“Where the devil is he going?” cursed Tom Mallory as he shifted into low gear.  The bumps and potholes in the dirt road allowed his car nothing more than an arrested crawl.  The dark night made it even more difficult to drive in unfamiliar country.  At least his quarry was no better off.  If he thinks I’ll get tired of chasing him, he thought, He’s not half as smart as he thinks he is.

But McKenzie was smart -- that was the whole problem.  He was still loose after having murdered at least seven people -- two of whom had been cops.  And of those two, the last one had been Mallory’s half-brother, Ted.  He and Ted were ten years apart, but Ted had been a nice kid.  Too nice to have to endure what that bastard had put him through.  Too nice to be dead at twenty-three.

Ted had looked up to Tom ever since Tom’s widowed dad had married the kid’s deserted mother.  The kid had had a hard time early in life.  Things had turned around for him.  He became a cop because Tom had been one, and was working his way up to detective just like Tom had.  Only the kid didn’t make it.

It was just dumb luck that he'd walked in on what was called in as a domestic violence. He’d heard the call over the radio, knew Ted would be there.  Tom had some spare time.  Stopped by to lend a hand.  He wasn’t prepared.  Tom knew he would never forget coming on to that scene.  Nobody’d told him – they hadn’t yet realized …  He walked into the back bedroom.  There were three bodies in there, each of them in more pieces than Tom would have thought possible.  One of them was Ted’s.

He shivered so violently the steering wheel twisted and the car bounced off a rock on the side of the road.  

“Jesus, Mallory, watch it!”

He regained control of the car.  It wasn’t even really his car -- McKenzie had shot the tires out of his Dodge on a desolated back road about an hour out of the city.  Mallory had radioed his position, then hiked nearly three miles back to the last gas station and commandeered the Toyota from a couple of high school kids hanging around the soda machine.  They’d stared at him and his badge with awe, like they were watching some TV cop movie.

Thanks to reported sightings of the old Chevy McKenzie had stolen, Mallory had finally picked up the man’s trail again.  More than two hours and almost a hundred miles later, he caught up to him in hilly, unfamiliar farm country.  The dirt road McKenzie had chosen to try to lose him on twisted through the darkness like a slithering serpent.  As Mallory tried to speed up the taillights of McKenzie’s vehicle vanished.  Mallory drove as fast as he dared, trying to catch up again.  The road smoothed out and he picked up speed.  His headlights showed him no curve in the road, no hill of any sort.  McKenzie hadn’t been that far ahead.

He shoved the brake pedal to the floor and searched the blackness.  The lights had disappeared right about here.  Had McKenzie shut them off?  Had he turned off somewhere?  Mallory saw nothing, heard nothing through the open window but the breeze rattling crispy leaves.

“Damn!”

He shifted back into gear, rolling slowly, the tires making more noise on the fallen leaves than the rumbling of the engine.  

Wait!  he thought.  What if that's what McKenzie wants you to do?  What if his car’s hidden in the trees, and what if he’s waiting right now for you to roll right by him so he can grab you and kill you like every other cop who got too close?  Like Ted?  His foot pressed the accelerator all by itself.  The car fishtailed, spewing dirt and leaves out behind him.  Ted’s decapitated head swam before his eyes.  Mallory’s hands covered his eyes.  He fell against the steering wheel.  It was then that he realized he’d stopped the car.

“Get a grip on yourself, Mallory.”

He wasn’t going to do Ted or any of the others any good if he lost his head.  With a bitter snort, he knew that that would be exactly what would happen to him if he didn’t pull himself together.  
He reached for the stick, pressing his palm against the smooth round knob.  As he was about to put her into first he noticed a driveway on his left.  There was no moon, but the starlight let him see the outline of a building, like a black void, at the crest of a low rise.  

Had McKenzie pulled in here?  Or was Mallory sitting here like an idiot staring at a sleepy farmhouse while that monster was getting further and further away?  He nearly drove on, but his gut said here.  It was all that made sense.  He backed the car up enough to turn in, and drove up the driveway.  

