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    Sure that my imagination was playing a trick, I slowly inched forward, suddenly stopping dead in my tracks as the sheet of white began to break apart. It was then that I realized the crudely made shroud was nothing but maggots. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny twitching and twisting white worms. They wriggled between Annie’s bare bones as the last witnesses to death, forming a living blanket of squirming, well-fed bodies.
    My pulse galloped through my veins and my vision began to blur as my scream roared through the room. Reverberating against the walls, it shook the house, before clutching at my clothes, my hands, and my hair. Death furiously tracked its way through the ranch, permeating every nook, every cranny, the very air. I tore down the hall and out the front door, where I leaned against the gallows, throwing up my breakfast along with the sandwich and pie. I was still shaking as I staggered to the Blazer and rinsed out my mouth with a swig of warm Coke. Frantically digging through my glove compartment, I located my cell phone. Grabbing hold of it as if it would save me, I punched in the number for Metro Police. But when they answered, I discovered that Annie wasn’t the only one no longer able to speak. Disconnecting the call, I sank to the ground and cried.

Three
     
    It took three attempts before I was able to call Metro Police and speak coherently. Two hours later, a squad car pulled up to the ranch. By that time I was thoroughly sunburned, unable to bring myself to venture back inside Annie’s.
    “Hey, there. You got something ripe for us?”
    Ted Brady struggled out of the squad car. Though only twenty-eight years old, he already had the receding hairline of a middle-aged man, coupled with a paunch that pushed against the shiny brass buttons of his uniform. A light blond mustache stained his baby-fat face like a smudge that hadn’t been wiped away.
    I’d never met the man who swung out of the passenger side of the car. Tall, with a mop of white hair and a walrus mustache to match, he raised his arm above his eyes, squinting at me, before striding over to where I sat on the ground.
    “Henry Lanahan. Forensics. Thought I’d join Ted for the ride,” he said in way of introduction.
    Lanahan shook my hand, then I felt myself being pulled to my feet. “Why don’t we go in and see what we’ve got?” he added. His fingers rested lightly on the inside of my wrist, and I felt faintly suspicious that he was taking my pulse.
    Brady stood with his thumbs tucked into his gun belt. “You up for that, Porter? You look like you could use a rest in my squad car. It’s air-conditioned, you know.”
    The last thing I wanted to do was go back into Annie’s house, and I would have killed for a shot of air-conditioning. But the smirk on Brady’s face brought me to my senses.
    “I’m fine, Brady. I had plenty of time for my daily siesta, waiting for you to get here,” I smartly retorted. Willing my feet to move, I led the way inside.
    By the time we’d reached the bathroom, Brady had a handkerchief pressed to his mouth. Lanahan was encased in a thick cloud of smoke, puffing on a cigar that smelled almost as foul as the room itself.
    Brady took one look at the scene and the blood drained from his face. “Jesus Christ. What the hell?”
    Turning on his heels, he ran back out the front door, and the sound of retching wafted toward us on dense waves of heat. It was almost enough to make me feel better.
    “Well, this is something I’ve never seen before.” Lanahan walked over to the tub and bent down close. “Extraordinary! Just look at this!”
    I sneaked a peek as Henry studied the scene.
    “You see, to a fly, the human corpse is the same as an animal. Free food and plenty of it.” He prodded a cluster of the parasites with the tip of his nail. “They lay their eggs on the skin, and when the little buggers hatch, the maggots scoop in the grub with this tiny clawlike apparatus that’s attached to their