The two detectives in the unmarked police car were riding in silence. Finally the passenger--Alan Sheridan--said, "I've never seen anything like that in my entire life."

The senior detective, Jacob Weidman, grunted. "You probably won't again, unless you're damn unlucky. We don't get all that much really messy stuff out here. Oh, we have our share of violence. Someone breaks a bottle and uses it in a bar brawl, a domestic incident gets nasty, a stick-up artist gets nervous... It happens." He shook his head. "But carnage like we found at the Bernard house? Hell, I've been working homicide here for almost ten years, and I haven't seen anything like that outside a car wreck."

"Are we going on the theory that the girl did it all?"

Weidman glanced at this partner. "Well, the housekeeper told us that the girl was unbalanced from childhood, and that she suspected that she'd attacked her father before."

"Stepfather."

Weidman shrugged as he pulled into the hospital parking lot. "Same difference."

"No," countered Alan. "There is a difference. Sometimes it's a big difference, and it looks like that's what it was here."

Weidman parked and shut off the engine, then sighed. "Yeah, you're right. I don't know why I said that--just habit, I guess." He turned in his seat to look at the younger man. "My father-in-law runs in the same social set as the Bernards. He's a pretty shrewd codger--he notices things." He bit his lip. "He said that if you saw Wallace and Maggie Bernard at a party with Kathleen, with the way he acted you'd have thought that the stepdaughter was the wife."

Alan grimaced. "Shit--one of those."

"People talk around it, but that's what it looks like. When they brought her in the doctor got her stabilized first, then pulled her old records, and had a look at them. He called me, instead of me having to hunt him down. He said that if Wallace Bernard wasn't already dead, I should be arresting him, and that if he thought he could manage it, he'd have the girl's old doctor up on ethics charges." Alan Sheridan had turned pale, and Weidman said quietly, "Don't let it get to you. There isn't a hell of a lot we can do about such situations. Either the kid has to come close to death, or you have to have an eye witness, at least when the perps belong to the so-called 'upper class'."

Alan's voice was hard. "I think that maybe the bastard got what he deserved."

"Maybe, but it isn't our decision, and it wasn't hers. And don't forget--two other people died. Though I have to admit, I've heard a few things about Lyons that make me suspect he might have helped bring it on himself."

"And the mother?"

Jacob shook his head. "I don't know, but I have to wonder how what I suspect could have gone on without her suspecting something. Still, that doesn't change the fact that we're going to have to build some sort of case against that girl, because there's no way she was just an innocent bystander. Let's go see if she's conscious."

They entered the hospital, and went to the information desk, paging Dr. Sandor Ellis. They waited a moment, and the attendant took a phone call, then told them that the doctor would meet them in the physicians' lounge. The lounge turned out to be a dimly lit room furnished with a couple of tables, some chairs, and a small sofa. The sofa was occupied by a young man in a bloodstained doctor's coat. He was stretched out with an arm across his eyes, snoring softly. The two detectives quietly helped themselves to coffee from the percolator on the counter, then Weidman started another pot. When Sheridan gave him a questioning look he explained, "There's one cardinal sin common to cops and doctors--taking the last cup, and not starting another pot of coffee."

They'd almost finished their coffee when Dr. Ellis entered the room. He was in his fifties, salt-and-pepper hair clipped in no nonsense style, and his pristine white coat covered an expensive suit. He nodded to them as he went to the counter. "Detectives." He gave a small smile as he poured a cup of coffee. Nodding toward the sleeping man, he said, "I know that Terry didn't make this, so thank you, gentlemen. I suggested we meet here because I knew Terry would be catching a few winks here, and I thought you might want to speak to the doctor who worked on her in emergency before I took her in surgery."

Ellis went over to the sofa and shook the young man's shoulder firmly. "Gilliam, the detectives are here."