Near the house there were two vehicles parked beneath an immense maple.  Mallory shut off the engine, listened, and looked.  He got out and gently closed the door.  Then he wondered why; in this lonely country, if McKenzie were here, he would have already heard the car pull up.  Mallory walked toward the two cars.  The one furthest from the tree was a dark color.  McKenzie was driving a brown four-door Chevy.  He drew his Smith & Wesson short Magnum from beneath his jacket and checked both cars.  Empty.  The Chevy had no plates -- part of McKenzie’s M.O.  Mallory laid his hand on the hood.  It was warm.  McKenzie was here.

The place looked quiet.  Maybe no one was home.  It was a Friday night, somewhere around 3 am, but that didn’t mean much.  He hoped to God there was no one in that house but McKenzie.
 
He made a quick call on his cell phone to report his approximate position.  He knew he couldn’t count on back up any time soon.  Crossing the lawn, he went up the porch steps to the front door.  The screen door inevitably squeaked.  He tried the knob on the storm door.  It wasn’t locked.  He balanced the screen on the fingertips of his left hand and, with his .357 in the right, pushed the wooden door open quietly.  He checked the hall, all was clear.  Sliding in around the frame he let the screen door squeak closed behind him.

He fished his flashlight out of his jacket pocket and used the push button on the end to send brief shots of light where he needed it.  There was a bedroom on his immediate left, a wide entrance to the living room a little further down on the right.  The floors were hardwood.  The hallway had a carpet runner down the middle.  He stepped to the doorway of the bedroom and let his gun precede him in.  The room was empty.  The bed covers were mussed.  He prayed these people were slobs rather than victims.  The floor creaked under his foot as he leaned over to feel the center of the bed.  It wasn’t very warm.  Could be there hadn’t been anyone sleeping in it.

He left the room and proceeded down the hall.  Next on his left was a bathroom, also empty.  At the end of the hall there appeared to be another bedroom.  It was even darker at that end of the house.  His toe kicked something small.  It made little noise but he froze anyway, listening for McKenzie to rush him.  Nothing.  He felt for a light switch, found it, and flicked it.  No light.  That's what he figured.  He drew a breath and stepped in.

As his eyes adjusted, he focused on some sort of mobile hanging from the ceiling over the small bed.  The covers of this one were mussed as well.  Shapes, shadows, were stuffed toys.  This was a child’s room.  
His body jerked when he heard, felt, the dull thud from the living room.  First satisfying himself that no one was concealed in the bedroom, he left it.  He edged his way back down the short hall, acutely conscious of his rapidly beating heart.  He hoped McKenzie stuck true to his M.O.  He’d never harmed a child.  But there’d never been one present in any case Mallory knew of.   When he reached the entrance into the living room he crouched low, pulling deep, even breaths into his lungs.  With an effort of will he steadied himself, relaxed, lowered his heart rate.  He listened, silence piercing his ears.

He saw that the couch split the living room in half, its back to the kitchen doorway, while it faced the front windows.  A couple more chairs, tables, lamps, the usual furniture.  The couch was closer than the open doorway.  He gathered himself to move quietly but quickly.  Three bent strides gained him the arm of the couch and a forth one got him safely behind it.  He squatted and peered toward the kitchen.

It was all so quiet -- perhaps McKenzie had escaped out the back.  At once, a crash spun him round and he brought his gun to bear on -- a little girl.

She screamed.  Three bullets tore into the chair and the couch as Mallory grabbed her arm and hauled her behind him.  He pinned her down as he crooked his arm around the couch and sent a few rounds back at McKenzie.  The child shrieked, wailed, and kicked.  Mallory smothered her mouth with his hand.

“Shh!  I’m a police officer.  I'm here to help you.”

She must have understood him for she was suddenly still.  She sniffled and choked, but she was trying to stop crying.  Mallory was trying to hear whatever McKenzie might be doing.  Anything was difficult to pinpoint over the child.

“That’s a good girl,” he whispered to her as he reloaded his revolver.  “My name’s Tom.  What’s yours?”

“S-Samantha.”

“Where’s your mommy and daddy, Samantha?”

“Daddy’s away.  He’s got Mommy.”

He?  “Who?  Your daddy?”

“No.  The - the man...”

Oh, dear God.  “Do you know where she is?”

“Down in the basement.  He tied her up.  I saw.  I’m hiding.”
“Good girl.”  With his free left hand, he brushed aside pieces of the ornament she’d broken.

