Daniel Abbott’s ancestors were among Birmingham founders. Old money. Powerful. Something else to look forward to in this investigation—heavy media coverage and pressure from the department hierarchy. Not unlike last month’s homicide investigation of the councilor that turned out to be a suicide for hire. The councilor had hidden his mental illness his entire adult life. Not even his wife understood the demons he had fought far too often for far too long. Rather than continue suffering in silence, and not wanting his family to endure the fallout of taking his own life, Hayden had hired someone to kill him. Made for a better payout from the insurance company too.

Ultimately things had gone exactly as he’d planned, except for his one mistake: never go cheap when hiring a hit man.

Kerri considered the first victim in her new case. Ben Abbott was handsome. He looked younger than forty. Short dark hair. Fit and tanned. The hole in the center of his forehead left no question as to how he had died. His eyes were closed, his chest was bare. The sheet was folded back at his waist, as if he’d only just crawled into bed. He could be asleep if not for the damage to his forehead and the lividity along his back and the underside of his arms, which lay at his sides. No sign of a struggle.

For the moment, Kerri ignored the blood on the other side of the bed. Boswell had taught her to focus on one element at a time, absorb all the details before moving on to the next element. His number one rule had been simple: the most important aspect of a homicide scene was the body or bodies; all else was secondary.

Kerri crouched next to the bed. She manipulated the fingers of the vic’s right hand and moved the arm. Fingers were rigid, but no stiffening in the larger muscles. He’d been dead only a few hours.

“Looks as if he was shot in his sleep.”

Matthews nodded. “The old lady upstairs wasn’t so lucky.”

Kerri grimaced, her mind immediately conjuring the images of a hard-fought struggle to stay alive. She picked up the framed photograph on Abbott’s nightstand. The woman in the photo had long black hair and wide gray eyes. Her smile was warm. She looked young, physically fit, and happy.

“What about the wife?” Kerri stood and looked to Matthews. Presumably the blood on the other side of the bed belonged to the woman in the photograph.

“Sela Rollins Abbott. Twenty-eight,” Matthews said. “According to the housekeeper, the couple started dating about a year and a half ago. Married a few weeks later. The wife has a ton of awards showcased in the husband’s home office for all the charity work she’s done since moving to Birmingham. It’s like a shrine to some saint or something.”

Matthews shrugged as she went on. “We haven’t found her body yet, but she must have been in the house when the shooter came in.” She gestured to the other side of the bed, where blood had soaked into the linens. “Obviously that blood didn’t come from the husband. Her glasses and cell phone are on the bedside table, robe’s in the chair. And if you check the master bath, you’ll find her empty retainer case next to one of the sinks.”

“How can you be sure it’s her retainer case? Could be the dead guy’s,” Falco piped up.

Kerri resisted the urge to sigh at how he phrased the query. His question was a valid one even if it did raise doubts about the ability of a good cop to analyze a scene. She made a mental note to talk to him about communication skills. MID was under close scrutiny. It was important to be seen as team players all the way but particularly when working with the local cops in each jurisdiction.

Matthews stared at him for a moment before answering. “It’s pink and has a sticker on it that says Wife.”

Kerri bit back a smile. “You’re thinking the shooter took Mrs. Abbott with him.”

“We haven’t found her body, which suggests as much. That said, unless the forensic guys spot something with luminol that I missed, I haven’t found a blood trail—not even a drop—to indicate a hemorrhaging victim was hauled out of here.”

“He may have wrapped her in something.” Kerri looked around. “A throw or quilt.”

When she moved away from the bed, Falco crouched next to the dead husband and had a closer look. “I’m betting it was a .22,” he announced. He stood and nodded toward the victim. “Hard-contact wound. Whoever did this pressed the muzzle against his skull. This was up close and personal, Devlin. By someone who knew what he was doing. He didn’t hesitate, or the vic would’ve woke up, opened his eyes.” Falco shook his head. “No hesitation at all. Our shooter walked up and tapped him without so much as a blink.”

