“What have we got so far?” I said to Fescoe and flashed my badge at a patrolman seemingly guarding an oak tree. Then I ducked under the bright yellow tape in front of the house. Beautiful house, a three-story Colonial on Cambridge Place, a well-heeled single block just south of Montrose Park.

    Neighbors and looky-loos crowded the sidewalk-but they stayed at a safe distance in their pajamas and robes, keeping up their white-collar reserve.

    “Family of five, all of them dead,” Fescoe repeated himself. “The name's Cox. Father, Reeve. Mother, Eleanor. Son, James. All on the first floor. Daughters, Nicole and Clara, on the third. There's blood everywhere. Looks like they were shot first. Then cut up pretty bad and piled into groupings.”

    Piled. I sure didn't like the sound of that. Not inside this lovely home. Not anywhere.

    “Senior officers on site? Who caught it?” I asked.

    “Detective Stone is upstairs. She's the one asked me to page you. ME's still on the way. Probably a couple of them. Christ, what a night.”

    “You've got that right.”

    Bree Stone was a bright star with the Violent Crimes branch, and one of the few detectives I went out of my way to partner with, pun intended, since she and I were a couple and had been for more than a year now.

    “Let Detective Stone know that I'm here,” I said. “I'm going to start downstairs and work my way up to where she is.”

    “Will do, sir. I'm on it.”

    Fescoe stuck with me up the porch steps and past an ALS tech working on the demolished front door and threshold.

    “Forced entry, of course,” Fescoe went on. He blushed, probably because he'd stated the obvious. “Plus, there's a hatch open to the roof on the third floor. Looks like they might have left that way.”

    “They?”

    “I'd say so-based on the amount of damage, whatever the hell happened in there. Never seen anything like it, sir. Listen, if there's anything else you need-”