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"They say there isn't anybody. I don't think they ought to be left alone, though, so I guess I'll stay."
    Spencer Arrowood looked at his watch. It was a little past three o'clock, and he still had reports to write up, and a full day of bureaucratic details to attend to after sunup. He stifled a yawn. "Guess I could stay, too," he said. "Make sure everything's all right."
    "Can I go out to the kitchen? I thought I'd make some tea. Would you like some?"
    "I could use some, but are you sure you want to go traipsing through this house? We didn't clean it up, you know."
    Laura closed her eyes wearily. "I know," she said. "As soon as we finish drinking that tea, I thought I'd start on it."

CHAPTER 3
    The twelvemonth and a day being up,
    The dead began to speak: "Oh, who sits weeping on my grave,
    And will not let me sleep?"
    —"The Unquiet Grave"

    The medical examiner's report and the inquest that followed were both perfunctory. The Underhills had all died of close-range wounds from the same weapon, a shotgun, and paraffin tests indicated that the gunman had been the deceased adolescent son, Joshua Underhill, who had subsequently committed suicide.
    Representatives of the medical examiner's office had inspected the sheriff's diagrams of the crime scene, studying photographs of footprints and patterns of blood spatters on the walls of the farmhouse. As part of their final report on the case, they offered a reconstruction of the events that tallied with the first guess of the sheriff's department. Paul Underhill had died first, and judging from the front-entry shoulder wound, he had attempted to fight off his attacker. A horrifying chase through the house had ensued, leaving traces of blood in several rooms. Finally, another shotgun blast had slammed the retired major against the living-room wall, leaving gouts of blood that sent trickling arrows down to indicate his body, slumped against the baseboard.

    Where was Janet during all this? Hiding? Attempting to go for help? She had died last. To the sheriff's surprise, the medical examiner's office insisted that the second victim had been eight-year-old Simon Underhill, the mischievous blond in the family photograph. His head still lay on the pillow, and the stain of blackened blood and gray matter on the wall behind him indicated that he had not raised his head when the killer approached him. Sleeping. There was some mercy in that. The bottom sheet was soaked to the waist level with blood from the head wound, but below that it was perfectly clean. How then to explain blood on the child's hand, curled under his right thigh? Serum testing proved that this blood belonged to an animal. The report offered no speculation regarding this fact. The rabbit outside, Spencer Arrowood thought. Was that a coincidence, or did it mean something? Since Simon Underhill had been shot while asleep in bed, the sheriff had assumed that the child had been an afterthought for the killer, caught by haphazard in the momentum of slaughter.
    According to the medical examiner, Janet Underhill had been last. She was found a few feet from an open hall-closet door, lying facedown, shot in the back of the head at almost point-blank range. The killer had found her crouched in the closet, hiding behind the winter coats. He had dragged her out, throwing her facedown on the wooden floor of the hall. Putting his foot (bloodstained shoe print) on her shoulder blade, he had pointed the barrel of the gun at her head

    and fired. Not much of her cranial area was left: It had exited in one crimson swath straight in front of her.
    But this was her son, Spencer kept telling himself. What would make a boy do that to his family? Drug use? Mental illness? There was no record of either. A tox screen on Josh Underhill's blood sample tested negative for drugs. In cold blood, then. What had made him do it? In order to keep that secret, Josh Underhill had gone upstairs, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. He had gone to