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over on Queen Anne. You know, that really steep hill, but Adam and Dougie go to the same school. McClure. They’re in junior high. I’m only in kindergarten now, but I’ll be big enough to be in first grade next year. Did you know that?”
    Hearing the ingenuous certainty in Junior Weston’s voice made me wish I could be a little kid again myself. No matter what terrible disasters might befall, kids exist in a plane where much of the future is known and predictable. At least children were free to believe it predictable. Junior Weston’s parents, siblings, and friend had been wiped out in the course of a single catastrophic night, but the boy moved forward with every confidence that next year he would shift automatically from kindergarten to first grade. And he was probably right.
    “Will I get to see my mommy and daddy?” Junior asked. “I saw Grammy after she was dead. She was in a long box with her good black dress on, her best church dress. There were lots of flowers. I thought she was sleeping. That’s what it looked like.”
    I doubted any amount of mortician’s art would ever restore the appearances of Shiree and Bonnie Weston. They would certainly need closed coffins. As a consequence, the others probably would be too. As if reading my mind, Big Al spoke. “No,” he answered firmly. “I don’t think so.”
    “Oh,” Junior Weston said. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired. Can I go home now? I want to go to bed.”
    The shift was abrupt but not surprising. A five-year-old’s attention span is only so long, and his understanding of the tragedy was as yet only skin-deep. It was fine to talk about people being dead and in heaven, but Junior Weston still had no real grasp of the fundamental changes that had transformed his young life. He was tired, with good reason, but he couldn’t go home and go to bed, not to the home and bed he had known, not ever again.
    “Someone’s gone to get your grandpa,” Big Al told him. “When he gets here, you’ll have to go home with him.”
    “Grampa’s coming here?” Junior asked incredulously. “How can he? He can’t drive, and it’s too far to walk. Besides, he doesn’t like this place.”
    “We’ll bring him here and then someone will take you both wherever he says.”
    “Oh,” Junior said again. “Okay.”
    He leaned back against Big Al’s shoulder and chest. Like a worn-out puppy, the boy closed his eyes. Within seconds he was sound asleep with one arm wrapped firmly around the teddy bear’s comforting neck.
    I had been taking notes fast and furiously. “You did a hell of a job with him, Al,” I said.
    Big Al Lindstrom nodded sadly. “Thanks,” he said. “He’s a pretty sharp kid. What’s next?”
    “You sit there with him for the time being and I’ll see what I can do about locating Adam Jackson’s mother. I’d like to get to her before someone else does.”
    “Right,” Big Al said. “I suppose I should call Molly, too.”
    But before either one of us had a chance to do anything, we heard a jumble of voices coming down the corridor. I looked up as Sergeant Watkins escorted a tall, stoop-shouldered black man into our cubicle. I would have known him anywhere as Ben Weston’s father. Harmon Weston was a thinner, older version of his son.
    “I’ve come for the boy,” he said without preamble, looking hard at Big Al Lindstrom through Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. “Has anybody told him yet?”
    “I did, Mr. Weston,” Big Al said. “I’m so sorry.”
    Harmon Weston nodded. “”All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.“ That’s what the Good Book says.”
    At first I didn’t understand that the old man was talking about his own son, but Big Al Lindstrom had been far closer to the Weston family, and he immediately recognized the scriptural quote as an attack on Ben. He fairly bristled.
    “That’s not fair,” he said quietly. “No matter what you think, Mr. Weston, your son was not a violent man. He wore a gun,