“I've got the kid’s mother!”  McKenzie yelled suddenly.  “I ain’t started on her yet, but I will.  D’ya wanna watch?   I heard you saw the last two!  Is it true one of ‘em was your brother?  Didja like how I left ‘em?  Didja like it, cop?  D’ya wanna look just like ‘em?  I do beautiful work, don’tcha think?”  

McKenzie stopped talking as his cackling chuckle rose in his throat.  Then he went on: “I couldn't never decide if I wanted to be a doctor or an artist -- don'tcha think this is a good compromise?”  He roared, this time a big booming laugh.  “Why don't you answer me -- Mallory, ain't it?  Why don't you answer me, Mallory?”

“I'm too busy picturing you carved up!”

McKenzie howled.

Before he'd even finished saying it, Mallory half-regretted it.  It was what he wanted right now, but he was letting his feelings froth too thickly, too high.  “I don't suppose you'd give yourself up quietly?”

“Not on your life!”

“I'll make you a deal.  You take off right now -- leave the lady and the kid with me.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause that's what you want me to do.”  McKenzie paused.  Mallory heard him scratching himself in the darkness.  “Besides -- I ain't had my fun yet.  I always finish what I start.  The lady’s down there waitin’ for me.”

Mallory responded directly, “You're not even gonna start, McKenzie.  You're not gonna touch her.”
    
“Oh?” said McKenzie with a touch of irritation and doubt in his voice.  “And what are you gonna do about it, cop?”

Mallory saw a thick tree-branch of an arm point level across the doorway.

“The basement door’s right here.  All I gotta do is open it and walk down.”

“You'd never make it,” Mallory told him.  “I'd cut you down before you made Step One.”
“Ha!  Don’t you think I know about you, cop?  You ain’t never killed anybody in yer whole cop career.  So, ya see, I ain’t all that concerned.”

“What do you call the bullets I threw at you, then?  Butterflies?”

“You weren’t aimin’ at me -- just shootin’.”

That was true.  But he'd been shooting to get him to back off and stop shooting, to prevent him harming the little girl.

“Are you afraid you're gonna hurt me with your little bullets, Mallory?”  McKenzie mocked him.  “Don’t you know you can’t hurt me?  I’m special!  I’m like – charmed.”

 “Whatever.  You’ve butchered your last human being, McKenzie.  I won’t let go of you.”

“How can you hold somethin’ you can’t catch?  Nobody’s never touched me.  I touch them.  It gets me off, you know, caressing them with my knife, watching their blood run red and smooth and quick across their quivering skin -- like spilled paint.  Did you know blood sounds just like rain if you sprinkle enough of it on the floor?"

The oddly poetic tone in the killer’s voice made Mallory's gut sicken all the more.  McKenzie must have sensed it, for he started to chuckle, low and deep, and it rose in his throat like an approaching semi-trailer until it burst upon Mallory’s ears with a roar that reverberated throughout the house.

Despite himself, Mallory shivered.  He rubbed his hand over his face and combed his fingers through his hair.  Suddenly he remembered the little girl.  She was curled up into a tight little ball, leaning against his kidneys.  He reached his hand around and patted her back.  

“Everything will be all right, Samantha,” he whispered.  “I won’t let him hurt your mommy.”

She made a whining noise in her throat as she nodded, trusting him.  He hoped he wouldn’t let her down.  

He began to examine the room more closely, looking for something, anything, to give him an edge.  It crept across his mind that he could just open up and start shooting, and blow the interior of the farmhouse to bits, taking McKenzie with it.  He had enough ammunition to probably get him, but how much did McKenzie have?  He couldn't chance drawing that kind of assault on himself with the girl there.

A familiar dark shape on the floor a few feet toward the window caught his eyes.  Easing the girl to the side, he stretched out low and grasped it silently.  Recoiling to his squat, he examined the thing.  It was a toy gun.

“That’s my cousin Jimmy’s,” Samantha whispered.  “He must’ve forgot it.”

Mallory hefted the toy in his hand -- it had a fair weight for a toy pistol.  It was a copy of the very gun he carried, a little smaller, lighter, of course, but still very similar.  It was metal, save for the handgrip, which was plastic.  The fragment of an idea flittered into his mind.  He caught it, built on it.  It might work.

“Whatcha doin’, cop?” came McKenzie’s voice suddenly.  “Ain’t heard a peep outa you fer awhile!  Have ya died of fright?”

