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soles of her feet. Her brothers had been luckier or had died first, leaving the killer to vent his rage on the remaining victim.
    He imagined how they had been rounded up in the living room by the intruder and carried or dragged to the bedroom. They tried to run, he thought, looking at the different locations of blood spatters in the room. Their young ages would have precluded them from putting up much of a defense. They were killed in this room. There was almost no sign of a struggle in the other rooms. Apart from an overturned end table and a general disarray of couch pillows and rugs, there was almost no sign of a struggle in the rest of the house. And the absence of blood in the other rooms meant they were most likely killed in this room.
    Jack looked one more time at the words on the wall. So many children. There will be more. There was no mistaking that the killer intended to kill again, and maybe the words meant he would kill more children. But why? Why kids? What did these children have to do with Timmy Ryan? And what did any of this have to do with Anne and Don Lewis? Did Anne Lewis or her husband have anything to do with the killer? Maybe he, or she, lost their children because of the Lewises? He didn’t know. All he had were questions, no answers. And even the questions didn’t make sense yet. He had never felt this helpless in his life. Children were dying, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
    The mother was such a wreck at the scene that the responding emergency medical crew had sedated her and had taken her to the hospital before the detectives had arrived. The first officers on the scene said she had been “ranting” and didn’t seem to understand anything. Jack and Liddell would stop at the hospital later, and Jack hoped she would be able to answer a couple of questions.
    He left the bedroom and found Liddell in the kitchen. No surprise there.
    â€œCrime scene’s done in here.” Liddell was sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of water. He offered one to Jack, and then took out his notebook and rattled off the report given to him by the officers that had canvassed the neighborhood.
    â€œMother—Elaine Lamar—age twenty-nine. Divorced from Carl Lamar. Works for Need-a-Home Realty and puts in a long week according to the neighbors.” Liddell gave Jack a glance, and said, “Carl’s an asshole, but I don’t figure him for this.” He continued. “The neighbors say she leaves the kids by themselves at times, but never for a long period of time, and it doesn’t happen often. The kids are Ricky, Jeremy, and Jenny, ages three, four, and ten. The neighbors also say she is a great mother and that the children are so well behaved that it never occurred to anyone to report them being left alone.”
    â€œThe little bungalow over there”—Liddell pointed over Jack’s shoulder—“is occupied by Missus Geraldine Truitt, age eighty-three and a widow. She heard the children screaming a few hours earlier, but she thought they were playing. In fact, she said the kids are so quiet normally, that she had been pleased at hearing them being loud for once. She couldn’t be sure of the time, but she takes her heart meds around noon, and it was somewhere around then.”
    Jack had sat quietly through Liddell’s report, but he now got up and checked the refrigerator.
    â€œAlready looked,” Liddell said. “There’s plenty of food. One beer. Part of a bottle of wine, nothing stronger. She’s clean, Jack.”
    Jack knew his partner was right. When he checked with the Department of Public Welfare, they would tell him they had no record of Elaine Lamar or the children, meaning there had never been complaints of child neglect or abuse.
    â€œAny boyfriends? Visitors?” Jack asked.
    â€œMother Teresa, I’m telling you, pod’na.” But Jack wasn’t listening. “Jack, you