“Yeah. Now the subject has to move fast. Ishy’s raising the alarm, there are two other kids capable of bolting for the neighbors’. The subject’s gotta tamp down, or the whole scene will spiral out of control.”

“So the subject grabs a gun—”

“One he’s taken off Hermes?” D.D. questioned.

“Unregistered, so no way to determine,” Alex said. “But subject has a gun and now it’s quick and dirty business. Fumbles the first shot with Ishy, but makes it right with the second. Then hits the girls’ room. Boom. Boom. Kids are done. It’s down the hall to the last member of the family.”

D.D. nodded. “All right. But the last member of the Laraquette family is a five-month-old baby. Infants can’t talk or bear witness. Why kill the baby?”

Neil and Alex were both silent for a minute, contemplating the matter.

“He has to kill the baby,” Alex said at last. “Because it has to be the whole family. It’s a script, remember? The family must be dead and the father must appear to have done it. So the baby must die. Then Hermes must be moved to the sofa and posed accordingly. It’s what the killer does. What he needs.”

“Not a gangland hit,” D.D. said slowly. “Because in a gangland hit, the shooter would want to take credit. He’d want it known that he’d eliminated his rival’s entire family, to strike fear into the hearts of other up-and-coming drug dealers. Plus, he wouldn’t mess around with four different weapons. Too much fuss. This isn’t about revenge. This is something deeper, something more personal to the killer.”

“A reenactment,” Alex murmured.

D.D. frowned, uncomfortable, not sure why. “Hermes’s death screwed it up. He was supposed to be stunned unconscious. Then, when the rest of the family had been eliminated, the killer could return, move Hermes to the sofa, wrap Hermes’s fingers around the gun, and complete the final act in the story. But Hermes had a heart attack, breaking with the script, and giving us our first clue.”

Alex said suddenly, “Hermes had the gun on him.”

D.D. and Neil turned to him. “How do you figure?”

“Because the gun has to come from inside the home. It’s part of the pattern, and if you think about it, it works. At the Harrington residence, the subject eliminates Patrick first. Stuns him, we’ll assume for the sake of argument. Then the subject slips into the kitchen, grabs a knife, and goes to town. Finally, the staging takes place. Patrick gets moved, the subject locates the gun, performs the final act.”

“Patrick lived,” D.D. pointed out.