One final blow to the head, and Walter Anderson collapsed in a bloody heap to the floor, never to move again. The front door slammed shut behind him, cutting off the view of the cracked flagstone walk, the repairs of which would now be left to the new, future owners of the Anderson house.

"GET THOSE DAMN CAMERAS out of here!" Lieutenant Frederick Jonston had yelled that three times already, growing angrier each time. No one seemed to want to listen tonight.

One of the uniforms disengaged from crowd control and headed over to the cluster of reporters. A few other officers followed his lead. Together, they corralled the members of the press back behind the yellow sawhorses.

It was a zoo. At first Jonston had wanted to string up whoever had alerted the media by their eyeballs, but the detective found out after arriving on the scene that the press had received a cryptic phone call from the hostage takers themselves. Just as the police had.

"They still not answering?" Jonston asked the sergeant on the radiophone in the car next to him. "Nothing, Lieutenant."

Leaning on the open door of the squad car, Jonston looked at the house. Upper middle class. Neatly tended grounds. Nice neighborhood. He frowned.

Lights from the roofs of a dozen cruisers and the dashboards of as many unmarked cars sliced through the postmidnight darkness.

This hostage drama had gone on for four hours. If Jonston had his way, it would not go on another four.

He turned to the sergeant. "How long's it been?"

"More than twenty minutes."

That was the last time they'd heard from the men holding the Anderson family.

One of the hostage takers' victims was already dead. They had let the son-maybe seventeen years old-get as far as the front door before shooting him in the back of the head. There had been a lot of screaming inside after that.