OCTOBER 18

Sun streaks blinded Sheriff Leanne Burgos as she slowed her ride down. Cherry Lane Development was but another hastily constructed yet expensive series of grayed houses on roads so new they lacked lines. A mass of clones, tightly situated around an oval road with four branching lanes.

Bet every single one of these people are from Philly or New York, she thought, then felt a bit bad for judging folk from out of state.

She let the vehicle come to a natural stop seeing nothing was up ahead. "No bushes, trees. Whole lotta nada. Probably a cool three-K a month for this pressed wood grain."

Cherry Lane looked more a blight than a community, especially as she had come in from the west up the road, past scattered old houses and rows of woods experiencing their first kiss from romantic Autumn. Leanne recalled this had once been a perfectly respectable patch of woodland. "Nothing wrong with that. Unless you eat and breathe profit."

A police officer waved to her and she let out a soft sigh of relief.

"Too nice a day to be," she paused and took a whiff. "Getting a call about suspicious death."

The officer coughed. He appeared pale, shrunken. "Deaths."

"That bad, huh?" Leanne gave the lane another glare. Place had too much newness, too many fresh wood chips to have a homicide.

"Garbageman called it in," Officer Phillips said at the front door to Number 24, half open, steps below gift-wrapped in yellow caution tape.

Leanne walked up the steps from her clean police SUV, nose wrinkling. "Said the smell from the house alerted him, right? He's right about that." She had on the dark uniform of a Bridgeton, New Jersey, ironed to perfection, left hand on her bulky belt. Hair in a ponytail. She was glad to see Phillips on the scene. Everyone on the force liked her, before the promotion, anyway.

"No trash can out front," she added.

"None," Phillips said, looking stiff and curt and serious as ever. "Said they've been on top of it since they moved in five months ago. The Burkes, five of them. Mother, father, two boys and a girl." He trailed off for a time. "A dog."

"But he stuck around, could smell death from the back of his truck? That's a nose the force needs. You had breakfast?"

Phillips grunted. "Was at the Golden Pigeon when the call came. Halfway through some sausage gravy and biscuits."

"So I get Cranky Chris today, huh? Wonderful."

He forced out a chortle and held the screen door open for her, which she offered him a playful grin and thanks while going up.

The scent struck Leanne hard, resurrecting a memory of when her mother smacked the life out of her for lying. Age twelve, report card day. That was one for the books, and best left buried. Decay brought up all the dead things.

"My God."

"Yeah," Phillips said. "Worse upstairs."

She took a minute to lean on the nearest piece of furniture she could find, eyes slit, nostrils flared. Knuckles white.

"I turned off the heater when I got in," said Phillips, walking ahead. "Opened a few windows to usher out all the flies."

"It's not cold out," Leanne noted. "Warm all this week. Do old people_-?" glancing ahead, she caught sight of the reddened tiles on the kitchen floor. "Is that?"

"Blood? Yeah. Whole floor, like, even distribution." He had stopped just before entering the kitchen, then turned his body left. "Like it was, I don't know, painted on? I'd love to say this is it, but, it gets worse."

She steeled herself. "How much worse? Wait. You hear that?"

"What?'

"A slight, I dunno, sound."

Phillips gulped. "Oh. The flies and maggots."

Leanne felt her pulse slow. "How many are we talking?"

His eyes strode down to the corpse. "She's, um, filled. All down the spine and in deep."

"Are you kidding me, Chris? She's been here this long that–" then she noticed some of the reddened floor formed miniscule roadways. Lines, still being developed, as slight figures wriggled across the tiles having lost their host.

Phillips stopped dead, gave the inquiry serious thought. "Leanne, I don't have the words for this." He moved down the hallway.

"Did you call forensics? Southern RMEO? Did Bobby come in and photograph?" were a litany of questions Leanna fired off as she pulled herself together. Local shooting, bar fights, drugs and prostitution were all standard fare in the city and its outskirts. Bridgeton held a lot of history, beauty. Danger. Bullets through the body were rough but quick to get accustomed to. This...

She moved to the edge of the kitchen, respecting its boundary line with the immaculate, richly furnished living room. A woman lay on the floor, dead center, face down. Her clothing cut down the middle and splayed open, along with the skin, muscle tissue. Her head had been scalped raw, jagged, as if from rage, unlike this surgical precision of the flesh down the back.

Bones white. As if the woman had been drained of blood first, her floor waxed via her own vitae, then cut open.

"No footprints."

"None," Phillips said from down the hall.

"How the hell?" Leanne covered her mouth, whispered a prayer, then remembered her officer had walked off and went to find him.

She passed one room, door ajar, empty, nothing of note. A child's room. The next also open, a room just for the dog, a hulking mastiff. It rested on the floor, legs under the body. Neck exposed, a deep red stump over a pool of gelatinous blood. No prints.

Leanne uttered an expletive. "Where's the head? Someone cut off a head and managed not to get blood on their shoes!"

"Sheriff," Phillips said, and the tone brought Leanne back to her profession. "It's in here."

She noted him standing outside the bathroom due to the slight sight of tiny white tiles on the floor by the doorframe. It was clean. "No bloodstains in the hall," she squinted at the officer. "But he manages to carry a head all the way..."

Leanne halted at the door, looked in, turned around and closed her eyes as she fell back to the wall.

"You gonna be okay?"

"That's a–!" Leanne curled fingers into fists. They slid down to rest on bent knees. She felt the world slipping. "That's a little boy in there."

"Age nine, yeah. Dog's head is in the bathtub." He paused long and hard. "Along with–"

"Don't."

"Leanne."

"Bad enough I'll have to look at all the damn photos later! Talk to Vince down at the medical examiner's office, whenever they show. And where the hell are they? All the gritty details will be drilled into my head soon enough, Chris.

She jumped when her phone buzzed in its pocket. "Holy! Okay, okay, you did call. Everyone's on the way. What's the holdup?"

"I had to detour on the way in. Pearl Street's blocked off. Some kinda construction. I imagine they'll have to do the same since they're coming up Landis."

Leanne sucked teeth. "I drove in from Hopewell, making sure Mom was doing fine." She sniffed. "God this is a real show, ain't it?"

"We're first on the scene, so we better see it all before County and State roll up wanting every 'I' and 'T' dotted, crossed, and interrogated."

Leanne nodded, thought. Gave Phillips a stern glare. "All?"

His index finger motioned. "Upstairs." He said it in a whisper.

She knew it. Deep down, every sense, especially smell, alluded to it, showed the invisible trail that went further into the unknown. Determined, nay, desperate, Leanne trudged on ahead of him. She stormed up the steps while he informed her to head for the master bedroom, the one with the door shut.

Leanne passed more open doors, another bathroom, all buzzing with flies. At first, she stopped. Paused and angled her head skyward.

"Flypaper," she mumbled. "Haven't seen anybody use it since I was a kid."

It hung all the way down the narrow length of the ceiling, curls and curls and reams of the sticky papers, all of them swollen in black, pulsing, kicking, buzzing dots. How long had these bodies been here? A week? Month?

She swatted a few flies away on the move, making her way to the closed door. Put a hand on her abdomen to push back sudden urges. Looking down, she noted the expensive violet carpeting under the door and just into the hall was wet. Dark.

There are three more bodies.

Leanne stood just beyond its sucking reach, stretched out a hand, and shoved the door open.

Phillips came up the stairs, limping, an old football injury never rightly healed when Leanne stormed down, pushing past him, sobbing, terrified.

He stopped there on the twelfth step.

"Don't blame you. But people are gonna talk. Hot damn whole world's gonna talk."