Bigelow called from the living room, "Hey, Frank-"

Padilla stepped back through the door. The rooms were bright now because Bigelow had turned on the lights.

"Frank, look at this."

Bigelow pointed to the floor.

In the light, Padilla saw little hourglass smears pressed into the carpet; tiny shapes that Padilla studied until he realized they were footprints. These footprints circled the bodies, tracking from the woman to the man, then into the kitchen and out again, around and around each body. The prints led into the hall toward the bedrooms.

Padilla stepped past Bigelow along the hall. The footprints faded, grew dim, and then vanished at the final door. Padilla stepped into the dark room, his mouth dry, and Hashed the room with his flashlight before turning on the lights.

"My name is Frank Padilla. I'm a policeman. I'm here to help."

The little girl sat on the floor at the foot of her bed with her back to the wall. She held a soiled pillowcase to her nose as she sucked her index finger. Padilla would always remember that-she sucked the index finger, not the thumb. She stared straight ahead, her mouth working as she sucked. Dried blood crusted her feet. She could not have been more than four years old.

"Honey?"

Bigelow came up behind him, stepping past to see the girl.

"Jesus, you want me to call?"

"We need an ambulance and Social Services and the detectives. Tell them we have a multiple homicide, and a little girl."

"Is she okay?"

"Call. Don't let the people outside near the house, and don't let them hear you. Don't answer their questions. Close the front door on your way out so they can't see."

Bigelow hurried away.

Frank Padilla holstered his weapon and stepped into the room. He smiled at the little girl, but she didn't look at him. She was a very small girl with knobby knees and wide black eyes and blood smudges on her face. Padilla wanted to go to her and hold her the way he would hold his own daughter, but he didn't want to scare her, so he did not approach. She was calm. Better for her to remain calm.

"It's okay, honey. It's going to be okay. You're safe now."

He didn't know if she heard him or not.

Frank Padilla stood looking at the tiny child in the bloody house with the miniature footprints she made as she walked from her mother to her father to her brother, unable to wake them, going from one to the other, circling through red shallows like a child lost at the shores of a lake until she finally returned to her room to hide in plain sight against the wall. He wondered what had happened to the little girl and what she had seen. Now, she stared at nothing, nursing her finger like a pacifier. He wondered if she still wore a diaper and if the diaper needed changing. Four was old for a diaper. He wondered what she was thinking. She was only four. Maybe she didn't know.

When the first team of detectives arrived, Padilla agreed to stay with the little girl in her room. Everyone thought staying in her own room would be better than having her wait for the social workers in a radio car. They closed the door. More detectives arrived, along with several patrol cars, two Coroner Investigators, and a team of criminalists from the Sheriffs. Padilla heard car doors slam and men moving in and around the house and voices. A helicopter circled overhead, then was gone. Padilla hoped the perp would be found hiding in a garbage can or under a car so he could get in a couple of hard shots before they hauled the sonofabitch away. That would be sweet, two jawbreakers right in the teeth, pow pow, feel the gums come apart, but Padilla was here with the little girl and that would never happen.

Once while they waited, Max Alvarez, who was the senior homicide investigator and Padilla's wife's uncle, eased open the door. Alvarez had thirty-two years on the job, twenty-four on South Bureau Homicide in Los Angeles plus another eight in Temecula.

Alvarez spoke softly. He had seven children, all of them now grown and most with families of their own.

"She okay?"

Padilla nodded, fearful that speaking might disturb her.

"How about you?"

Padilla only nodded again.

"Okay, you need a break, let us know. The social workers are on their way. Ten minutes, tops."

Padilla was relieved when Alvarez left. Part of him wanted to do the cop work of finding the perps, but more of him had assumed the role of protecting the little girl. She was calm, so protecting her meant preserving her calm, though he worried about what might be happening in that little head. Maybe her being so calm was bad. Maybe a child like this shouldn't be calm after what happened.

Two hours and twelve minutes after Padilla and Bigelow entered the house, field workers from the Department of Social Services Juvenile Division arrived, two women in business suits who spoke softly and had nice smiles. The little girl went with them as easily as if she was going to school, letting one of the women carry her with the woman's jacket covering her head so she wouldn't see the carnage again. Padilla followed them out, and found Alvarez in the front yard. Alvarez's face was greasy from the heat and his sleeves were rolled. Padilla stood with him to watch the social workers buckle the little girl into their car.

"How's it look?"

"Robbery that got outta hand, most likely. We got the murder weapon, a baseball bat they dropped behind the garage, and a couple of shoe prints, but we're not drowning in evidence. And the interviews so far, nothing, no one saw anything."

Padilla studied Katherine Torres and the civilians who still lined the street. Padilla wasn't a detective but he had seen enough crime scenes to understand this was bad. The first few hours after a homicide were critical; witnesses who knew something tended to step forward.

"That's bullshit. Workday like this, all these women and kids at home, they had to hear something."

"You think wits always got something to say, you've been watching too much television. I worked a case in L.A., some asshole stabbed his wife twenty-six times at eight P.M. on a Thursday night, them living on the second floor of a three-story building. This woman, her blood trail started in the bedroom and went all the way to the hall outside their front door, the woman dragging herself all that way, screaming her head off, and not one other tenant heard. I interviewed those people. They weren't lying. Forty-one people at home that night, having dinner, watching TV, doing what people do, and no one heard. That's just the way it is. These people who were killed in here, maybe all three of them were screaming their asses off, but no one heard because a jet was passing or some mutt was barking or the fuckin' Price Is Right was on television, or maybe it just happened too damned fast. That's my call. It happened so fast nobody knew what to do and it never even occurred to them to scream. What the fuck. You can't say why people do anything."

Alvarez seemed both pissed off and spent after that, so Padilla let it ride. The social workers got themselves buckled in, and started their car.

"Why you think they didn't kill the little girl?"

"I don't know. Maybe they figured she couldn't finger them, her being so little, but my guess right now is they didn't see her. The way her footprints lead back to her room, she was probably in there sleeping or playing when it happened and they left before she came out. We'll let the psychologists talk to her about that. You never know. We get lucky, maybe she saw everything and can tell us exactly what happened and who did the deed. If she can't, then maybe we'll never know. That's the way it is with murder. Sometimes you never know. I gotta get back to work."

Alvarez joined another detective and the two of them walked around the side of the house. Padilla didn't want to go back to work; he wanted to go home, take a shower, then drink a cold beer in his backyard with his wife while his children watched television inside, but, instead, he stood and watched.