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think he did
it?"
    "I don't know that he did. Imagine
someone you've been close to for years waking up one morning and
saying something like, Hey, today's a good
day to kill everyone I love. It doesn't
happen." I bit my lip. "I mean, it's not supposed to
happen."
    Mary turned in her chair and
opened a file cabinet. "I have a story for you," she said, sliding
files back and forth. "I wrote it back when Mr. McDonger was in
charge around here. Ah, here it is." She turned back to me and
placed a laminated front page article on her desk. The featured
picture was of an alley crisscrossed with yellow police tape, the
red brick buildings had taken on a slight blue grow from the light
of the police cruisers parked on the street.
    I picked up the laminate, but Mary
had already begun telling me the story. Her eyes seemed focused on
something far away, so I placed it back on her desk and
listened.
    "A few years ago," she said,
"Natasha Banders, a woman living in Baltimore City, called the
police to report her daughter missing from a crib. The detectives
found a broken pane of glass on the back door. Less than three
hours later, the dogs found her daughter's body in a
dumpster.
    "She had been tortured, Jon.
Sodomized with a hot curling iron, then strangled. I was there
covering the story. I don't have the words to describe the woman's
agony as the police pulled the baby from the garbage.
    " 'My
little girl! Oh god, someone murdered my little girl!' Rage filled her eyes, and she screamed, 'I'll kill you! Come out'n face me. I'll slit
your throat.'
    "Then she ran up to random
bystanders and yelled in their faces, 'was
it you? I know it was you!' She went on
like that, absolutely hysterical, until one of the officers wrapped
a blanket around her shoulders and pulled her away from the crime
scene.
    "I felt her pain, every ounce. We
all did. The horror she was going through, the terror the little
girl had suffered….
    "No one deserves that. This
well-liked community woman had gone to work at the docks each
morning to help feed her family. She had no enemies. She never had
a run-in with the law. Why her? What could she have done to deserve
the wrath of a monster?
    "The worst part…a week later, when
the police discovered a Chinese restaurant had installed a camera
to watch the alley, it was Mrs. Banders who had dumped her
daughter's body…. So don't blame yourself. Anyone can be
fooled."
    We sat in silence for a while,
then I finally said, "I'm not blaming myself."
    Of course I did. If Taylor had
been harboring murderous thoughts his whole life, or if he had
slipped into insanity during the war, I should've noticed. I
should've protected his family. Their deaths were on me.
    Mary reached across her desk and
put her hand on mine. "Hey?"
    "Yeah?"
    "I might be wrong. Like you said,
maybe someone set him up."
    "But I'm the only one the police
are looking at. Most of them are convinced I'm a
killer."
    Mary nodded. She looked at me much
the same way that Yang had looked at me in the morgue—with hunger
in her eyes. "Well," she said, smiling slightly, "now that would be
a story."

 
    SECTION IV - ATTEND
FUNERAL

     
    The Naval Station's legal department had finally
confirmed that they had Taylor's will on file.
    As stated in The Death Agreement,
his will had been adjusted, the change small. In the event no
immediate family members survived, I would become the executor of
the estate. That meant I became responsible for burying my best
friend, who may or may not have murdered his family.
    Once I had Taylor's will in hand,
I used it as proof to get his body released and delivered to
Hardesty's Funeral Home. The funeral director needed a day to
prepare, which was fine because I had other important duties
requiring my attention. You see, the executor takes on the
responsibility of asset dissolution. Because Lorie died before
Taylor, he inherited everything, and since the rest of Taylor's
family was also deceased, the whole estate went to me.
    This, of