Ridge, were finished tracts where people already lived. From those residents,
the Yorba Linda Police had received calls about screaming somewhere in this
embryonic development. Because the area had not yet been annexed into the city,
the complaint fell into the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department.
At the end of the street, the deputies saw a white pickup that belonged to
the company that owned Bordeaux: Tulemann Brothers. It was parked in front of
three almost-completed display models.
“Looks like there’s a foreman still here,” Ken said.
“Or maybe it’s the night watchman on duty a little early,” Tee! said.
They parked behind the truck, got out of the stiflingly hot patrol car, and
stood for a moment, listening. Silence.
Ken shouted, “Hello! Anybody here?”
His voice echoed back and forth through the deserted tract.
Ken said, “You want to look around?”
“Shit, no,” Teel said. “But let’s do it.”
Ken still did not believe anything was wrong at Bordeaux Ridge. The pickup could
have been left behind at the end of the day. After all, other equipment remained
on the tract overnight: a couple of Bob-cats on a long-bed truck, a backhoe. And
it was still likely that the reported screaming had been kids playing.
They grabbed flashlights from the car because, even if electric service to the
tract had been connected, there were no lamps or ceiling lights in the
unfinished structures.
Resettling their gunbelts on their hips more out of habit than out of any belief
that they would need weapons, Ken and Teel walked through the nearest of the
partially framed houses. They were not looking for anything in particular, just
going through the motions, which was half of all police work.
A mild and inconstant breeze sprang up, the first of the day, and blew sawdust
ghosts through the open sides of the house. The sun was falling rapidly
westward, and the wall studs cast prison-bar shadows across the floor. The last
light of the day, which was changing from gold to muddy red, imparted a soft
glow to the air like that around the open door of a furnace. The concrete pad
was littered with nails that winked in the fiery light and clinked underfoot.
“For a hundred and eighty thousand bucks,” Tee! said, probing into black corners
with the beam of his flashlight, “I’d expect rooms a little bigger than these.”
Taking a deep breath of sawdust-scented air, Ken said, “Hell, I’d expect rooms
as big as airport lounges.”
They stepped out of the back of the house, into a shallow rear yard, where they
switched off their flashes. The bare, dry earth was not landscaped. It was
littered with the detritus of construction’: scraps of lumber, chunks of broken
concrete, rumpled pieces of tarpaper, tangled loops of wire, more nails, useless
lengths of PVC pipe, cedar shingles discarded by roofers, Styrofoam soft-drink
cups and Big Mac containers, empty Coke cans, and less identifiable debris.
No fences had yet been constructed, so they had a view of all twelve backyards
along this street. Purple shadows seeped across the sandy soil, but they could
see that all the yards were deserted.
“No signs of mayhem,” Tee! said.
“No damsels in distress,” Ken said.
“Well, let’s at least walk along here, look between buildings,” Teel said. “We
ought to give the public something for their money.”
Two houses later, in the thirty-foot-wide pass-through between structures, they
found the dead man.
“Damn,” Teel said.
The guy was lying on his back, mostly in shadow, with only the lower half of his
body revealed in the dirty-red light, and at first Ken and Teel didn’t realize
what a horror they’d stumbled across. But when he knelt beside the corpse, Ken
was shocked to see that the man’s gut had been torn open.
“Jesus Christ, his eyes,” Teel said.
Ken looked up from the ravaged torso and saw empty sockets where the victim’s
eyes should have been.
Retreating into the littered yard, Tee! drew his revolver.
Ken also backed away from the mutilated corpse and slipped his own gun out of
his holster. Though he had been perspiring all day, he felt suddenly damper,
slick with a different kind of sweat, the cool, sour sweat of fear.