Bruce sat in the easy chair in the den, waiting for the police and thinking. Upstairs there was silence, followed by fits of screaming and crying, followed by silence again. The two remaining pieces of this shattered family were dealing with their grief. They had moved to the guest room, leaving little Tommy’s body in the boys’ room to await the authorities.

He couldn’t get the picture of the body out of his head. The child had died from strangulation, but there had also been blood. Apparently Jeremy had stabbed his son through the stomach with a knitting needle, getting a good flow of blood going, painful but not fatal, before he had proceeded to squeeze the life out of his youngest offspring.

How could the man have done such a thing? It just didn’t make sense. Brainwashed? Some kind of demented extortion blackmail conspiracy? It was just too much of a coincidence that this had happened the same night as Theresa discovering Jeremy beat to a pulp, dumped in front of their house.

The sickest part, the image burned deepest in his mind, was of Jeremy with that big shit-eating grin spread across his face as he released the neck of the boy and dropped him to the ground just as Bruce & Theresa had burst into the room. Then he’d started laughing, eyes looking directly at them, but through them, seeing yet unseeing. And Jeremy had kept right on cackling maniacally as he smashed his way through the upstairs picture window, as he seemingly bounced off the concrete driveway 20 feet below, and as he ran off into the night.

How could someone so sick, so evil & demented, live in your midst for so long without giving away any clue as to his true nature? What kind of monster was so good at concealing itself that not even the ones it was intimate with had any notion of the evil festering below the surface?

In the middle of one of these desperate thoughts, the police and ambulance showed up, and Bruce was caught up in explanations, anguish, and all the requisite emotions of the situation yet again. The police quickly took charge of the scene, interviewing both Theresa and Jeff, analyzing the crime scene, and what not. Throughout all the procedures, Bruce’s mind could not let go of that vital question. How had such evil hidden itself for so long? It gave him a very defined chill, and he realized that he would never be the same again.