The store was dark and silent; the only sound was their own movement, as the five men made their way into the showroom, stepping around chairs and sofas and tables.

Yawn called Mays's name and got no response.  Thompson veered off to the right, toward the front counter and the partitioned store offices.

The show room was 82 feet wide and 106 feet deep.  About the first three-quarters of the floor area was covered with a dark orange carpet.  But at the rear, past the counter and offices, the floor was white terrazzo.  Yawn was approaching the end of the carpeted section when he spotted a body face down near the back wall, in a pool of blood on the terrazzo.  He had never seen so much blood from a body.

Yawn assumed that it was Charlie Mays, but some furniture blocked his view.  When Yawn got closer he saw that it was a white man.

Yawn bent and checked his pulse at the neck.  The man was dead.  Yawn searched the rear pockets of the man's pants, looking for identification, but the pockets were empty.

Thompson, too, was calling for Mays, speaking into the darkness: "Charlie, it's Bobby Thompson.  Let us know where you are.  Give yourself up, Charlie."  Thompson had approached the customer service area, about midway along the north side of the showroom.  He saw that the telephone on the counter was covered in blood.  The receiver was off the hook and hung down the front of the counter.

Thompson went behind the counter, to the cash register.  To his right, as he faced west, was an office door on which the jamb was broken.  It seemed to have been forced.  Thompson used the tip of one finger to push that door open.  Inside were two desks and a sofa.  Everything appeared to be in order.

Directly in front of him, as he faced west, was a second door.  It led to a small employee kitchen and lounge.  Thompson swung that door open and found a white woman on the floor.  She was motionless, face up and with her eyes open, in a pool of blood.

Thompson bent close to her, looking for some sign of life.  She was quite pretty, and seemed very young--maybe a teenager, he thought.  She was dead.

Thompson went back around the counter the way he entered, and he started to the rear of the showroom.  At about that moment, the beam of Yawn's flashlight fell across the body of a black man sprawled on the terrazzo, near the linoleum racks.

"That's him," Thompson said.

It was Charlie Mays.  Thompson stooped near his head, checking his pulse.  The man whom Thompson had recommended for Christmas charity was obviously dead.  His face was disfigured by a savage beating.  Gouts and sprays