These things happen, though. Not all at once. But bit by bit, moment by moment, choice by choice. There are pieces of yourself that once you give away, you can never get back again. – Victoria Oliver
Live To Tell, the fourth novel by Lisa Gardner featuring Boston PD detective D. D. Warren, opens with Warren being called out to the scene of a horrific mass murder; an entire family is dead, the wife and three kids apparently killed by the husband before he shot himself in the head.
Something about the case doesn’t feel quite right to Warren, but before she can identify what it is another family is killed, also in an apparent mass murder-suicide scenario. This time, however, the autopsy is conclusive: the husband was dead before the supposed self-inflicted gunshot was fired. Someone else killed these families.
Warren’s quest to find out who really committed the brutal murders and how – if at all – they were connected leads her to a pediatric psych ward that specializes in mentally unbalanced children who’ve displayed violence toward themselves or others.
Turns out both families had a child who had spent time there. Yet, in both cases the violent child was one of the murder victims, so what other connection could there be?