Excerpt of Lights Out by L.T. Fawkes

A DOUBLE-WIDE MURDER

He was stretched out across the kitchen floor, facedown, the pool of blood running away from me toward the back hallway. Big guy. Muscular. Wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, gray socks and black high tops. I tiptoed over to him, watching where I stepped, and squatted beside him. I pushed his tangled dark hair off his neck and put my fingers on his throat, feeling for a pulse. There wasn’t one. He was dead.

I hurried back out through the door. John had the woman handcuffed behind her back. She was sitting in the shadowy driveway crying, her body swaying, her head bowed. Her tangled blonde hair hung down between her knees.

When he finished reading her rights, I said, “There’s a dead guy in there.”

He raised his radio to his mouth and began to tell the dispatcher he needed the coroner, as the woman sitting on the driveway raised her dazed blue eyes to look at me, let go with a sob, and said, “Terry?”

Danny came running up behind me and skidded to a halt, staring at her. “Holy shit!” he said. “Marylou?”