“Gabe, come over to the house,” Mack said as he was talking on the phone to his cousin in the home office that Henni was normally in. “Is something wrong?” Gabe asked. “Just come over as soon as you can. I have to talk to you.” Mack said, and Henni walked in carrying their latest baby in her arms. She was not confused as she had an idea of what he was doing. When he hung up when Gabe said he was on his way and would be there in ten minutes, Mack could breathe a little easier. Though he still had no idea of how to actually break it to him. “Gabe or Matt?” Henni asked. “Gabe first. As much as I want to tell them together, I know Gabe will take it hard, and Matt will internalize it. They have to be separate, but we have to be ahead of the curve on this one. I agree. They need to know, and they should hear it from us and not the news.” Mack said, and she nodded. “I will get the kids upstairs. Either w

      ”Now I need to call the lead detective handling the case. I can’t in good faith not tell them all that happened in the past and everything in Matt’s disappearance.” Mack said as he sighed and leaned forward. “I also have to call our department and have them do a wellness check at his apartment.” “Shouldn’t we call his parents? Maybe this is a huge misunderstanding, and maybe one of us pissed him off, and he is taking a break from us.” Christian stated as he looked at everyone. Everyone knew he was grasping at straws. He was trying, though. They had to have some kind of hope to really deal with the events around them. “When has he ignored all of us when one of us pissed him off?” Gabe asked as he looked at Christian. “Look, man, I don’t want to think about it, but Mack’s reasoning is more on point than we want to admit. I don’t want to admit it either, but something isn’t right. I will call his parents, but

        “I see,” Henni said.  Henni dreaded the reports being brought to her via her work email. She was grateful they did not call her to do the actual autopsies. She did the video observation, though. So she still had those imagines in her mind. Though right now, she was trying to be clinical about everything.  She had worked on cases where she had known the person on the table before. This was different. “Are you holding up?” Mack asked as he walked into the house, knowing that she had been there to observe everything in the past three days. She hadn’t said much. She was still having a difficult time with processing everything to do with this. It was bringing up the past she had worked really hard to forget. “I am here,” Henni said. “They had to do DNA to identify Beth and Alisha. Their parents wouldn’t look at them.” “Why?” Mack asked, a little angry that someone could do this to their children

    “Why would that matter?” Henni asked as she looked at the two men. “A crime of passion often has lesser charges,” Mack said as he looked at his wife. “Because passion can blind you from the way you normally would act. It is like a temporary, momentary insanity. You can do many things if you have that extra bit.” “I see,” Henni said as she looked at the two. “We need to go over what he does know and what he doesn’t,” Max said as he looked at the two. “This is going to take a while.” “Then we should get started,” Henni said as she sat down and then started to thinking. She was filtering the conversations with Matt that she had and the ones she overheard Mack have with him. Soon she was listing the questions and the information that the two had given him. She was rather quick about it, and Max was even more impressed with the woman. He had recorded the whole thing as he knew he would need to go back and list

        Max Anderson stood in front of his class the next day. It was an intro to criminal science, but these kids were the next possible generation of the police force. He looked around to the fifty or so students, and though his eyes lingered on one for a few seconds longer, she wasn’t looking at him. She hadn’t since the day she got tongue-tied and almost ran out of the room. That was a few months ago. She had shown up to class, but he could see she was having trouble with some of the concepts. She would not come to get help, though. She wouldn’t put herself in a position to be alone with him again. At least he thought that was the reason. The lecture hall was full. He was hoping to use their brains. They would be the new set of eyes they needed to get through this case and sifting the big things from the small things. If Matt knew the procedures, it was time to throw th