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tear, just worried about the baby.”
    Rutledge squinted at Cork. “The suspense is killing me.”
    “Suspense?” Cork said.
    “I’m dying to know what you were doing out here last night.”
    Cork explained the circumstances.
    “Buck Reinhardt,” Ed Larson said, as if it made perfect sense.
    “I know about the Reinhardt girl’s death,” Rutledge said. “Tell me about her father. Is he the kind of man who could do something like this?”
    Dross considered his question. “You have a daughter, Simon. If you believed someone was responsible for her death, think you might be capable of something like this?”
    Rutledge glanced at Cork. “You said you didn’t find him last night.”
    “That’s right.”
    Larson took off his wire-rims and carefully cleaned the lenses with a white handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “When I’m finished here, I’ll head over to the Reinhardt place, interview Buck.”
    “Might be a good idea if I went along,” Rutledge suggested. “You talk to Reinhardt, I’ll talk to his wife, see if we get the same story.”
    “Who else should we be talking to?” Dross asked.
    Larson said, “DEA’s convinced the Red Boyz are deep into the drug trade. Cold-blooded executions and drugs pretty much go hand in hand.”
    “Match made in hell,” Dross said. “Call DEA, Ed. Run this by them.”
    “What about the Red Boyz themselves?” Rutledge said. “Is it possible there’s a power struggle going on or some kind of ideological rift, anything that might have led to this?”
    They all looked to Cork.
    He held up his hands defensively. “It’s not like there’s a pipeline that runs between me and the Red Boyz. Don’t forget, I hauled some of them in as juveniles.”
    “You know their families,” Dross said.
    “I’ll do what I can, okay?”
    Larson slipped his wire-rims back on. “Marsha, did you tell Cork about the business at the back of the house?”
    “What business?” Cork said.
    “It’s what I wanted to show you.” Dross turned and led the way.
    They walked carefully through the yard, along a path Larson’s people had marked for entry and egress from the scene. In the high grass beyond the mowed edge of the backyard, deputies were still working. The bodies of Alexander and Rayette Kingbird were gone, but the long green blades of wild grass were still splashed with spatters of dark red.
    “Tom Conklin’s already at Nelson’s,” Dross said, speaking of the man contracted as medical examiner for the county. He did his autopsies in one of the prep rooms in the basement of Nelson’s Funeral Home. “He seemed pretty eager to get started. Turn around, Cork.”
    Cork turned and looked back at the house. “Jesus. Is that what I think it is?”
    “We’ve taken samples,” Larson said. “We’ll have them analyzed to be certain. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s blood.”
    Across the wall of the house, painted in large, ragged letters each a foot high and dried now to the color of old rust were the words DED BOYZ.

SEVEN
    A nnie O’Connor had learned how to cook from the best. For the first fifteen years of her life, most meals at the O’Connor house were prepared by her mother’s sister, Aunt Rose. Rose was a cook with an outstanding reputation, and Annie was an apt pupil. Though she preferred sports to most domestic pursuits, cooking appealed to Annie’s sense of order and, in a way, her enjoyment of competition. Since Aunt Rose had left—married and gone to Chicago—Annie regularly took a turn preparing the evening meal. Her father’s schedule was erratic, especially since he’d started his sideline business as a private investigator. He wasn’t an inspired cook, preferring to stick with the staples: mac and cheese, hot dogs, chili, sometimes a passable meat loaf. And once Sam’s Place opened for the season, he wouldn’t be home most evenings until very late. Her mother often worked long hours at her law office and had always been a cook with a