“Don’t bet on it,” Mallory told him.
    
“Good, good.  I want you alive when I carve you up.  It’s no fun if yer already dead.”  McKenzie chuckled low and deep.  “You know what the best part is, cop?  When I cut off pieces of them and show ‘em what I took from ‘em.  They really like that.  Some of ‘em even stop yellin’ and stare at it, like they can’t believe that part of ‘em is floatin’ free in my hand.  An artist needs that feedback from the people, ya know?”  He laughed then, that high, shrieking, kiddie-laugh again.  “That’s what your brother did, ya know.  He stared with his eyes popped wide open.  I did him last.  He got to watch me do the other one first.  You shoulda seen that boy sweat!  Didn’t scream, though.  The first one was screamin’ long before I even touched him.  Yer brother, though, he kept tellin’ me how I’d never get away with it.”  He laughed.  “Funny, all you cops say that when yer down to yer last pitch.  He kept tellin’ me about you and how you’d get me for this.  Wanna know how I did him?  I took one finger at a time to start with.  He didn’t start screamin’ until I took his arm off.  Then I wanted to make rain with it, so I hadda shut him up.  Cut his tongue off and stuffed some parts in his mouth – don’t even know if they were his!”

McKenzie’s cackle made Mallory shiver.  His innards felt like they were trying to turn him inside out.  He didn’t want to, but he kept picturing Ted in his mind, poor Ted while McKenzie was ... ‘doing him’.  My God, why Ted?  Why anybody?

“Now it’s your turn, cop, pig, Mr. Police Detective!  I think I’ll keep your head.  Your brother figgered you were so great, I think I better make you a trophy -- show how great you’re not!  So come on, pig!  I'm gettin’ bored!  Come on out and get slaughtered!  I wanna hear you squeal!”

Two bullets tore through the back of the couch with a roar, one crashing through the window, the other imbedding itself in the wall.  Mallory felt the rush of one past his forehead.  

He signaled the girl to lie flat.

“Please don't let him hurt my mommy,” she pleaded.  “Please.”

“I won’t.  I Promise.”  He let the tremor in his gut come up his throat, let it be heard in his voice.  “All right, McKenzie, I’ll make you a deal.  I’ll give myself up to you if you let the lady and the child go.”

“Forget it!”

Damn it.  

“You’re just about done in anyway, cop.  I can hear it in your voice.  Have you pissed yerself yet?”

“Come on, McKenzie.  You know both of us aren’t leaving here alive, not if you keep this up.”

“That's the way I want it, stupid.  I want you.”

“I’m not done in yet!” he called back, hoping for a false note of bravado in his voice.

“Ha!  You can’t get outa here alive -- you just said it yerself.  You can’t make it to the door.  You only got in ‘cause I let you in.  You can’t even get through that window behind you – I’d blow you in half before you could even cut yerself.”

“But then you’d have nothing left to carve up.  Wouldn’t that spoil your fun?”

There was silence for a moment.  “I’d still have the lady.  The kid can fend for itself – I ain’t interested in her.  Either way, you’re a stuck pig.”  He shrieked with laughter.  Then he fired four bullets at the couch, spewing tufts of stuffing into the air that settled on Mallory and the girl.

As soon as he was sure McKenzie had pulled the trigger enough to suit him, Mallory took advantage of his own raging emotions.  He gathered them, made them perform for him.

“All right!”  His voice actually cracked in his dry throat.  “All right!  I should have known I couldn’t beat you!  Come and get me and get it over with!”

Samantha raised her head and stared at him.  He couldn't see her expression, but he could feel her terror.  He crossed his fingers and held them close to her face so she could see he was gambling.  
She lay her head back down on her arms.  

“Come on, McKenzie!  Just do me first so I don’t have to watch you do the woman!  I couldn’t stand that!”

He heard McKenzie chuckle that deep, bull-throated chuckle.

“Throw out yer gun first.”

“All right -- okay.”  Mallory twisted carefully around the edge of the couch and estimated the distance.  Weighing the toy again in his hand, he drew back and sent it skidding across the hardwood floor.  It came to a halt in the center of the floor, half way between himself and McKenzie.  He prayed to God McKenzie wouldn't realize that it sounded too light to be real.

