“I’m afraid she did. Though Danny probably thought that one blow to the head would have been sufficient to kill her, it wasn’t. She apparently fought back with all her strength, and might even had been able to stand up, but Danny then used the knife he had taken from the kitchen and stabbed her. The knife was not very big, only around two inches long, so at some point Danny grabbed a pair of scissors off the sewing table and overpowered and stabbed Rachel with those.” Thompson was purposely withholding some information because he knew it would be too upsetting to the friends and family, and tried to move on.

“That’s the long and short of it. The—”

“Did Rachel at least not know it was Danny?” Carolyn interrupted, as her bar was lowered yet another notch.

“I’m afraid it’s almost certain she did. This struggle went on for several minutes, and even though we suppose the room was dark, she must have recognized his voice, and there’s no doubt there was a great deal of shouting between them, which is likely what caused the children to wake up. Many items in the immediate region were knocked to the floor, so there was clearly a pretty fierce struggle. Additionally, the victim had many defensive marks on her arms, and what we presume to be Danny’s skin under her fingernails. She was fighting for her life, and there’s no doubt she knew her attacker.”

“How long did it take?” Now Carolyn needed to know.

“Given the number of stab wounds, I would estimate more than a minute, but less than two minutes.”

Mitch spoke up, asking a question he had to ask, having to do with that odious word he’d just learned, “overkill.” Dreading the answer, he barely could form full sentences.

“Number of stab wounds? How many, where …?”

Thompson paused before answering, pretending to look through some papers. That particular fact had been the topic of much discussion between the officers at the crime scene, and it was emblazoned on his mind. “There were approximately forty stab wounds, some to the torso, but many to the face and neck.”

Sam and Pete leaned against each other as brothers will and wiped tears from their cheeks. The sounds of sniffling and nose-blowing filled the silence. Anna had thoughtfully placed a box of tissues within reach on the table. There was something about that last part of the last sentence that seemed to get to everyone. It was all too much. Anna, a reader of P. D. James, Patricia Cornwell, and Ann Rule, knew to ask about the piece of information Detective Thompson had glossed over.

“Officer, what was the official cause of death?”