Meanwhile, Harris continued. “We’re going to work with Little’s office here to prepare a blanket statement everyone needs to stand by until further notice.”

The newscast was running old file footage of a night crime scene. Two bodies on gurneys were being wheeled out of a big house. Grant started to look away but then noticed something in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen.

Another chyron.

Then it disappeared as the coverage ended and the redhead appeared again, ready to talk weather.

Grant waved frantically at the television set. “Wait, wait . . .”

An annoyed Harris glared at him. “What is it, Commander? You’re already on my shit list.”

Grant pointed at the remote control. “Wind that back. Please.”

“Why? It’s not like we’re going to see something we don’t already know, especially since these fools know nothing themselves.”

Grant snatched the remote control and pressed rewind. The images squiggled by until he got to the old crime footage of two bodies being removed from the house. He freeze-framed the image—and felt a familiar chill run up his spine. Grant grabbed Frankel by the shoulder. “Take a look at that.”

The detective was confused. “At what?”

“The upper left corner of the screen,” said Grant.

The red chyron was a specific date.

September 9, 1988.

“You’re shitting me.”

Grant was happy to see the detective was quickly catching up.

“What the hell is this?” asked Frankel.

“It’s follow-up on a story they’ve been running since last night,” Little told them. “The Timothy Leeds case.”

“Timothy Leeds?” Grant asked. “Never heard of him.”

“He got released from prison last night after doing thirty years for a double murder,” explained Little.

“A double murder?” repeated Grant.

Something started gnawing deep in his brain, trying to come together.

“Out on Long Island somewhere,” Little said. He indicated the chyron. “That’s the night it happened. September 9th, 1988.”

The crime blotter report.

The one he’d looked up late the night before when he couldn’t sleep.

It had been right there.

“Oh, shit,” said Frankel. He turned his attention fully to Grant. “I heard a story the other day that this guy was getting released. They made a big deal how he was going to be out in the real world for the first time as an adult.”

“And that would be because . . .?”

“He was only seventeen when he was convicted for murdering his parents,” explained Frankel.

Timothy Leeds had been the textbook case where everyone who knew the teen said he was a quiet kid who had never done a violent thing in his life.

Until one night in early September 1988, when he blew both of his parents away with his father’s shotgun in the Long Island town of Cedarhurst.