I turned on the light. A large roach scurried out of the garbage bag and headed for the darkness.

There was blood, damp, fresh. Ames looked down at the body, around the room and shook his head. The shake was hardly more than a tick but I knew Ames McKinney. He hated filth, human and otherwise.

“Let’s go,” I said, turning off the light.

There was a telephone in the living room but I couldn’t bring myself to stay here any longer and I didn’t want to report finding my third corpse in four days. I didn’t search the place. I didn’t go into the bedrooms. I knew what I would see. I just wanted to get out. Maybe I would call the police from my office when I was dry and I wasn’t shaking. Maybe I would call and tell them a story. It wouldn’t be the truth, so I needed time to make it up.

The rain was heavier.

I had to move slowly going back to the car where the rising water was now up to mid-hubcap. I wondered if any neighbors had seen us go into the house. I wondered if any neighbors had seen someone go in an hour or two before us. I wondered if anyone in this neighborhood would tell even if they had seen the murder on their front lawn.

Ames and I got in the car and I drove slowly through heavy rain that would move the waste but not wash it away.

My name is Lew Fonesca.

The crumbs of Gretel that had led me to that house had begun to drop four days earlier when…

1

“Hot in here.” She looked around my tiny office, trying not to show uncertainty and disapproval.

“Air conditioner doesn’t work,” I said.

“Then why do you leave it on?”

“Fan makes the air move a little. Your daughter is missing?”

She nodded.

So far all I had from her was that her daughter, Adele, was missing and that the woman’s name was Beryl.