“My father smashed a Thanksgiving platter over my head, then screamed, ‘LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!’—but six hours later, a doctor discovered something inside my head that my father had spent nearly 30 years convincing me never existed.”

At midnight on December tenth, the storm broke over Lancaster County, turning the streets into sheets of black ice.

Detective Vance called my cell phone while Marcus and I were sitting in the kitchen of the Duke Street house, watching the forensic teams pack up the last of the structural samples from the cellar.

"We have a problem," Vance said. The connection was bad, crackling with static from downed power lines along Route 222. "James’s attorney, Arthur Sterling, just filed an emergency motion for a writ of habeas corpus with the Superior Court in Harrisburg."

"On what grounds?" I asked, my skin prickling with cold dread.

"Chain of custody on the lead slug Mehta extracted," Vance said. "Sterling is arguing that Mehta contaminated the evidence during the craniotomy. He’s claiming Mehta used unsterilized non-magnetic titanium forceps that deposited trace lead onto an ordinary bone sequestrum. And that’s not all."

"What else, Paul?"

"Thomas Carter—the former police chief—died in a nursing home in Florida three hours ago. Before he died, he signed a sworn affidavit claiming that Margaret Carter was alive when she left Pennsylvania, that he spoke to her in Jacksonville in 1998, and that the remains in your cellar belong to a transient female who broke into the property during the ninety-four flood."

"That’s impossible," I said. "The charm bracelet had our initials."

"Sterling doesn't need it to be possible," Vance snapped. "He just needs reasonable doubt to secure bail before the murder indictment is formally returned on Monday. The judge on duty tonight is Judge Clarence Vance—Paul’s second cousin on his mother's side. James has dirt on half the judicial district from his surveyor days. He knows where every illegal septic field, every unrecorded easement, and every crooked boundary line is buried."

Before I could answer, the lights in the Duke Street house flickered twice and died.

The whole house plunged into pitch-black darkness.

Marcus stood up immediately, his flashlight beam slicing through the kitchen toward the back door. "The breaker didn't trip. The main feed from the street was cut."

Outside, through the heavy driving sleet, came the sound of heavy tires crunching over the iced gravel of the driveway. A set of headlights illuminated the frost on the kitchen window—not police cruisers, but the high, yellow halogens of an old Dodge Ram with a heavy utility bumper.

The engine idled with that deep, rhythmic clatter I had heard in my nightmares since I was four years old.

"He's not at Rockview," Marcus whispered, his hand going to the iron skillet on the counter. "Vance said he was in Rockview."

"No," I said, feeling the titanium plate behind my ear turn freezing cold against my scalp. "Sterling didn't file for bail. Sterling filed for an emergency medical transport."