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unbalanced, and maybe her mom's death had been too much for her. Maybe she blamed her father for the mother's death. Whatever it was, they'd find it out in the investigation.
    “How is she?” he asked one of his junior officers. There were a dozen officers on the scene by then. It was the biggest thing that had happened in Watseka since the minister's son had taken LSD and committed suicide ten years before. That had been a tragedy, but this was going to be a scandal. For a man like John Adams to be shot by his own kid, that was a real crime, and a loss for the whole town. No one was going to believe it. “Is she on drugs?” he asked as a photographer took pictures of the bedroom. The gun was already in a plastic bag in the squad car.
    “She doesn't look like it,” the young cop said. “Not obviously, at least. She looks kind of out of it, and very scared. She has asthma, and she's having a hard time breathing.”
    “I'm sorry to hear it,” the senior officer said sarcastically as he glanced around the neat living room. He had been there only hours before, after the funeral. It was hard to believe why he was back now. Maybe the kid was just plain crazy. “Her father's got a lot worse than asthma.”
    “What did they say?” The junior officer looked concerned. “Is he gonna make it?”
    “It doesn't look great. Seems like our little shooter here did quite a job on her old man. Spinal cord, maybe a lung, God only knows what else, or why.”
    “Think he was doing her?” the younger man asked, intrigued by the situation, but the older man looked outraged.
    “John Adams? Are you nuts? Do you know who he is? He's the best lawyer in town. And the most decent guy you'd ever want to meet. You think a guy like him would do his own kid? You're as crazy as she is and not much of a cop if you can come to a conclusion like that.”
    “I don't know … it kind of looked like it, they were both naked … and she looks so scared … there's a bruise coming up on her arm … and …” He hesitated, given the senior man's reaction, but he couldn't conceal evidence, no matter who the guy was. Evidence was evidence. “There was come on the sheets, it looked like …” There had been a lot of blood, but there were other spots too. And the young cop had seen them.
    “I don't give a damn what it looked like, O'Byrne. There's more than one way for come to get on a man's sheets. The guy's wife just died, maybe he was lonely, maybe he was playing with himself when she came in with the gun, maybe she didn't know what he was doing and it scared her. But there's no way in hell you're gonna come in here and tell me that John Adams was doing it to his kid. Forget it.”
    “Sorry, sir.” The other officers were already rolling up the sheets as evidence anyway and putting them in plastic bags too, and another officer was talking to Grace in her bedroom. She was sitting on the bed, still wearing the blanket they had given her when they got there. She had found her inhaler and she was breathing more easily now, but she looked deathly pale, and the officer questioning her wondered how clear she was on what had happened. She seemed so dazed that he almost wondered if she understood him. She said she didn't remember finding the gun, it was suddenly just in her hand, and it went off. She remembered the noise, and then her father bleeding all over her. And that was all she remembered.
    “How was he bleeding on you? Where were you?” He had the same impression of the scene as O'Byrne, though it seemed hard to believe of John Adams.
    “I don't remember,” she said blankly. She sounded like an automaton, her breath was still coming in little short gasps, and she seemed a little shaky from the medication.
    “You don't remember where you were when you shot your father?”
    “I don't know.” She looked at him as though she didn't see him sitting there on her bed with her. “In the doorway,” she lied. She knew what she had to do. She owed