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green grass. Pretending that she was at the track of the local high school or maybe running the New York City Marathon.
    Anywhere but here.
    Tawny Lynn Griffin. Madison Williams. And now Jeremiah Malone. Three teenagers attending the local high school. All little more than children. All dead. Tawny’s death was immediately pegged a suicide. She was found hanging from a backyard tree, two of her father’s best church ties knotted together to form a makeshift noose. Her parents had been gone for the evening, out at a Mormon Church social. They returned home to the loss of their only child, a popular cheerleader with a reputation for being a mean girl. She left a note. All it said was a hastily scrawled “Sorry.” A small stepladder had been kicked over and lay askew beneath her dangling feet. Details of the brief note were never released to the press, more out of concern for the privacy and grieving of the family than anything else.
    More than one chubby, lonely teenage girl or pimply, geeky rejected boy had admitted to not feeling a great loss upon Tawny’s death.
    Still, no sign anyone would kill her. That was an extreme reaction that seemed unjustified. But then Madison, Tawny’s good friend and fellow cheerleader and not-so-nice girl, was found hanging from a statue of town founder Robert Kane, in the center of the Kanesville City Park. Again, no sign of anything but a very public suicide. A stepstool was knocked over beneath her dangling legs, explaining how she got high enough to tie a rope—not a tie this time—around the head of the Robert Kane’s horse. While the first girl had left a one-word scrawl, a longer note was found in Madison’s pocket, explaining she was tired of having to try so hard. She wanted peace. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to atone. That last word, “atone,” had hit Sam wrong. Yes, they learned these things as children, but teenagers didn’t talk like that.
    And now Jeremiah. One big difference was no note. Instead, there was a slide show, delivered to the Mormon seminary where all three teenagers had been instructed in matters relating to their religion.
    Murder. Serial killer. Those words escalated, darting through Sam’s brain, and she tried to shut them down. She didn’t want this to get worse, but it was already pretty transparent. Any second-rate detective could come to the murder conclusion and investigate it. And she was no second-rate detective. She refused to be. This couldn’t be a suicide pact, unless the three had planned this out with the first girl leaving a one-word note, the second leaving a longer note, and Jeremiah Malone leaving a graphic slide show.
    Of course, that wasn’t possible. Because the slide included pictures of Jeremiah, dead.
    Sam supposed he could have been acting it out, but she’d seen the body and there was little doubt in her mind that he was dead when the picture was taken. Newly dead.
    Either they had a killer or this was one hell of a suicide pact. The appearance of the slide show meant there had to be someone else, a fourth teenager. Someone who had placed it in the seminary and someone who was, themselves, in grave danger from their own hands. And the fact remained that whoever put the slide show on the seminary computer had used a key and knew the alarm code.
    Who had access to the seminary building?
    Paul Carson and all the teachers—three instructors and the people who had cleaned the building last. All scheduled to be interviewed this afternoon. She had little doubt all would have a solid alibi.
    If it looked like a duck and walked like a duck … How did that duck get inside the seminary building to leave the slide show?
    Sam’s gut told her these were murders.
    On her fourth time around the outer road, she finally slowed, decreasing her pace from a fast sprint to a jog, then a walk. She paced over to a spot filled with larger statues and monuments, tributes to loved ones placed there by those left behind. Sam walked