[As I'm getting into this I'm realizing I need more work on the B storyline, which'd be the whole death thing. There should be a chapter before this one where Stephanie's family is found, and some of the boring really needs to get removed from this. So we're going back in time a little. Whee! This 'wednesday' is the day before Joe is in on the interview with Stephanie]

Wednesday morning Chris Gagnon was sitting at his desk digging through the medical examiner's preliminary report on the O'Malley murders. It wasn't complete, since they were still waiting for the toxicology reports, but it was something to go on. The only witness they had was a terrified eight year old girl who wasn't in any shape to talk to them. By mutual consent Steve and Chris had decided not to push, but they couldn't hold off much longer.

He shook his head. Despite what TV showed, murders like this were rare. There were all sorts of ways that people killed each other, but some sort of ritual? That wasn't normal. Unfortunately it was bad, since these things weren't normally one-offs.

Chris was digging through the back files, looking for anything that might match. There wasn't much, locally. Normally a good thing, it meant there weren't all that many people getting killed in his town. For this, though, he'd almost welcome another case like it. Anything to give him more information.

He had this nagging feeling that it was related to the murders four months ago. A young couple was killed at the Wildbrook apartment complex. It had looked like a revenge killing of some sort