The sinister snicker that seeped out of McKenzie’s lips gave Mallory a jolt of hope.  His eyes riveted on the doorway, he saw McKenzie’s towering shadow come out from behind the wall.  It paused briefly, looking for the gun, then moved forward slowly.  Mallory saw McKenzie’s pistol still held ready.

“Heh-heh.  Your little brother would be disappointed in you, Mallory.  You just let him down.”
    
Mallory drew himself back silently, like a snake, and crouched behind the end of the couch, drawing a bead on McKenzie as the giant bent over to pick up the toy.  Before he could touch it, Mallory told him:

“Freeze right there, McKenzie.”

McKenzie’s big boulder of a head lifted and he looked toward Mallory without straightening up, his thick fingers wavering over the toy gun.  He saw the detective’s arms balanced on the back of the couch, the .357 Magnum in both hands, balanced for deadly accuracy.  He couldn’t miss.

“What’re you tryin’ to pull?” he growled.

“The plug, McKenzie.  Your plug.  Drop the gun.”

“What, this?”  He waggled his pistol in his fingers, as if it was all just a game.  He stretched down a fraction more for the toy.

“Don’t,” Mallory warned him.  “That one won’t do you any good anyway.”

“Oh, no?”  He made as if to grab it but brought up the real one and fired at Mallory.  Mallory pulled his own trigger at almost the same second.  Both of them went flying backwards.

Samantha screamed as Mallory tumbled nearly on top of her.  He grabbed for her shoulder, held her down with his left arm.  The flesh of his bicep was burning with the graze it had taken.  He knew there was a gouge right into the muscle, but that was lucky -- damned lucky.

He sprang back up and looked for McKenzie.  The behemoth was sprawled back against the wall.  Mallory could hear his breath coming in heaves.  He checked for the guns.  They were lying only inches from the other, and well out of McKenzie’s reach.  Cautiously, he rose to his feet, keeping his muzzle zeroed in on McKenzie.

“The knife, McKenzie.  Take it out real slow and slide it over to me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Now, McKenzie.”  What light there was coming in the window gave him the briefest glimpse of steel as McKenzie pulled out his carving knife.

“Come’n get it, pig.”

“Put it on the floor.”

“No.”

“On the floor.”

“No.”

“You’re done in, McKenzie.  Give it up and we’ll get you to a hospital.”

“So some quack can practice his art on me?  No fuckin’ way.  Besides, nobody takes my knife that easy, cop.  You want it, come’n get it.”

Damn it.  Now what?  Did he just shoot him dead and take him that way?  Not if he didn’t have to.  But he wasn’t going anywhere near that knife while McKenzie was still holding onto it.

He stepped sideways to his left, toward the telephone stand near the hall entrance.  It was probably useless, but he picked up the receiver anyway and held it to his ear. Dead.

McKenzie snickered.

Mallory shifted over to face him squarely again.  “I know I hit you in the chest,” he said.  “You don’t have long if you don’t get help.”

A chuckle rumbled in McKenzie’s throat.  “Does that bother you, little cop?  Are you afraid you’ve killed me?”  He laughed, tossing his head back, thumping it against the wall.  “You have to, if you want my knife.  ‘Cause I ain’t goin’ in.  Either I die, or you die.”  McKenzie paused, shifting his body awkwardly.  “I know that you’re here alone ...  No back-up comin’ fer a long time.  Maybe never.   You can’t get me outa here without help.”

Mallory knew he was right.  Even if he did get the knife, what did he do with him then?  Send the kid down to free her mother and get to a neighbor’s.  He turned his head over his shoulder to speak to Samantha when suddenly McKenzie struggled to rise.  Mallory faced him squarely and leveled his gun at his chest.  

“Sit back down.”

Grunting, holding his left hand against his lower right ribs, McKenzie got to his feet.  He held the knife out with his right hand.  

“Drop it,” Mallory commanded.  “I will shoot you.”

“Ha!  You’re too soft, Mallory.  You don’t like to hurt things, even big mean things like me.”

“You’re carrying one slug already,” Mallory reminded him, however needlessly.  He backed a step from the towering man.

“If you’re gonna do it, do it now.”  McKenzie slid one foot toward him.

“Last chance, McKenzie -- back off.”

McKenzie chuckled and waved the knife at him.  “Kill me, cop -- kill me, cop,” he chanted.

