“She didn’t kill herself!” I insisted again, angry now and realizing how much I needed that rage. “She wouldn’t do that. Someone helped her get out. That’s the only way you can explain her getting through two sets of locked doors. Someone helped her. First time was yesterday, maybe as a trial run, then again tonight. Face it, the unit was hopping, we were short-staffed, and then the police suddenly appeared. Plenty of distractions, providing the perfect opportunity for someone to harm her. That’s what happened.”

“Someone,” Sergeant Warren drawled, looking right at me.

“I was only gone five to ten minutes—”

“Eighteen. I timed you.”

“I was with your own detective for part of that—”

“About two minutes, he says.”

“That’s not enough time to smuggle a child out of the unit and get down to radiology and back.”

“But someone did. You just said so.”

“Not me—someone,” I snapped. “Someone else, someone.”

“Really? Because I thought Lucy didn’t trust anyone else but you. So who could that someone-else someone be?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Gave up. Fuck if I knew.

Lucy, dancing in the moonlight. Lucy, swinging from the ceiling.

Then, out of the blue: my mother, with a single bullet hole in the center of her forehead.

“I’ll take care of this, Danny. Go to bed. I will take care of everything.”

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl…”

“Do you need to sit down?” Karen asked me gently.

I shook my head.

“How about a glass of water? Greg, fetch Danielle a glass of water.” Karen found my right hand, cradling my fingers between her palms. But I snatched my hand back, held it against my chest. I didn’t want to be touched right now. I wanted to feel the rage, let it flood me like a river.

“Tika and Ozzie,” I stated, looking at Karen. “Ask Sergeant Warren about Tika and Ozzie.”

D.D. explained. Karen went chalky white.

“But … but … that doesn’t make any sense,” she protested feebly. “We can’t be the common denominator between two murdered families. We don’t make home visits. We work with the child, but hardly know anything about the family. Where they live, what they do … that’s not us….”

“But you have that information,” Sergeant Warren said. A statement, not a question.

“In the files, yes.”

“And didn’t I see some poster in the lobby about an open-door policy? Parents can visit the floor anytime they want?”

“Parents are invited to visit their child whenever they want. That still doesn’t mean we know them. Their time on the floor is a small slice of their overall universe, assuming they visit at all. Most of them don’t.”

“The Harringtons?” Sergeant Warren pressed.