But that was easier said than done. Their manpower was stretched so thin because of this that if the mayor had murdered his mother on Main Street that afternoon, there wouldn’t have been an officer available to arrest him, yet by the end of the afternoon, not a single lead had turned up. Brad spent the day not only coordinating the efforts of his various teams, but consulting with both the M.E. and, via videoconference, a profiler from Phoenix, and by the time he knocked off at six, after instructing Vern to call him at home if anything turned up afterhours, the only thing he had to show for it was a headache.

Grateful not to have heard a peep from either the radio in his car or his cell phone on the short ride over, he unlocked the front door and wearily entered the house. “I’m home!” he announced. Jillian and Sue were both seated on the living room floor in front of the television, and they jumped up at the sound of his voice. “Daddy!”

When the expected sound of Patty’s voice did not immediately call out to him from the kitchen, he glanced in that direction, suddenly noticing that aside from the girls and the television, the house was silent. Brad frowned. “Where’s Mommy?”

“She had to go out.”

“And she left you here by yourselves?” Brad was incredulous. This was not only completely unlike Patty but was completely unacceptable, and anger built within him. Yes, the door to the house had been locked when he’d arrived home, but he’d just come back from investigating the deaths of fifteen people, including the most brutal murder in Montgomery history, and he didn’t think this was the time to be leaving little girls alone. It wasn’t the 1940s for God’s sake, when people let their kids run wild, blithely talk to strangers and come home when the sun went down. This was now. What the hell could she have been thinking?

Outside a car door slammed. Patty was home. A moment later, the front door opened. “I’m back!” she announced, but the chipper tone of her voice was undercut by wariness. She had seen the car in the driveway, knew he was here, and knew he would not be happy.

She got that right, Brad thought.

He confronted her the second she stepped into the living room. “What were you thinking?” he said accusingly. “Leaving the girls by themselves? I come home and you’re nowhere to be found and they’re in here all alone watching TV?”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely.

“You’re sorry? I can’t believe this! Do you know what I spent my day doing? Looking for whoever slaughtered Glen Taggart and laid out all those bodies in that field!”