“Looks that way,” Kerri agreed, “but we’ll see what the crime scene folks and the ME have to say before we make any final conclusions.” Investigative procedures needed to be followed for a reason. Something else she’d learned from Boswell. Never conclude anything too quickly, and leave room for adjustments; otherwise you might miss an important detail that didn’t fit neatly into your initial conclusion.

“Were the french doors open when you first arrived on the scene?” Falco asked, not put off by Kerri’s reminder of protocol.

Matthews nodded. “They were. No sign of forced entry, though. No alarm triggered. I checked with the company monitoring the security system, and they said the system was disarmed at five this morning. Cameras were disabled weeks ago. No one had bothered to reactivate them.”

Had the wife awakened that morning, disarmed the security system, and opened the french doors only to find an intruder? Or had the wife exited through those doors after murdering her husband and mother? Had the mother wounded her in their struggle? But then how had the blood gotten on the bed down here in the master suite?

Maybe the mother-in-law hadn’t been happy with her daughter’s husband and had shot him, and her daughter had been injured in the ensuing struggle.

If the shooter was the wife, there was always the possibility that after the struggle with her mother, remorse had brought her back to the bed next to her husband for a few minutes, long enough to bleed on the sheets. People did strange things when they went over an edge. Even those who had no mental incapacity often suffered a moment’s remorse after it was too late to change their minds.

Kerri had seen far too much in her seven years to doubt the possibility just because the missing woman was the daughter of one of the vics or because she was injured herself. People did bad things. Sometimes those people were good people—maybe even saints—who for whatever reason snapped. Life could be like that. But there were other, more probable possibilities to rule out first.

Kerri took another look around the room. “What about jewelry? Cash?”

Matthews indicated the door to the walk-in closet, which stood open. “There’s a huge jewelry box—more like a small bureau—in there full of dazzling pieces. The wife’s purse is lying on top of it. Credit cards and cash inside. The husband’s wallet is there as well. Credit cards and cash inside, just like the wife’s.”

“Makes it hard to point to robbery,” Falco said from where he stood near the open french doors.

Definitely, Kerri agreed. To Matthews, she said, “Let’s see the second victim.”

“This way.” Matthews jerked her head toward the door.

Kerri followed her back to the front hall and up the stairs. By the time they arrived at the second-floor landing, Falco had caught up.

“I checked outside,” he said to Kerri. “The deck off the master overlooks the backyard. Steps lead down to a stone walkway. The ground is covered with that extrathick grass and mulched landscape beds. We won’t be finding any shoe prints back there.”

Kerri wasn’t surprised. With a property like this one, there wouldn’t be any barren areas where a shoe print might be found. There were times when an ultralush landscape was not their friend.

Upstairs there was a den and three more bedrooms, each with a private en suite. The first bedroom was that of the second victim.

“This is the mother-in-law’s room. Jacqueline Rollins,” Matthews said, hesitating before entering the room. “Seventy years old. She moved in with the couple right after their honeymoon. She obviously had a number of health issues. There are some serious prescriptions on the bedside table. I’m no doctor, but”—Matthews gestured for Kerri to go on in—“my father died of lung cancer. I recognize some of the meds. Whatever she had, it wasn’t pleasant.”

Kerri stopped in the center of the room and surveyed the space. The room smelled of disinfectant, like a freshly cleaned hospital room. The walls were painted a calming hue of blue. Several watercolor prints of the beach and the ocean adorned the wall. As Matthews had said, an array of prescription bottles sat on the bedside table. A walker stood next to the bed. The covers were tousled. But there was no victim.

Kerri’s gaze wandered to an open door that provided a slanted view of the en suite. “The vic in the bathroom?”

Matthews jerked her head toward the door. “In the next room.”

Judging by the expression on her face, there was more to this ugly story.