Without answering, Christopher turned and ran back up the stairs. Tom followed after him, taking two steps at a time, and reached the hallway on the second floor. The boy was standing outside his parents’ bedroom, excitedly waving his hand toward the darkened room. Tom put his hands on Christopher’s shoulders and gently moved him aside as he gave the door a poke and it wobbled open. He took a few steps forward and then stopped at the threshold, frozen in place. There, in the stillness, the morning sunlight shone upon a crumpled mass of covers, saturated in blood. Next to the bed, splayed grotesquely across the floor, her head crowned by a pool of blood, lay Rachel Turner, motionless and obviously dead.

Tom looked at Christopher, whose trusting expression implied that he thought this grown-up would fix the bad thing that hurt his mommy. Schroeder shuddered as he glanced back over his shoulder, into the room, and then hurried Christopher down the stairs, babbling “everything will be all right,” because he had no idea what else to say.

His quivering fingers could barely find the numbers as he dialed 911.

“This is Tom Schroeder, I’m at the house of Danny and Rachel Turner,” he told the operator. “Something very bad has happened; we have an emergency; we need an ambulance; please send someone right away, right away.”

“Can you be more specific, sir? What is the address?’

His mind could not process the information. “Please, you must be able to trace the call; send someone immediately.” Finally the street popped into his head.

The dispatcher, in her trained noncommittal voice, assured him someone was already on the way. He turned to Christopher, who was standing passively at his side.

“Christopher, where is your dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s your brother, Chris? Where’s Evan?”

“I think he’s upstairs in his room.” With that he took off again, ran up the stairs, and stood in the hall, pointing into the room next to where Rachel lay.

“There he is!”

Praying he would find Evan sleeping soundly, Tom’s heart sank when he noticed a faint, bloody handprint on Christopher’s shoulder. He held the boy firmly to him as he looked into the bedroom to see Evan, lying on his back, his covers a deep purple, a dark red streak arcing up the wall behind his head. His face was almost unrecognizable. He did not need to enter to verify his condition. It suddenly dawned on Tom that whoever did this might still be in the house, and that, in any event, he had seen enough. With that, he scooped up Christopher and carried him outside, into his car. His smallness made the awful magnitude of the situation excruciatingly real.