Sherlock left the lights off as she walked through the downstairs—a living room, dining room, family room added on in the back of the house, and Dr. Madison’s study, all dignified burgundy leather with an art deco vibe. She saw labeled and numbered bloody shoe prints, black now, smeared into one another, as if the supposed robbers were confused about where to go, or wanted to seem so. She backtracked along the bloody prints to the kitchen where three people had died. Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen was newly remodeled, starkly modern. She’d seen photos of Mrs. Madison, both alive and dead. She’d been a comfortably plump older woman, rolling out dough for an apple pie at the counter, maybe hoping the crust would turn out flaky enough, when she turned at a sound, a voice perhaps, and Storin shot her in the face. Or had she? Had they argued before Storin shot her? Erased her face, erased her?

Sherlock saw Mrs. Madison had hit the counter as she fell, and the flour spewed upward. She bounced back and crashed to the ocher tiles, on her back, her face covered with bloody flour. She looked down to see gobs of flour still mixed with dried blood on the tiles where the wife had lain. A bowl of rotten apple slices still stood on the counter next to the blood-spattered pie dough. It looked obscene.

The frigid air still carried the taint of copper from all the blood, not surprising given the murders had happened only four weeks before, but the chemical smell that overlay it was heavier. How long would it take for those smells to sink into the walls and the floor, into the very bones of the house? Who would ever want to live here again? But of course, the horrific crime would either fade away or gain more gruesome proportions in the years to come.

Sherlock looked down at the chalk outlines of the three bodies, Mrs. Madison on her back, arms flung away from the body, Dr. Madison’s and Mr. La Shea’s bodies twisted because they’d hit either the center island or the stove when they’d fallen, both on their sides.

All that was left of three human beings were their white chalk outlines and the bloody flour. There wasn’t much near the two men. Sherlock knew Mrs. Madison was murdered before Dr. Madison had come home. Had Storin known Mrs. Madison was alone in the house?