As he and Eddie got out and hit the bag stash in the back, the glooming light turned everything into a variation of gray, the landscape like a black-and-white photograph.

Vin’s BMW was in the drive, and there were lights on inside, so as they came up to the front door, they knocked. The response was an immediate holler from upstairs, but it took a while before they were let in, and the reason why was pretty clear: Vin’s hair obviously had had fingers running through it, and his cheeks were flushed.

Jim’s first thought as he stepped in and looked around was that cheap furnishings really didn’t age well. From what he could see, everything from the wilted wallpaper to the crappy couch in the living room to the dejected kitchen in the back had been done in twenty-year-old Sears Roebuck.

It was the same stuff he’d grown up with and the first time since he’d met the guy that he thought he had anything in common with Vin.

Eddie put one of his bags down and focused on an oddly newer stretch of rug in the hall. “They died here at the bottom of the stairs. Your parents.”

“Yeah.” Vin shifted uneasily. “How do you know that?”

“I can see their shadow.” Eddie stepped to the side, glanced at Jim, and nodded downward.

Jim wondered what the big deal was, because when he looked at the floor all he could see…was…

He rubbed his eyes to make sure he was getting it right—but yeah, he was. At the base of the stairs where the fresher square of carpet was, he picked up on an odd disturbance, a visual echo of what had been two people intertwined in a heap. The woman had had frizzy, faded hair and a yellow housecoat. The man had been in green overalls, like the kind an electrician or a plumber would wear. The bloodstains beneath their heads covered yards of the carpet.

Jim cleared his throat. “Yeah, I see it, too.”

Marie-Terese appeared at the top of the stairs. “Where do you want us?”

“I did it in my bedroom,” Vin said.

Eddie left some of his load in the front hall and started for the second floor. “Then that’s where we’re going.”

With all the bags he was holding, Jim had to turn sideways to fit as he went up, and Vin was cool enough to take some of the load.

“What’s all this stuff?” the guy asked.

“Lotta frickin’ salt.”

As the four of them crammed into a room that was decorated in faded navy blue wallpaper and seventies schoolboy furniture, Eddie reached down and pulled up the braided rug in the center.

“You did it here?”

Self-evident, given the faded circle that was left on the floorboards. “Do we need to clean that first?” Jim asked.