Patrick Harrington, former father of three, had been recovering from brain surgery for the past three hours when D.D. and Phil arrived at the hospital. According to the charge nurse, he was in no condition to talk.

“Let us be the judge of that,” D.D. informed the nurse as she and Phil flashed their credentials.

The nurse wasn’t impressed. “Sweetheart, the man is in a drug-induced coma with a manometer attached to his skull to measure intracranial pressure. I don’t care if you’re packing a pass to the Pearly Gates; man can’t talk yet, because the man can’t talk.”

That stole some of D.D.’s thunder. “When do you think he’ll come around?”

The nurse looked D.D. up and down. D.D. returned the scrutiny. Hospitals had policies concerning a patient’s right to privacy. For that matter, the legal system had scribbled a line or two on the subject. But take it from a detective—at the end of the day, the world remained a human system. Some head nurses were bulldogs when it came to protecting their patients. Others were willing to consider the big picture, if things were presented in the right manner.

The charge nurse picked up a chart, glanced at the notes. “In my professional opinion,” she offered up, “hell if I know.”

“How did the surgery go?” Phil interjected. The nurse glanced at him, noted the ketchup stain on his white shirt, and smiled a little.

“Surgeon removed the foreign body. That should help matters.”

D.D. leaned against the nurses’ station. Now that the nurse’s body language had relaxed slightly, it was time to press the advantage. She glanced at the woman’s name tag. “So, Terri, did you hear what Patrick did to his family?”

“Some kind of domestic incident.” Nurse Terri regarded them seriously. “Maybe he didn’t like his wife’s cooking. If you ask me, we see too much of that around here. More men need to start liking burnt food.”

“Ah, but there was a bit more to it than a spat with the missus. Kids were involved. Three kids. He got ’em all.”

Nurse Terri hesitated, showed the first glimmer of interest. “He killed his own kids?”

“Nine, twelve, and fourteen. All dead.”

“Oh Blessed Mary…”

“That’s what we think happened. It would be a good thing to know, however. I mean, there’s a little difference between four people slaughtered by a family member than, say, by a deranged maniac who’s possibly still wandering free. Really, it would be good to dot our ‘i’s and cross our ‘t’s here. As Patrick’s the lone survivor…”

Nurse Terri sighed heavily, seemed to finally relent. “Look, I can’t make the unconscious conscious, not even for Boston’s finest. I can see, however, if Dr. Poor is still around. He was the admitting doc in the ER. He might have something to offer.”