The young man snorted, his arm dropping. He blinked rapidly, then sat up slowly, and accepted the cup of coffee offered by the older man. He said nothing till he'd drunk deeply, then he sighed, "Okay, I think my heart is started now." He rubbed at his eyes. "What time is it?"

"Almost nine."

"I got almost three hours of sleep."

"Damn," muttered Alan.

Terry nodded. "Yeah, I'm usually not that lucky." He drained the cup.

Ellis joined the detectives at the table. "Come on, son. Once you finish here, you can go home and catch some shut-eye before your evening shift." As Terry took a seat, Ellis said, "Gentlemen, I'd like to know how that young woman came to have a bullet in her shoulder, and a head wound that resulted in a cracked skull and took nearly a hundred stitches to close."

Both detectives took out notebooks and began to consult them. Jacob said, "That's what we're going to be trying to figure out, along with what happened to the two other vics we found with her."

Ellis made a dismissive gesture. "The dead don't concern me--you'll have to talk to the medical examiner about them."

"Well," said Alan, "From our preliminary observations and interviews, we have a rough theory of what happened."

"Very rough," said Jacob dryly. "The girl, Kathleen Bernard, was a runaway. She'd been on the road for a couple of years, and her parents had detectives looking for her. One of them tracked her down not too far away, and brought her home. The only surviving witness was downstairs when the incident happened. According to her, the girl went upstairs to meet with her stepfather. A short time later she heard the guy screaming, and the detective ran upstairs. There was a shot, a lot of noise, and then she heard the mother yelling, and another shot. She called us sometime during all this, but she had the good sense not to go investigate."

"We located her locked in her bedroom, and it took us a couple of hours to get any sense out of her," said Sheridan. "The first officers on the scene found three corpses--Wallace Bernard, his wife, Margaret, and a detective named Lyon. Cause of death hasn't been officially established for the three, but it was messy--really messy."

"It's pretty apparent that the woman had her brains knocked out with a poker," asserted Weidman. "I mean--given that she pretty much didn't have a back left to her head, and the poker was plastered with blood and brains. The two men, though, are a little harder to figure. We just know that there was a lot of physical damage--cutting or ripping."

"The older guy looked like someone had flailed him with a cat-o-nine tails that was tipped with fish hooks," blurted Sheridan. He shuddered. "And he looked like he was... missing parts."

Terry was looking pale. "That girl I treated..." He swallowed, then got up to get another cup of coffee.

"Spit it out," said Weidman. "It could be important."

Terry sat down again and drank, and they noticed that his hand was shaking. Dr. Ellis said sternly, "Terry, if you're going to be a doctor, you have to learn how to deal with all kinds of situations without losing your cool."

"I know that." Terry ran a hand over his face. "But I gotta tell you, doc--if I run into something else like this any time soon, I'm switching over to dentistry. The girl..." He frowned, snapping his fingers.

"Kathleen Bernard," Weidman supplied.

"Kathleen. I did triage on her wounds, got her stabilized till they could take her into surgery." He took a deep breath. "Okay, first off, she was all over blood, but I seriously doubt that all of it was hers."

"We'll check her clothing to see if there are different blood types," Weidman assured him.

"Yeah, I know. But her hands were coated, almost to the elbows, and there was what had to be skin and flesh under her nails." He blinked. "By the way, she has the fucking longest, sharpest nails I've ever seen."

"Well," said Sheridan, "we were pretty sure that she was involved in the other deaths."

Terry nodded. "You haven't heard all of it yet. She threw up while she was still unconscious, and I had to check to be sure her airway was clear, right? Well, there was blood and bits of flesh in her teeth." The other three men reacted, the youngest detective flinching, and even the other doctor paling. "I scraped up and bagged the vomit, and I really don't want to think about what your lab might find in it."

Weidman swore softly. "I don't know if I want to talk to this girl or not. I mean, I have to, and there's a sort of sick curiosity, but..."