Behind him, still on the floor behind the couch, Samantha whimpered.  Reflexively, Mallory’s head turned toward the sound.  McKenzie lunged and Mallory reacted, pulling the trigger and blowing the knife out of McKenzie’s hand and a hole into that hand at the wrist.

McKenzie roared in pain and shock.  He coddled the useless hand, groaning and rocking it as his own blood poured out of the eaves trough of his arm.  He turned round, unbelieving eyes on Mallory.

“What have you done to me?  That was my hand!  My good workin’ artist’s hand!  I can’t work left-handed!”  He stumbled around, looking for the knife.  Its haft in fragments, it lay amongst the blood drops on the floor.

He faced Mallory again.  Roaring in mad outrage, he charged the detective.  Mallory fired again and he knew the bullet went right through McKenzie.  The giant fell upon him, pushing him backwards over the couch, crushing him.

Upside-down, Mallory still had a hold on his gun.  Samantha had screamed and he could hear her scrambling back toward the window.  McKenzie loomed above him, grabbing at him.  Mallory couldn’t move, jammed as he was with his back on the seat, his head hanging over the edge, his legs up over the back of the couch and pinned beneath McKenzie’s weight.  He was half-expecting the huge man to start breaking him up; his whole body was ready for the first bone to snap.  He couldn’t shoot from this position without taking part of his own leg off.  He felt the rough, exposed bone of McKenzie’s wrist brush his arm, leaving a sticky wet trail of blood up to his hand.          
 
Then McKenzie’s good hand closed over both of Mallory’s and the gun.  Mallory couldn’t believe it as he saw his hands so dwarfed.  McKenzie’s squeezed, like a vise.  Mallory pulled and twisted but he couldn’t get out of the deadly grip.  His finger couldn’t get from around the guard to the trigger.

Now it comes, he thought.  Now he starts bending my fingers back and snapping them one by one.  He tried to kick and wrench himself free but he was firmly stuck.

McKenzie began to chuckle, a very low, victorious chuckle.  He stared down into Mallory’s eyes and grinned, his face oddly aglow in the light of the rising sun.  Mallory stared back, for the first time tonight seeing the absolute madness in McKenzie’s eyes.  Mallory had looked into eyes before -- eyes that despised him, eyes that feared him and what he stood for, eyes that glinted that they were going to kill him.  But McKenzie’s eyes were something else entirely.  They were windows to Hell with the shades all the way up, and when Mallory looked in, he saw the twisted, pulsing snarl of blackness that was McKenzie’s soul.

His breath caught in his throat.  He wasn’t a man prone to gasping aloud or screaming, but he almost did.  His gut knotted in revulsion at what he saw and again he fought to get free.

Abruptly McKenzie hauled on his captured hands and pulled him off the seat cushion, suspending Mallory in mid-air.  McKenzie’s fingers pried at his, loosening them from the grips.  Mallory set his jaw, trying to hold onto the gun.  If McKenzie wanted it, he was going to have to break his fingers to get it.

Mallory’s body jerked in shock as, one-handed, McKenzie took Mallory’s right index finger and inserted it through the semi-circle of the trigger guard.

My God, he’s gonna make me pull the trigger on myself, Mallory thought as McKenzie’s hand tightened over his as firmly as before.  To be out-muscled by this behemoth was one thing, but to have to let him kill him with his own gun, his own finger, to leave this mother and child with no one to protect them --.

“Damn it!” he shouted, his whole body fit to explode with frustration.  He resisted as McKenzie raised the gun from between Mallory’s knees.  He might as well have tried to resist the force of gravity.  His hands surrounded the gun but McKenzie controlled it.  It lifted and Mallory could only watch, waiting, waiting for it to turn on him and blow him into the next world.

But his arms remained straight and Mallory was staring down the barrel at McKenzie’s face, just as if he were sighting him by himself.  For one split second, he saw the intention in McKenzie’s eyes, and then his finger was pressed into the trigger.  There was a deafening explosion and he was suddenly free.    

His torso bounced lightly on the seat cushion.  His gun was still in his hands.  The ringing in his ears was Samantha shrieking somewhere behind him.  Swinging his feet to the floor, he went to her, his head swimming for the moments it took to settle her down.  Then he left her and walked to the other side of the couch.  What was left of McKenzie was sprawled, quite dead, in the middle of the hardwood floor.