Rocky cocked his head, eyeing me. "Earth to Kate...?"

"What?" I asked, drawing my thoughts back to the present.

"I asked if you think that's a note by the gun or more lipstick prints?"

"Sorry," I said. "Thinking about something else." I looked at the white square on the floorboard near the male victim's fingertips. "Could be a note. Definitely not tissue."

"Any idea who her friend is?"

"Not a clue. Like I said, I haven't seen her in a few years."

"Tremayne. Where have I heard that name?"

"Her father ran for District Supervisor a few years back."

"That's where I heard it. Wasn't he the front-runner, dropped out all of a sudden because of bad health or something?"

"That's him."

"So what was the real scoop?" he asked, as we strolled over to where one of the crime scene techs was doling out coffee from a thermos.

"The real scoop?"

"Yeah. Why'd he really drop out? Someone got something on him, right?" he asked, handing me a Styrofoam cup.

"I wouldn't know," I said, hoping he'd leave it at that. I sipped at the too-strong brew, trying not to grimace over the taste, and was grateful when one of the CSIs called out that it was a suicide note on the floorboard by the gun. Rocky immediately went over to see, and I followed.

Once it was photographed at every angle, the CSI lifted it out with gloved hands to let us have a look, and Rocky read it aloud. "'Sorry it had to end this way.' Signed, 'Josh.'" He shrugged. "That makes it nice and tidy. Or it will once the ME confirms it."

"You have doubts?" the CSI asked.

"You know what they say. It ain't over-" Rocky stopped, looked at me, apparently noticed I was a million miles away and put his arm around my shoulder. "What are you thinking about?" he asked me as I stared at the steam rising from my cup.

"Making the notifications." I hadn't seen the Tremaynes in years. They'd be devastated and I wasn't sure if I wanted to be the one to tell them. I didn't want them to ask why I had suddenly dropped from Eve's life -- I didn't want anyone to ask -- and wondered if I could be taken off the case. But I knew my duty. "We should probably contact her parents first," I said.

Several minutes later Rocky dropped off his car at the Hall and I picked him up there before heading out to the Tremaynes, worried about how Eve's mother would receive me. I'd always felt that she barely tolerated my presence, that I was not the sort she wanted for her daughter's friend. Eve's father was a different story, however, making me feel welcome. He'd always called me his "other daughter" -- not that it mattered now. I had cut off all ties to the Tremaynes, and to my relief, Eve's parents weren't home.

"The grandmother's?" Rocky asked.

I looked at my watch. Almost two A.M., which translated to oh-dark-thirty in cop talk -- anytime after midnight. "That's about our only alternative," I said.

Our drive took about five minutes, a time any commuter would kill for during daylight hours. A patrol car was blacked out and parked about a half block down the hill, the officers having kept an eye on the place from the initial call and finding the vehicle with the bodies. Rocky turned off his headlights as we pulled up beside the officers' car and identified ourselves.

"Nothing moving since we got here," the driver said. His face was shadowed in the confines of the patrol car so that it appeared I was talking to a silhouette.

"What time was that?" I asked.

"Maybe around twenty-three-thirty hours?" he said, turning to his partner, who nodded.

I wrote down the time for our report. "You mind coming up while we check on the premises?" Not that I expected any trouble from Mrs. Harrington, but I didn't want to be mistaken for a prowler. People tended to panic at night, bring out the heavy artillery if they don't see a uniform.

"Not a problem."

We parked about two buildings down and walked up with the younger officer, P. Worth, according to his name tag, and a rookie according to his face. He looked barely old enough to drive. His partner, an older white-haired man, followed, and I quickly went over the situation with the officers as we approached, at the same time contemplating how to tell Mrs. Harrington that her granddaughter was the victim of a murder-suicide.

It was not an easy thing to do with someone you didn't know very well. My past with Eve made it more difficult. Perhaps for selfish reasons I didn't want anything dredged up, questions as to why I had cut myself off from Eve so suddenly all those years ago. If I was lucky, I told myself, Mrs. Harrington wouldn't be home either.

I'd been to her house before, two stories that from the architecture and smooth plastered siding appeared to have been constructed in the 1920s or '30s. A hedge of boxwood surrounded a sundial amid a bed of flowers, giving the place the illusion of having a front yard.

I'd shared Thanksgiving dinner here and recalled how sweet Mrs. Harrington had been, which made me realize that I didn't want to appear at her door with what must surely look like an army of cops. I asked Ramirez, the older officer, to wait outside by the garage with Rocky while Worth accompanied me. We stood on either side of the door, a practice ingrained on us from day one, basic officer safety. I rang the bell just as I had all those years ago, when Eve had invited me on a whim to stop by on my lunch hour because I was on duty that Thanksgiving.

Hearing nothing, I pressed the doorbell again and waited, almost anxiously, wishing that Shipley and Zimmerman had been on call this week instead of me.

"Maybe it's out of order," Worth said.

"Maybe," I said, rapping sharply on the wood panel. The first knock caused the door to push slightly open, bringing with it the sound of the TV droning on in the background.

Definitely not a good sign.

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