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reunion?”
    “I think he was apologizing.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “If we assume the father did it, then he’s a family annihilator,” Alex stated. “Now, maybe the event started impulsively—got in a fight with the wife and it went too far. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe this is what he’d planned all along. But think of the nature of a family annihilator: Why do these guys kill?”
    D.D. looked at him. “I don’t know. Why do these guys kill?”
    “Because they think they’re doing their family a favor.”
    “Yet another reason I’m single, now that you mention it.”
    Alex smiled wryly. “Times were hard. I bet when we dig deeper, we’ll find the financial picture even bleaker. Maybe they were facing foreclosure, about to be kicked to the curb. The pressure mounts. The father starts thinking he’d be better off dead, but he doesn’t want to hurt his family. That gets him thinking that they’d be better off dead. It’s too cruel to just kill himself. So he’ll do right by them—he’ll kill them all.”
    “Shit,” D.D. said, staring down at the blood-churned floor, swatting away another buzzing fly.
    “He takes them out one by one. Then he carries each one of them back here and lays them down side by side. Maybe he prays over them then. Or says absolution, or gives them some little speech he’s already prepared in his head. I love you, I only want what’s best for you, I’ll see you soon . Then he picks up the twenty-two and taps one to the forehead.”
    “He shot himself?” Phil spoke up. “Pussy.”
    “True. Especially given that he didn’t get the job done.”
    D.D. did a double take: “Are you saying—”
    “Yep. Father’s undergoing surgery now at Mass General. With any luck, they’ll save him. Then we can nail his ass.”
    “The father’s still alive,” D.D. murmured, looking at the blood, waving away the hungry flies. She finally smiled. It was a distinctivelywolfish expression on her face. “I think we’re gonna have some fun with this after all.”

    They were walking back toward the front of the house, past the dining room, when it came to her. She drew up short. Belatedly, Phil and his shadow followed suit.
    “Hey, Professor,” she said. “I got a question for you.”
    Alex arched a brow, but waited.
    “Okay, so father kills the mother, the fourteen-year-old boy, the nine-year-old boy, and the twelve-year-old daughter, then shoots himself in the forehead.”
    “Current theory, yes.”
    “Based upon blood evidence.”
    “Based upon preliminary exam of the blood evidence, yes.”
    “It’s an impressive analysis,” she told him. “Very well done. I can tell that you’re hell on wheels in the classroom.”
    Alex didn’t say a word, which confirmed that he was as smart as he looked.
    “But there’s another major piece of evidence.”
    “Which is?”
    “The dining room.”
    Alex and Phil turned toward the dining room.
    Phil asked the question first: “What about the dining room?”
    Alex, on the other hand, got it. “Crap,” he said.
    “Yeah, it’s always slightly more complicated than we’d like it to be,” D.D. agreed. She looked at Phil. “We got five bodies, right? Four dead, one in critical condition. Five bodies for five family members.”
    Phil nodded.
    D.D. shrugged. “Then why is the table set for six?”

CHAPTER
FOUR
    DANIELLE
    You want to know what it means to be a pediatric psych nurse? Welcome to the Pediatric Evaluation Clinic of Boston, otherwise known as PECB. Our unit occupies the top floor of the larger Kirkland Medical Center. We like to believe we have some of the best views in Boston, which is only fair as we serve the toughest citizens.
    Thursday night, I sat in the hallway of the pediatric ward observing our newest charge. Her name was Lucy and she’d been admitted this afternoon. We’d had only twenty-four hours to prepare for her arrival, which hadn’t been enough, but we did our best. Most of our kids shared a double room;