He stood, watching, as Hank backed the car out of the driveway, parking on the street. Seconds later, the M.E.’s van arrived, pulling into the just-vacated spot.

He should probably be the one to show the M.E. the bodies, but his head was hammering, and he really didn’t want to see that again. Mitch and Issac were still there, Issac shooting pictures, and when Hank walked up, Brad told him to take the M.E. and his assistant into the garage.

Vern and Norris were in the house right now, going over the place with a fine-toothed comb, and Brad clomped up the porch steps and went in to check on their progress. According to the Decker kid, the Clarks had a son. There was no sign of him anywhere on the property, he was not answering his phone, and he’d apparently been MIA for the past few days. In Brad’s book, that made him not just a person of interest but their prime suspect. Nine times out of ten, in situations like this, it was the missing family member who ended up being the one who’d done it. At least that had been his experience, although, admittedly, on a much lesser scale.

He wished now that he’d asked the Deckers a few more questions. He’d briefly interviewed the boy and his dad before allowing them to leave, advising them to come by the station later to give a full statement. They’d both been pretty shaken up—hell, he was shaken up—and since they weren’t witnesses, just civilians who’d happened upon the scene, he’d thought it best to send them home. Having a little more background on the family, though, might help steer the search in the proper direction, since, according to Norris and Vern, they’d turned up nothing yet.

“Skip the front of the house here,” Brad told his men. “I want you to look in the kid’s bedroom. If we’re going to find anything, it’ll probably be there. Right now, he’s our only suspect.”

“Really?” Norris said. “You think their son killed them? And did that?”

Brad shrugged. “It’s happened before.”

“Maybe the kid was kidnapped,” Vern suggested. “Someone kills the parents, kidnaps the kid…”

“What for?”

“Well, it can’t be ransom, ’cause there’s no one left to pay it, so maybe…I don’t know, sex stuff?”

“Unlikely,” Brad told him. But the idea of kidnapping, especially in such close conjunction with the brutal slayings in the garage, made him think about the girls, and, excusing himself, he ducked into the laundry room to give Patty a quick call.

She answered on the second ring. He tried to make things seem casual, but she could tell that he was checking up on them and immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I was just—”