“Like hell you are! You’re not on GIS, let alone Homicide, so get out of here and leave me to do my job.”

“Damn it, CC! These kids are family!”

“Forget it. Don’t blame me. It’s policy.”

They locked eyes and neither spoke.

Jack was the first to break the silence. “Have the bodies been formally identified yet?”

“Maybe they didn’t see the faces, I heard it’s pretty messy in there, but…”

“Policy wouldn’t consider that a proper ID. I can do that now. Or were you looking forward to watching their mom and dad do it?”

CC paused, then let out a sigh. “Okay. You win. ID the bodies and then go. Deal?”

Jack nodded, and CC rummaged inside her briefcase and handed him a pair of protectors to slip over his shoes.

CC gave Jack a hard look and said, “Remember, it’s not your investigation!”

“I hear you.”

CC flicked on a small tape recorder and cautiously entered. Jack stood at the entrance, looking in. He saw a kitchen, with a trail of blood across the floor to an open door on the far side. He resisted the urge to rush in. He watched CC practically hug the wall as she moved through the room, avoiding contact with anything someone else might have touched or walked upon. She talked as she went.

“Blood on the kitchen floor indicates two different sizes of footprints. Appear to be a man and a woman’s. Note, must seize the parents’ footwear.”

CC moved past the kitchen counter and studied the open door leading into the bedroom. “A door leading off the kitchen has numerous chunks and small round holes taken out of it. The pattern is similar to what a shotgun with heavy shot would do. Appears to be multiple blasts, maybe three or four. Entry point is on the kitchen side. No sign of shell casings.”

“CC!”

She clicked the recorder off. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your mouth shut! What is it?”

Jack indicated where some dust had been disturbed on the counter.

“So?” asked CC.

“Something slid across the counter. There are grains of powder in the dust! Brownish-grey. Bet it’s heroin or meth!”

CC bent over for a closer look, then said, “Maybe someone weighing drugs. I’ll have it looked at.” She then turned her recorder on and said, “Now, facing the entrance to the room off the kitchen. Inside is — Christ!”

CC shut off the recorder and stared into the room.

A voice in Jack’s head and an eruption of burning bile up his throat and into his mouth told him to get out of the building. But he didn’t listen. He swallowed, then slowly moved to the doorway and looked in.

Sunshine reflecting off splinters of mirror cast bright, rainbow-coloured images. Vibrations from their feet caused the images to dance and shimmer throughout the room. Shards of light flickered across red and pale-white flesh. It looked mystical. Surreal.

He felt the urge to run. To go back to his apartment and crawl into his closet and hide. Hide from Liz and Ben. Hide from this room. Hide from this world.

He paused in his thoughts and found himself staring at Ben Junior’s little hand. He thought back to a month previous. He had been roughhousing with Ben Junior out on the lawn. Ben Junior had pressed his tiny hand against Jack’s hand and said, “My hand will never be a big as yours, will it, Uncle Jack?” Jack had replied, “Someday. But mine is bigger now!” Then he’d grabbed Ben Junior, who had squealed with delight.

Jack forced himself back to the present. He felt numb as his brain tried to deal with what he saw. Please don’t be sick. Think meat. Maggie and Ben Junior are gone. This is just raw meat. Part of her rib … No! Part of the rib cage blown away … blood splatters … one of her fingers by my feet … but her body is halfway across the room. She was shot while standing behind the door. But her face! … Pieces of skull … she was shot in the face later. Ben Junior … executed from behind. Oh God! I can’t be sick. It’ll ruin evidence…. Maggie and Ben Junior … just meat.

He studied a bloody imprint of someone who had fallen in the bedroom, knocking over a pail of blackberries. A pattern of bloody hand marks with slender fingers extended across the floor from the imprint.

Blood tells a story. It was all too easy for Jack to read. Easy to read; impossible to erase. The tipped pail, the bloody imprint of an adult body with slender hands…

Liz fainted when she saw … and awoke next to the bodies of her children. Red streaks, like small railway tracks, snake their way between red palm prints. Liz was covered in blood. The fingers point into the room. Speckles of blood are partially obliterated by sliding palm prints. She broke her nose when she fainted and was dripping some of her own blood as she got to her knees, before crawling backwards out of the room. The railway streaks from her knees disappear, but red palm prints pepper the floor, along with red scuff marks made by her shoes. She tries to stand … feet slip on the linoleum … falls … gets to her feet.

Jack’s senses become alive. He is conscious that the hot summer sun has turned up the humidity. A musty odour … stifling hot. Rotten wood in the air … my tongue feels thick. Sound of flies. They’re buzzing everywhere. Evil sound.

Tracks from a workboot cover part of Liz’s footprints. Ben’s tracks. First Liz finds the bodies, and then Ben comes to check. Small red globules of blood are embossed between the thick tread marks left by his boots. The boot prints become farther apart. Ben is running, frantic to protect her from what he saw. He is too late. Too late to protect her — or himself.

Long red narrow streaks against the white enamel paint of the doorframe. Liz claws at the doorway as she tries to escape from the house.

A bluebottle fly with a fat hairy body crawled along the sticky blood on the doorjamb.

Jack stepped outside and the fly buzzed around his head, angry at being disturbed. It landed on his lip. He spit and mauled his lips with his fingers. The fly returned to the doorjamb.

I feel like I’ve tasted death. Is that possible? He spit again. The taste remained. It would remain in the fibres of his brain forever.

Jack handed his shoe protectors to CC. Neither spoke while she placed them in a plastic bag and filled out a label.

She looked at Jack. “Formal identification of…?”

“Margaret Anderson and her brother, Ben Anderson Jr. Yes, it’s them.”

CC glanced at her watch and made a notation in her notebook. “How they were shot will be hold-back information.”

Jack nodded silently, then walked back to the main road as an unmarked police car arrived with two more investigators, followed by a van belonging to the dog master. A wild-eyed German shepherd barked furiously from inside the van.

Jack knew that the bodies of Maggie and Ben Junior would haunt him for the rest of his life. It didn’t scare him as much as what he had to do next.

chapter three

Danny O’Reilly looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting poster for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as he stood outside the main entrance to the hotel in downtown Winnipeg. His red tunic was tailored to fit perfectly, and his deep brown leather riding boots equipped with silver spurs gleamed in the afternoon sun. He was shorter than most police officers, but it wasn’t too noticeable when he wore his riding boots.

Danny was looking forward to his transfer to the West Coast. It was no secret that he hated Public Relations. Today he was to open the door of a limousine when it arrived and salute the prime minister as he stepped out. A mannequin could have performed the same function. Any real threat or danger was to be handled by the plainclothes officers. Not that any serious threats had been identified.