottle from inside and handed it to me.

  I took the water and thanked him.

  After a mouth rinse and a stick of gum, it was time to get back to the task at hand—securing the scene until a forensics team could get inside and organizing some kind of search for Richard Kirkwood.

  “Beth!” I called. I could see her standing outside the old home, and I waved her back toward us.

  “Anything my guys from the Clarksville office can do?” Tom asked.

  “How many do you have?” I asked.

  “Probably six that could come.”

  “Get them here. The more of a federal presence we have until our guys get here from Memphis, the better. I don’t want to get outnumbered by the locals and have to make sure they aren’t disturbing evidence.”

  “Got it,” he said. Tom grabbed his phone from his pocket and made the call back to his office.

  Chief Deputy Whissell rounded the side of the house and came to Beth and me. “You guys find anything inside?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Let me go and take a look,” Whissell said. He turned and started for the back door of the house.

  I was about to keep him from entering when I heard Beth tell him to stop. She stood beside me.