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or even if, it might fit.
    â€˜Shot came from just inside the kitchen door. Point blank. Bang!’ he said, kicking a louvred door open with his foot as they left the house through a side passageway and headed south once again.
    â€˜Jesus, O’Donnell,’ said Mannix. ‘What’s with the merry maze?’
    â€˜We need to approach from the side. The evidence guys are all over the blood spatter patterns near the back of the kitchen.’
    â€˜Okay,’ said Joe, as they rounded the back courtyard which led downto a terraced entertaining area. Big by anyone’s standards, but huge for a home in historic Beacon Hill – $4 mill-plus price tag or not.
    â€˜Where’s the family?’ asked Frank.
    O’Donnell shook his head. ‘That’s why I took you round the side way,’ he said, lifting his leg over a crouched crime scene worker huddled over a metallic case carrying fingerprint lifting powders and brushes. ‘This one, I swear, it has to be seen to be believed.’
    They reached the side bi-fold doors and stepped into the kitchen. The image before Joe and Frank nearly blew them away. The back wall of the room was covered in blood and other bodily chunks. The pool of blood on the floor was massive – Joe guessed over four litres – and was now congealing on the tasteful limestone floor. The kitchen benches were covered in spatter, the shiny stainless steel sink now patterned with deep red tracks of fluid that had hit and slithered down its squeaky clean sides. There was even a hole the size of a melon through the under-sink cupboard where a bullet had obviously passed before smashing through the double-brick wall behind.
    â€˜Jesus,’ said Joe.
    â€˜It gets worse,’ said O’Donnell, gesturing towards the middle of the room.
    Within seconds Joe could see he was right. The victim, Stephanie Tyler, was sitting on a white wicker chair, her entire body arched backwards so that her pale thin arms draped awkwardly over the sides of her chair. From behind, it looked like she had been pulverised, the hole between what would have been her shoulder blades at least the size of a soccer ball. The blast must have hit her in the chest from the front and had enough force to shoot her chair backwards at least four feet into the middle of the room.
    â€˜What the hell kind of calibre are we talking here, O’Donnell?’ asked Joe, blinking his eyes at a photographer’s flash before refocusing on the police sergeant before him.
    â€˜Not that I’m any expert, but Schiff, who knows a thing or two about this shit, tells me the .460 Weatherby is the most powerful calibre in the world. It, and the fancy customised rifles that fire it, are designed for those rich assholes who take pleasure in jumping a plane to Africa and facing off against charging elephants from less than a hundred feet away. The recoil on the bastard is something fierce.’
    Joe nodded, taking the information in.
    â€˜Where’s the family?’ asked Frank again.
    O’Donnell shook his head once more. ‘I told you this one was a doozy,’ he replied, before directing them around a cooking island and into the kitchen proper.
    â€˜They haven’t moved since we arrived,’ he said. ‘Doctor Jeff and his two kids refused to do so until he spoke to a detective of rank. To be honest, it has suited us fine, given their lack of movement is preserving the crime scene. Still, when you check this out you will wonder why the hell a father would . . .’
    And then they saw it. Three people sitting at the kitchen table – evening out the fourth who had been shot across the room like a rocket.
    Across from the mom, at the far end of the table, in front of the kitchen door, sat a young boy of no more than thirteen. His eyes were closed tight, his baggy white long-sleeved T-shirt singed at the shoulder and patterned with tiny spots of his mother’s