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Sheriff’s Deputies Teel Porter and Ken Diun-with a broken ventilation syste out of the vents The ere open, but the sedan was an oven

"You stink like a dead hog," Teel Porter told his partner

"Yeah?" Ken Di, you look like a dead hog"

"Yeah? Well, you date dead hogs"

Ken smiled in spite of the heat "That so? Well, I hear fro"

Their tired humor could not mask the fact that they eary and unco a call that didn’t proames; kids loved to play on construction sites Both deputies were thirty-two, husky forh school football players They weren’t brothers-but, as partners for six years, they were brothers

Teel turned off the county road onto a lightly oiled dirt lane that led into the Bordeaux Ridge developes of construction Most were still being framed, but a few had already been stuccoed

"Now there," Ken said, "is the kind of shit I just can’t believe people fall for I mean, hell, what kind of na tract in Southern California? Are they trying toto be vineyards here one day? And they call it ’Ridge,’ but the whole tract’s in this stretch of flatland between the hills Their sign promises serenity Maybe now But what about when they pitch up another three thousand houses out here in the next five years?"

Teel said, "Yeah, but the part gets me is ’miniestates’ What the fck is a ht mind would think these are estates-excepttwelve to an apartutters had been poured along the streets of Bordeaux Ridge, but the pave not to raise a lot of dust, raising it anyway He and Ken looked left and right at the skeletal for for kids ere up to no good

To the west, at the edge of the city of Yorba Linda and adjacent to Bordeaux Ridge, were finished tracts where people already lived From those residents, the Yorba Linda Police had received calls about screa 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 sahite 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 foreht watchman on duty a little early," Tee! said

They parked behind the truck, got out of the stiflingly hot patrol car, and stood for aSilence

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 rong at Bordeaux Ridge The pickup could have been left behind at the end of the day After all, other equipht: a couple of Bob-cats on a long-bed truck, a backhoe And it was still likely that the reported screahts from the car because, even if electric service to the tract had been connected, there were no lahts in the unfinished structures

Resettling their gunbelts on their hps more out of habit than out of any belief that they would need weapons, Ken and Teel walked through the nearest of the partially fra in particular, just going through the motions, which was half of all police work

Aup, the first of the day, and bledust ghosts through the open sides of the house The sun was falling rapidly ard, and the wall studs cast prison-bar shadows across the floor The last light of the day, which was changing frolow 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 beaer than these"

Taking a deep breath of sawdust-scented air, Ken said, "Hell, I’d expect rooes"

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, ruled loops of wire, les discarded by roofers, Styrofoa 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 so for their money"

Two houses later, in the thirty-foot-wide pass-through between structures, they found the deadon his back, mostly in shadoith 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 ut had been torn open

"Jesus Christ, his eyes," Teel said

Ken looked up froed torso and saw empty sockets where the victi into the littered yard, Tee! drew his revolver

Ken also backed away froun 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

PCP, Ken thought Only soh to do so er by the second

"So his fears about PCP into words