Bad Luck and Trouble

still and silent, except for a tiny subliminal hum that raised the hairs on Reacher’s arms and sounded a faint alarm in the back of his mind.
    “Kitchen door?” O’Donnell asked.
    Reacher nodded. O’Donnell put his hand in his pocket and came out with his brass knuckles. Ceramic knuckles, technically. But they didn’t have much in common with cups and saucers. They were made from some kind of a complex mineral powder, molded under tremendous pressure and bound with epoxy adhesives. They were probably stronger than steel and certainly they were harder than brass. And the molding process allowed wicked shapes in the striking surfaces. Being hit by a set wielded by a guy as big as David O’Donnell would be like being hit by a bowling ball studded with sharks’ teeth.
    O’Donnell fitted them to his hand and balled his fist. He stepped to the kitchen door and tapped the glass backhand, quite gently, like he was trying to attract an occupant’s attention without startling him. The glass broke and a triangular shard fell backward into the kitchen. O’Donnell’s coordination was so good that his real knuckles stopped before they reached the jagged edges. He tapped twice more and cleared a hole big enough to get a hand through. Then he slipped the knuckles off and pushed his sleeve up on his forearm and threaded his hand through and turned the inside handle.
    The door sagged open.
    No alarm.
    Reacher went in first. Took two steps and stopped. Inside, the hum he had sensed was louder. And there was a smell in the air. Both were unmistakable. He had heard similar sounds and smelled similar smells more times than he wanted to remember.
    The hum was a million flies going crazy.
    The smell was dead flesh, rotting and decomposing, leaking putrid fluids and gases.
    Neagley and O’Donnell crowded in behind him. And stopped.
    “We knew anyway,” O’Donnell said, maybe to himself. “This is not a shock.”
    “It’s always a shock,” Neagley said. “I hope it always will be.”
    She covered her mouth and nose. Reacher stepped to the kitchen door. There was nothing on the hallway floor. But the smell was worse out there, and the noise was louder. There were stray flies in the air, big and blue and shiny, buzzing and darting and hitting the walls with tiny papery sounds. They were in and out of a door that was standing partially open.
    “The bathroom,” Reacher said.
    The house was laid out like Calvin Franz’s, but it was bigger because the lots were larger in Santa Ana than they had been in Santa Monica. Cheaper real estate, more scope. There was a center hallway and each room was a real room, not just a corner of an open plan space. Kitchen in back, living room in front, separated by a walk-in closet. On the other side of the hallway, two bedrooms separated by a bathroom.
    Impossible to say where the smell was coming from. It filled the house.
    But the flies were interested in the bathroom.
    The air was hot and foul. No sound, except the insane thrashing of the flies. On porcelain, on tile, on papered walls, on the hollow wood of the door.
    “Stay here,” Reacher said.
    He walked down the hallway. Two paces. Three. He stopped outside the bathroom. Nudged the door with his foot. An angry black cloud of flies billowed out at him. He turned away and batted the air. Turned back. Used his foot again and pushed the door all the way open. Fanned the air and peered through the buzzing insects.
    There was a body on the floor.
    It was a dog.
    Once it had been a German shepherd, big, beautiful, maybe a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and ten. It was lying on its side. Its hair was dead and matted. Its mouth was open. Flies were feasting on its tongue and its nose and its eyes.
    Reacher stepped right into the bathroom. Flies swarmed around his shins. There was nothing in the tub. The toilet was empty. All the water was gone from the throat. There were towels undisturbed on the rails. Dried brown stains on the floor. Not blood. Just leakage from failed sphincters.
    Reacher backed out of the bathroom.
    “It’s his dog,” he said. “Check the other rooms and the garage.”
    There was nothing in the other rooms or the garage. No signs of struggle or disturbance, no sign of Swan himself. They regrouped in the hallway. The flies had settled back to their business in the bathroom.
    “What happened here?” Neagley asked.
    “Swan went out,” O’Donnell said. “Didn’t come back. The dog starved to death.”
    “It died