Mortal Danger

dried red liquid at the edges of the bedding was almost certainly blood. In the great room just beyond there were two brown recliners and a matching couch, all placed so that viewers could see thelarge-screen television set. He thought he could make out a human form lying on the floor of that room, but most of it was blocked from his view by one of the recliners.
    Deputy Laura Wilson walked rapidly around the perimeter of the house, checking for anything that seemed out of place and for other obvious points of entry. She came back shaking her head; she’d found nothing amiss outside the house.
    Jeff Freitas had a key to the Maucks’ residence, and he gave it to the Pierce County deputies.
    It was time to go inside. As Lund and Catey entered the home to assess the scene, they stepped over a woman’s black shoe that rested incongruously on the threshold. They saw more blood—this time blood spatter that had flown onto the walls from the floor of the dining room, leaving a large blank spot that was quite possibly the “phantom image” of a killer. The blood droplets appeared to be high velocity, as if they had come from a gunshot wound. In that case, the shooter and his clothing had probably trapped the blood spatter before it hit the wall.
    Catey and Lund were apprehensive about what they would find farther inside. They saw bare hands and feet, and realized there were probably two bodies in the great room, both covered with blankets. Closer now, they could see a man’s lower body clothed in jeans and with bare feet, and it looked as if a woman lay horizontally on top of his shoulders. Only her feet and one arm protruded from a blanket covering, but the two bodies formed the crude pattern of a cross.
    The two deputies decided not disturb the scene. Instead, they would wait for Detective Sergeant Ben Benson, whowould be in charge of this criminal investigation, before going further. He was on his way with forensic investigator Adam Anderson. Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp and Detectives Darren Moss and Jason Tate were on the property now. They spoke in hushed tones.
     
    This was a crime that would shock even longtime law enforcement veterans, with some of the most totally unexpected twists and turns, and it had occurred in such a quiet and bucolic area. It was going to take some intense detective work to discern why it had happened and who had hated the victims enough to kill them.
    During his more than two decades with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, Ben Benson has worked everything from patrol to undercover drug investigation, and now he was a detective sergeant in CID who had seen his share of homicides. But none like this.
    Benson, forty-seven, is tall and laconic, and never seems to get rattled. When he was just a high school student, he managed to get an interview with a local law enforcement chief who had been forced to retire in disgrace, a man who hadn’t agreed to talk to any newspaper or television reporters from Seattle or Tacoma. Seventeen-year-old Benson’s scoop, worthy of any metropolitan newspaper, was published in his high school paper. His interrogation skills had only improved in the three decades since. The average criminal was no match for him.
    When he was just a rookie, Ben Benson was as mature as detectives twenty years older than he was. He owns asmall plane, and he and his wife, Grace Kingman, a Pierce County deputy prosecutor, spend much of their time off flying over Puget Sound and the islands that dot it, taking photographs of the natural beauty that abounds in Washington State.
    Benson is also one of the Sheriff’s Department pilots. In July 2008, while he was flying over a suspected illegal narcotics operation with another pilot and two deputies, their Cessna 206’s engine suddenly stopped. They dropped from 2,200 feet to within 500 feet of the ground in forty-five seconds, and they sent out a Mayday! call.
    They looked down and saw they were over a large mall and a freeway, with no safe place to land. More dicey moments passed before Benson switched the fuel tanks back and forth, and the engine came back to life. In the air, in an emergency, he was totally calm—until afterward, when he thought about what might have happened.
    No, nothing seems to alarm him, but even he was appalled by this scene of horror on a quiet country road.
    As Benson arrived at the Maucks’ house with Adam Anderson, Detective Lynelle Anderson drew up an affidavit for a search warrant. Lynelle