“I’ll let you handle that,” I said. “Back to the witchcraft or whatever. That could explain why we never connected the ritual to anything else. There are elements of Druidism, but nothing that more strongly suggested an actual fae influence. If it was the Tysons who devised the ritual, it would be exactly what your experts concluded: a mishmash of elements taken from God-knows-where. If the Tysons killed the first victims, then they established the pattern, meaning the pattern itself would be meaningless. The ritual elements. The method. The locations. Even the day of the week.” I stopped writing. “But that was significant. It was my parents’ date night.”

“I would suspect Friday is a popular date night. Meaning a good time for the Tysons to find a couple.”

I nodded and made a note of that. “Wait—what about the eyewitness who ID’d my parents as the people fleeing the first crime scene? She picked them out of a lineup, right?”

“Yes, but if I recall correctly, the Tysons were roughly the same age, body type, and coloring. They didn’t resemble one another in any significant way, but if the witness spotted them from a distance, it would be close enough, particularly if the lineup was skewed. I’ll look into that further.”

“If the Tysons killed Mays and Perkins, then my parents were following their pattern. Trying to hide the crime by emulating the victims’ own crimes. Which would throw a serious wrench into any investigation.”

“It would have been an even bigger wrench if there had been any forensic evidence with the first couple. Fingerprints. DNA. I could have gotten your parents off with that. It’s reasonable doubt.”

“Just their bad luck, then, that the Tysons were good. Or lucky. Which may also explain why the Cwn Annwn took an interest. If they needed my parents to commit murders and their purview is killing killers, the Tysons would have been an ideal case. They left no clues, so they stood little chance of being caught and convicted.” I paused, thinking it through. “Chandler and Evans copycatted their murders with Jan and Pete—after my parents copied the Tysons. So the chances that someone else murdered the third pair, in yet another act of copying . . .”

“. . . is infinitesimally small.” He drove another half block before saying, “Still, does this help?”