Being the senior officer, Jurek assumed command, making notes of the time, weather, who was present, and getting debriefed by Meyer. The rookie cop’s face was ashen, his voice shaky. Connie Tullock was still alive, Meyer told him. She’d been rushed to the regional trauma center in Alden but the paramedics doubted she would make it.

Jurek then talked separately with Lander and Penner, getting initial statements as Constable Danny Dufrense arrived to help. Jurek assigned him to seal the property and to park his patrol car across the driveway’s entrance. Meyer had already cleared the house. “No one in there but the deceased,” he said.

Jurek slipped on hooded and booted coveralls, tugged on skintight nitrile gloves, got his digital camera and clipboard, then entered the house, steeling himself for what was inside.

As a boy growing up on his parents’ farm in southern Manitoba, Jurek had seen things that stayed with him. Like what coyotes did to chickens, or the time he watched an owl eat a gopher struggling for its life. When he became a soldier, he’d seen what conflicts did during his tours in Bosnia and Africa. As a cop in Eternity, he’d seen the bloated bodies of drowning victims, fire victims burned so badly you couldn’t tell if they were male or female. In traffic accidents he’d seen men, women and children, entwined in metal, their blood dripping onto the pavement.

Walking through the crime scene, Jurek now saw a whole new level of horror that would haunt him for the rest of his life, as if evil had rampaged through the Tullock home. He took pictures, made notes and sketches as he studied the main floor before proceeding upstairs and concentrating on the message left on the wall.

KILL THEM ALL.

What was the significance? He took more pictures, then made more notes, stopping to steady himself as the extent of the horror caught up with him.

Then he noticed smears, smudges on the floor, and followed a faint blood trail down into the basement that led to a window that was not fully closed. He examined it thinking it was likely a point of entry and exit.

When he stepped outside, Jurek called Abe Atkin, the chief, and told him what they had. Atkin, who’d attended Roy and Connie’s wedding, released a groaned curse before asking: “Was there anything else besides that message?”

“A blood trail, an unlocked window. We need to process the scene.”

“All right, I’ll be there soon. We’ll likely have to turn this over to the Mounties. I’ll take care of that. We’ll set up a case status, hand-over meeting for first thing tomorrow.”

“We can handle this, Abe. We’ve trained for it. We can lead it. This is our town.”