Mortal Danger

Anderson had a special talent for organizing scores of details and creating comprehensive affidavits. The investigators had many buildings, trailers, mobile homes, and vehicles to search, and they needed the warrants ASAP.
    At shortly after 2:00 p.m., the sun was already beginning to lower in the western sky, so while they waited for the warrant, Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien, also a forensic investigator, took photographs of the exterior of the house,while Detective Tom Catey made a video recording as he walked around the house and surrounding area, describing what he saw.
    Everyone arriving from the Sheriff’s Department was an expert in his or her particular field. The familiar routines they followed helped a little to defuse their revulsion as they first encountered the crime scene.
    But only a little.
    Ed Troyer, a close friend of Ben Benson’s who once worked with him when they were both road deputies and in the Narcotics Unit, has been the sheriff’s media liaison for several years. Troyer is the first line of media defense, managing to juggle the people’s right to know and the need for secrecy in many investigations. Now, he stationed himself between the investigators and the massive media response as word of a possible multiple murder was picked up from police radio calls.
    Neither he nor the investigators knew just how bad the situation was, but Troyer told reporters as much as he could.
    Jeff Freitas had said the house was completely dark at 5:00 a.m. when he passed it on his way hunting, but now both exterior lights were on. For some reason, Brian Mauck must have turned them on before it got light about eight. As Tom Catey walked around the outside of the house, he noted that all of the windows were securely locked: At the front door, he saw that someone inside could open the door when the push-button lock was set by turning the knob, but it could not be opened from the outside when the lock was set. If the dead bolt was shoved into its slot—as it was when the police arrived—the door could not be opened.
    It would have taken a very, very thin person to enter through the missing panel’s space, which was only twelve inches wide. No, it was more likely that Brian Mauck had heard something on the front porch, flipped on the outside lights, and admitted someone he either believed he could trust or someone pretending to be in distress.
    Whoever had come to the Maucks’ door should never, ever have been let in.
    The bamboo floor of the dining room, just beyond the front door, was stained scarlet in many spots. These areas had been covered with the blue fleece blanket and matching sheets. Now that Benson was inside, he could see that something heavy had been dragged from the bloodied floor in the dining area, across a section of rug there, and then into the great room, where the television still droned on.
    Benson moved into the great room, where he carefully removed the blankets covering the bodies. He found a white male, dressed in a gray T-shirt and jeans, wearing a black belt but no socks or shoes. He was in a prone position; the woman lay on her back, draped crosswise on top of him, over his shoulders. Rigor mortis was apparent; they had been dead for hours.
    There was so much blood spatter—probably medium velocity (cast-off blood)—that it stained the walls red in two distinct patterns eight feet above the floor. The south wall had so much blood on it that it was hard to tell what color it had originally been painted.
    Criminalists would determine that the killer or killers had swept a broom through the pools of blood on the floor, flinging it up on the wall. The broom had been droppedcarelessly in the kitchen, as if whoever tried to sweep up the blood had realized it was a hopeless task.
    Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien used standard black fingerprint powder to process the exterior of the sliding glass door that opened off the great room and brought up latent prints from the sliding portion and door frame. They might be matched to the couple who lived here, or they might be the one key the investigators needed.
    The blue blanket covering the female victim had hidden the fact that she was nude. She might have slept that way, or the killer’s motive could have been a sexual attack. One bullet hole was obvious just above her nose near the corner of her right eye, almost certainly a fatal wound. After she was photographed, she was turned over, and a second wound now was visible in the back of her upper