“That’s okay, Todd, I can call Hull myself,” Thorpe said, retrieving his cell phone from his belt.

Thorpe stood with his back to the media for several minutes before Hull came walking down the drive to deliver a handshake. Hull had been with the department for thirty-plus years but still projected a youthful appearance. A couple inches shorter than Thorpe with graying black hair, he wore a tan suit jacket and pants with a white dress shirt and no tie. He looked unshaven, but Hull was one of those guys who grew a five o’clock shadow well before lunchtime. He was a superlative detective and dedicated to his job—so much so it’d cost him several marriages and any semblance of a normal life.

“John, this is a good one; gets my juices going.”

“Bob, the last thing I want to hear about are your juices.”

Both men laughed as Hull led Thorpe down Newton. “It all started this morning…” Hull said, talking with his hands and making a large circular motion in the air. “When Marcel’s baby’s momma, Lady Morgan—and, yes, Lady is her actual first name—called Marcel’s grandmother today and asked if she’d seen her grandson. Grandma tells Lady that Marcel must have caught a ride in the morning because his car was still parked outside of her house, and she hadn’t seen Marcel since the night before. Lady tells grandma she and Marcel had plans together and he never showed up. Grandma doesn’t get around too good, but now she’s concerned. She walks out to Marcel’s car and sees a blood smear on the driver’s side window. Then she finds what she thinks might be more blood on the street, goes back inside and calls 911.”

The two men had reached the corner of Newton and Waco Avenue. Hull pointed to the north. “That’s Marcel’s car with the police tape around it. The blood was found just east of the car on the street. When the first two uniforms show up, they also notice the blood and one starts looking to the east to see if Marcel had been dumped into the ditch or crawled there. They notice the barbed wire cut at that location and began following a beaten-down path through the woods to a barn. They open the barn door and about crap themselves when they find a naked, bloody black male bound to a pole inside. They cleared the barn of suspects and, because Marcel was obviously deader ‘n shit, didn’t approach his body. They backed out and called it in. Good job protecting the scene on their part.” Hull pointed back in the direction they’d just come. “Let’s walk back to the gravel drive, and we’ll go in that way.”

Arriving at the drive, Hull nodded at the cut barbed wire next to the gate. “We think the killers may have entered here, left from here, or both.”

“Killers, as in plural?” Thorpe asked.

“Yeah, there are multiple footprints left in the dirt floor of the barn that all seem to come and go from where Marcel was tied up. The prints are different shoe patterns and sizes. We think we’re looking at multiple suspects—at least three. We’ve got a partial print near this cut barbed wire that matches one of the prints left on the barn’s floor.” Hull glanced at Thorpe with a question. “Any ideas why they cut the barbed wire instead of just climbing the gate or cutting off the lock?”

“You sure the killers cut the wire?”

“Pretty. It’s definitely fresh.”

Thorpe feigned contemplation before responding. “Maybe they’d planned to drag Marcel out through the opening and figured they wouldn’t be able to lift his heavy ass over the gate. I don’t know.”

Hull responded with a simple nod, and the two men continued north on the gravel driveway. As they approached the barn, Thorpe saw several homicide detectives and crime-scene investigators busying themselves with measurements and photographs.

Hull stepped to the threshold of the open barn door and pointed inside. “Marcel’s still bound to the pole. No big hurry to move him—he ain’t goin’ nowhere. We’ve marked off a path that’s been processed already. We can access the body this way.” Thorpe followed on his heels, and they both paused to allow their eyes to adjust to the gloom. “We’re in the process of getting some better lights set up in here,” Hull offered.

Except for crusty, congealed blood and the ghastly swelling of flesh puckered between bands of tape, the body appeared the way Thorpe had left it. Hull walked over and stood beside the corpse.

“From what we can gather so far, the killers took Marcel down at his car, dragged him through the woods and bound him here. Marcel has a wound in his right shoulder that appears to be through-and-through. One of his nipples has been torn off and tossed over there.” Hull pointed to a patch of what now looked like shriveled leather lying in the dirt. “Don’t know the cause of death yet. His mouth, nose, throat—all his airways—were taped up. If that happened when he was still alive, it surely would have done the trick.” Hull pointed down and behind Marcel’s body. “There’s the initials I told you about. So what do you think?”

Thorpe knelt and studied the scene. “Looks like he was still alive when they pulled the nipple off. Lot of blood. He’s pretty jacked up. I’d say his killers were trying to get information from him or were just really, really, pissed off. My first impulse is to believe they were probably after something though—trying to find out where dope or money was hidden. Any signs of his car or his grandma’s house being ransacked?”

Hull shook his head. “No. Why do you think they were looking for something instead of just out to kill him?”

Thorpe stood. “Because these guys don’t do this shit. Your Mexican and El Salvadorians do this, sometimes motorcycle gangs, but generally not black gangs. They just jump in a car with their buddies and go shoot the shit out of a house, usually without checking if the target’s even inside first. The dude’s little sister is the one who ends up catching a bullet.”

Thorpe looked at a nodding Hull. The homicide detective knew all of this already but liked to hear what other people were thinking to see if it matched his own thoughts. Hull always gave the appearance of studying you while you spoke, which he probably was. An excellent interrogator, he could smell bullshit like a fly in summertime. Because the behavior represented Hull’s usual demeanor, Thorpe wasn’t alarmed. He could only remember one instance when Hull didn’t behave that way—the night Erica and Ella were killed. Hull had made it clear he didn’t believe Thorpe was a suspect in the killings.

History suggests when a wife and child are murdered, the husband is, more often than not, the culprit. Though Thorpe believed Hull didn’t seriously consider him a suspect, it would have been negligent not to cast part of the investigation his way. Hull’s detectives would have looked into Thorpe’s life to some degree, even if only to focus on those who may have held a grudge against the supervisor of the OGU.

There would have been hundreds of arrest reports to sift through. What were the circumstances? Were they sentenced to prison? If so, were they still in incarcerated? If not, were they living in the Tulsa area? That line of investigation alone would have been extremely time-consuming. Of course, Thorpe’s life away from the department would also have been scrutinized. How much of his past and current life Hull had uncovered, Thorpe wasn’t sure. This he did know: Hull was a good cop, but more importantly was a good man. If Hull unearthed something not pertinent to the case, it would only be filed away in his brain. And no one possessed a key to that labyrinth.

“What do you make of the ‘L.A.’ scribed in the dirt?” Hull inquired.

Again Thorpe paused as if gathering his thoughts. In reality, he anticipated this line of questioning and had prepared his responses. The trick was to appear spontaneous.

“We’ve gotten several tips Dwayne Foster and the late Marcel here have been shooting at one another for some time now. They’ve never hit each other. But a couple of their homeboys have taken superficial wounds. Foster’s street name is L.A. The most logical conclusion would be L.A. and friends were kicking Marcel’s ass when he realized he might not make it out of this barn alive. Marcel then wrote the initials in the dirt so the police or his crew would know who to look for.” Thorpe paused before speaking again. “Or someone other than Foster killed Marcel and set Foster up as the fall guy.”