"You won't have to worry about that for a little while, detective," said Dr. Ellis. "I checked her just before I came here, and she's still unconscious." He frowned. "And I must say that since she's restrained, I hardly see the need for the officer stationed outside her door."

"Doctor, your intern here just got through saying that it looks like the girl ate part of one of them. I'd say we're being damn lenient in not chaining her to the wall. When will we be able to talk to her?"

Dr. Ellis put his palms together in an almost praying gesture, then tapped his fingers against his mouth, thinking. "That's problematic."

"If we can't talk to her soon, it damn sure is a problem," said Weidman.

Ellis sighed. "Detective, if a patient remains unconscious for more than an hour, it is officially considered a coma. Miss Bernard should have come out from under anesthesia shortly after her surgery was completed last night. She hasn't. That's been..." he checked his watch, "more than ten hours. Granted she's been through severe physical and emotional trauma, so I wouldn't become really alarmed unless her breathing is compromised, or she doesn't regain awareness by this evening, but..." He shrugged. "You never know how these things are going to run. It may last hours, days, weeks... years."

Sheridan stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not. Not all physicians use morbid humor. If she continues to breathe on her own, with the use of a feeding tube, the young woman could live quite a long time as she is." He grimaced. "If you can call that living. If she doesn't come to by this afternoon, I'm having her hooked to an EEG, and we'll see what sort of brain activity she has. I may be able to tell you more then."

Weidman sighed. "Well, if we can't talk to her, there's really not much point in us being here. We'll be more useful in the field or at headquarters. There's a shit storm brewing over this. The Bernards were prominent in the community, but they weren't well liked." He stood, offering his hand to the doctor. "Keep us informed if anything breaks, and we'll check back soon."

They left, and the two doctors sat together silently for a few moments. Finally Terry looked over at the senior physician. "She isn't going to come out of it, is she?"

"We don't know that."

"No, but you can make a pretty good guess."

"She should wake up. The head wound is superficial, the fracture wasn't severe. There doesn't seem to be any brain injuries save for a possible concussion. There was no loss of respiration, and we took care of the blood loss before there was any chance of brain damage. The pupils are responsive, her vital signs are steady as a rock."

"But?"

The other doctor shrugged reluctantly. "I do have a feeling about this one. We'll probably never know exactly what happened at that house, but it was nasty." He leaned back in the chair. "Something that I didn't tell the detectives also weighs on my mind, but the connection is so tenuous I doubt they'd pay it much attention."

"What is it?"

Ellis rubbed his forehead. "Gossip, really. Rumor and innuendo. Speculation." He took a breath, then looked down at this fingers as he drummed them on the tabletop. "The Bernard family has a bit of a history of mental and emotional problems. Wallace Bernard, the stepfather of our patient, had a younger sister who committed suicide in a mental institution. She'd been in and out of private 'rest homes' since childhood, but she didn't have a history of self-destructive behavior, as far as I know. There was... talk."

"About what?"

Ellis looked at him, considering his words. Even now that the last of the Bernards had passed on, one didn't lightly speak words that could be considered slanderous. Finally he said delicately, "Some people believe that certain aspects of their family relations were inappropriate." The younger man stared at him blankly, and Ellis shook his head, saying, "You really do need to go get some more sleep. Some of the male members of the family might have been fond of some of the female members in a more than familial way." Terry blinked, then made a face. "Precisely. And that can engender all sorts of problems, which very seldom go away with time. In fact, they often spread, gathering in others." He took Terry's empty coffee cup and turned it slowly in his hands, staring down into it like a fortune teller trying to read tea leaves. "You know what I think, Terry? And if you mention this to anyone I'll tell them you were either too groggy to understand what I was saying, or you're hallucinating."

Terry smiled faintly. Ellis knew that anything he told him wouldn't leave the room. "What do you think?"

"I think that young woman may not wake up because she doesn't really have anything to come back to." He lifted troubled eyes to the intern. "I think she may not want to come back."