I cruised past the house, checking for police. The small wooden bungalow looked as if it was about to be set upon by the hulking, ivy-covered trees surrounding it. It hadn’t been painted in who knows how long, and the yard was strewn with junk—a rusted washing machine, a crumpled fender, milk crates full of empty beer bottles. The place fit right into the neighborhood, a poor-white ghetto made up of houses that had seen better days and known better residents. Even on a serene sunny morning, the street oozed melancholy and regret. Satisfied the coast was clear, I parked down the block.

The pink kiddie bicycle lying on the porch brought tears to my eyes. I picked it up and propped it on its kickstand before knocking at the door. When I heard the lock click, I stepped back, giving whoever was about to answer plenty of space. It was a woman, or rather what was left of a woman whose heart had been torn out and whose brain had been scrambled by loss. I could have put my finger right through her.

“Yes?” she said in the softest of voices.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but are you Suzy Byrd’s mother?” I asked.

“I am,” the woman replied. “Who are you?”

“My name is Charles Sanders, and I wondered if I might talk to you about what happened to your daughter.”

“She was murdered,” the woman said.

“I know that, ma’am,” I said. “My son was murdered, too, in the same way, two years ago, in Los Angeles. The police gave up trying to find the killer, but I’ve been working on my own, retracing my son’s path in the last year of his life, gathering information and searching for anyone who might know something about what happened to him.”

Confusion clouded the woman’s face. “Why would you think I’d know anything?” she said.

“No, no,” I said. “Excuse me for not making myself clear. The reason I’m here is, as part of my investigation, I’m talking to people whose loved ones died under similar circumstances on the chance there might be a connection the police aren’t seeing.”

“What connection?” the woman said.

“One theory I have is that the same person might be committing a lot of these murders,” I said. “They’re identical in many ways. I’ve got some clippings I could show you.”

“I don’t…I don’t—” the woman said. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth.

“Your daughter’s throat was cut, right?” I said.

“What?”

“Was her body drained of blood?”

“Oh, my God,” the woman said. “How could you?”

A man appeared behind her, a big man with three days’ stubble and red eyes.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“He asked if Suzy’s blood was drained,” the woman said.

“How do you know that?” the man said.