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There was always a push-pull between them. An intellectual tug-of-war.
    Duff took the clipboard down from the wall and read the stapled information sheet, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay, Charlie. Run it by me again.”
    “All three victims have defensive cuts to the hands, face and forearms…”
    “Hold it right there.” His eyes narrowed skeptically. “That could easily be attributed to shattered glass. You crouch in a defensive position, arms across your face, when the windows explode. That would explain those cuts.”
    “We found blood in the downstairs hallway. Blood on the couch cushions and mattress they were using to protect themselves with.”
    “Again, cuts and abrasions from shattered glass. Flying debris blown into the house through numerous broken windows, open doors and that great big hole in the roof.”
    “What about the sliding marks on the stairs?”
    Duff shrugged. “Maybe Jenna and Danielle got injured, and Rob dragged them upstairs. We do strange things when we’re scared. That’s why it’s called ‘scared out of our wits.’”
    Charlie wasn’t buying it. “What about the scrape marks on Rob’s back? If he dragged the other two upstairs, then how’d he get those?”
    Duff sighed noisily. “You bring up some good points, Charlie. I’m not saying this isn’t a mystery. But tornadoes have been known to do some pretty weird things. For instance, several years ago in Kansas, this tornado picks up a cake inside a house, carries it outside and sets it down so gently on the hood of the car it barely smears the icing. Coffee?”
    He shook his head. “Never drink the stuff down here.”
    “Why not? Because of the smell? Ah, you get used to it. Okay, fine, no coffee.” He put the clipboard back on its hook. “Let’s see what the autopsies tell us.”
    Charlie followed him over to Rob’s rotatable table, while Duff clipped a tape recorder to his belt and slipped on his headset. “Rob Pepper has sustained an impalement injury to the right side of the chest with a wooden projectile approximately two and a half feet long,” he dictated into the machine. “What appears to be a staircase baluster has entered the right side of the chest anteriorly and exited posteriorly. Right lung is lacerated and contused. Internal exam will further assess pulmonary parenchymal damage.” He paused a moment and stood tracing the line of his jaw with his fingers. “Remember the Oklahoma City tornado back in ’99? Plenty of penetrating trauma due to flying debris. Terrible. The nightmares I had about that one. I’m seeing the same type of injuries here, Charlie, only…”
    “Only what?”
    “Bear with me a moment.”
    It was getting hot down here in the basement. Charlie shrugged out of his jacket, while Duff slowly circled the table, his breath whistling through his nose. He had nose hairs or adenoids or something. The morgue’s narrow transom windows cast brilliant puddles of sunlight over the floor as the day moved into late afternoon. The small dissection tables rolled around on squeaky wheels and were used for cutting up and examining organs. Nearby was the hanging scale for weighing body parts, and a large tank on the floor collected fluids from each of the autopsy tables.
    Ripley Funeral Home, two years ago. Maddie lying on a gurney, dead of a brain tumor, the starched white sheets drawn up around her shoulders.
    “Maddie?”
    There was a long scar like a headband across the top of her head, which had been shaved for the operation; her cinnamon-colored hair had grown back in thick and dark. Strange as the flowers that’d blossomed in the rubble after Hiroshima. Thick and dark and ominous. A grieving cap of hair.
    “Maddie?”
    She hated people always asking, always thinking about the tumor. She didn’t want to discuss it, preferred to be just Charlie’s wife, Sophie’s mother. A normal person, not her illness.
    Charlie leaned over the gurney and for a moment didn’t feel