I pointed them out to Mac and Phillips.
Phillips gave a soft whistle. “A dog of some sort.” He stepped clear of the footprints and squatted by the tracks. He held his hand next to one. “A big one, too. Massive. Way too big to be a coyote. A mastiff, maybe. Or a Great Dane.”
“There was a wolf dog near one of the crime scenes on the Davenport case,” I said. “How fresh are these prints?”
Phillips stood. “Water has caught in them, and the edges are blurred. I’d say a day at least. Maybe more.” He scratched his head. “We get a lot of those wolf-dog hybrids out here in the county. People use ’em to run off the coyotes. But they give me the willies. Those animals can never decide if they’re wild or tame. I’ve seen it go both ways. Had one take down its owner a couple of years back. Ugliest scene I’ve ever processed.”
Clyde kept his ears up. But he wasn’t going wild over the prints, so I was confident no predator watched from nearby.
Phillips was staring at the porch. “What is that?”
Mac and I squinted into the shadows. Now that we were closer, I could see something huddled in the gloom just beyond the top of the stairs. Tan fur shivered in the wind. My mind went to the bobcat on Jill Martin’s table.
“The hell?” Mac said.
At the same time Phillips said, “It’s rabbits.”
Phillips was right. Heaped upon the porch was a mound of dead rabbits, their bodies piled atop each other like kindling in a funeral pyre. The bottom carcasses were well along in the decomposition process. The rabbits at the top of the pile looked relatively fresh. Intermixed with the rabbits were ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and a few woodrats.
None of them looked like they’d gone peacefully.
Phillips hitched up his belt. “It’s like a . . . a damn offering.”
Exactly, I thought. The way a cat left a bird or a mouse on the doorstep as a gift for its owner. Only the owner these were intended for never picked them up.
Phillips keyed his radio. “Dispatch, this is Unit Twelve. I’m on scene. Requesting assist. We have anyone in the area?”
“Roger that,” dispatch said. “Deputy Armstrong is thirty minutes out from your location. I’ll send a call-out.”
We went on up the steps, the wood soft and spongy under our feet from the recent rains. We stepped around the dead rabbits and their unwanted guests—the rabbits near the bottom of the pile writhed with maggots, while flies worked the top. Phillips swallowed hard as he went by.
Clyde stayed close to me.
Esta Quinn’s front door was old and scarred, the jamb splintered from years of heat and rain and cold. The doorbell dangled from a single wire. It looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to the porch light.
In the center of the door, someone had drawn a small X.
“The killer has been here,” I said softly.
“What killer?” Phillips asked. “You mean the guy who got the Davenports?”
“You’re up for this, right, Phillips?” Mac asked.
He took a step back. “Maybe we should wait for Armstrong.”
But I shook my head. “Lucy might be in there.”
Phillips swallowed again. “Shit.”
He took another step back and all of us looked up and down the length of the porch, swept our eyes over the windows. I kept my hand on the butt of my gun, but the house appeared to offer no threat. No curtain twitched, no shadows passed the windows.
In silent agreement, Mac went to one side of the door, Clyde and I took the other, and the deputy—in his official capacity—knocked as if it were a perfectly normal visit. The sound echoed around the porch then died away.
Out in the yard, the wind rustled through a line of cottonwood trees and, far over the fields, a bird called. The clothesline kept up its metallic clang.
“Mrs. Quinn!” Phillips yelled through the door. “This is Deputy Phillips with the Weld County Sheriff’s Office. I’m here to see if you need anything.”
Clyde’s ears came up. A second later, I heard it, too. A high, thin wail coming from somewhere deep inside the house—it sounded like the weak screech of an old woman.
“Let’s go,” I said to Phillips.
He tried the handle. The door was locked.
The wailing hiccupped into a cough and faded away.
Phillips stepped back, raised his booted foot, and slammed it into the door, just below the doorknob. The door groaned and a series of cracks appeared in the door’s wooden frame. He kicked it twice more, the frame splintered, and the door burst inward.
As if the house had been holding its breath, a smell rolled out, a dark mix of urine and feces and another odor I knew from Iraq—the sickly sweet stench of rotting wounds. My eyes watered.
“Damn,” Phillips said.
I touched Phillips’s shoulder as he was about to step through the doorway. “Clyde and I will go first. Give us close backup. Once we’ve cleared the entrance, we can split up and clear every room until we find Esta. Keep an eye out for the little girl.”
If an FBI agent and a sheriff’s deputy had problems taking orders from a railroad cop, they didn’t show it. Phillips moved aside, and Mac gave me a nod. Maybe it was because I had the dog.
I turned back to the house. A shadowy hallway disappeared into deep gloom. I reached around the doorframe and felt along the inside wall until I found a light switch. A single, dim bulb came on halfway down the hall.
Clyde and I moved through the shattered doorway. The hallway dead-ended fifteen feet down at a single doorway, which was closed. Just to the left of the door, a staircase led to the second floor. A small alcove on the left held hooks that brimmed with coats; a pile of women’s shoes lay in a jumble below. Through an archway on our right, a living room stretched into the dimness beyond the reach of the light, the space crowded with mysterious lumps of furniture draped in dusty sheets. I stepped that way and found another light switch. Shadows scurried back. Stacks of magazines and newspapers filled the floor. Dirty dishes covered a coffee table. A dry rattling came from behind the walls—cockroaches or termites.
Then, from directly above, another long, thin wail.
Clyde and I went fast, winding our way through the furniture and thigh-high stacks of magazines as we cleared the room before we made our way back to where Mac and Phillips waited just inside the door.
“Clyde and I will check the rest of the lower floor,” I said quietly. “You two head upstairs. Sounds like she’s in a room right over the living room.”
It took me only a few minutes to clear the downstairs. Kitchen, mudroom, a den. All filthy with dust and mouse droppings and old food. I heard the floors creak as Mac and Phillips walked through the rooms upstairs, shouting “clear” as they moved through each space.
Then Mac called out, “Found her! It’s Esta.”
I could tell by her voice that it was bad.