This moment, however, was not one of those moments. She, Alex, and Neil had taken over the conference room so they could spread out, and Neil was currently pacing up and down the length of the table, talking a mile a minute.

“Hermes Laraquette was hit with a Taser in the chest. Two jolts would be the ME’s guess, to judge by the twin set of burns. Most men would’ve gone down, but recovered. Laraquette’s lifestyle wasn’t exactly heart-healthy, however, so he never got up again.”

“Taser killed him?” D.D. reiterated.

“Taser caused a massive coronary event, which dropped him deader than a stone.”

D.D. was standing at the whiteboard, dry-erase marker in hand. With Neil’s affirmation of cause of death, she jotted down a fresh note. “Hang on. If a Taser was used in the attack, where’s the confetti?”

Tasers, which were illegal in Massachusetts, were supposed to discharge coded confetti with each stunning jolt. The code on the confetti could then be used to trace which Taser had been used in an attack—compensating for the fact that there was no bullet left behind for the police to trace. The confetti was a huge, fluttery mess, nearly impossible to clean up, especially given conditions at the Laraquette household.

“Don’t know,” Neil said. “But the ME is convinced it was a Taser. Has no doubts about the marks.”

D.D. frowned, decided to come back to the confetti. “Okay. So that gives us four instruments for attack: Taser, handgun, knife, pillow. What else did the ME have?”

“Definitely stabbing as COD for the woman. Single fatal blow. No hesitation marks,” Neil reported, still pacing.

“Like the Harringtons,” D.D. said.

“Same size blade,” Neil reported. “Meaning both households contained knife sets, and in both attacks perpetrator selected the same size blade.”

“The largest blade,” Alex said, his tone cautious. “Which, if you think about it, is the most logical choice for murder.”

“True, true,” Neil mused, stopping his pacing long enough to stick his hands in his front pockets and jiggle the loose change.

“Can the ME check Patrick Harrington’s body?” D.D. asked. “See if he was tasered, too?”

“Already made the request.”

“Well?”

“Give him a couple of days. Between the two scenes, plus the rest of the city’s normal mayhem, bodies are stacking up.”

“August,” D.D. muttered. “Always a busy time of year. So what about the kids? The son was shot.”

“Yep. Same with the four-year-old and eleven-year-old girls,” Neil reported. “Infant’s gonna be tougher. Harder to rule on asphyxiation. More like nothing else seems to be physically wrong with the child, ergo it was probably suffocation. ME’s sent the pillow out to be tested for DNA. Might be able to trace saliva on the pillow back to the infant, then it’s a bit more conclusive.”

“How long?” D.D. was already bracing herself.

“Three to six months,” Neil said.