"Okay. We're just not sure yet it's her, sorry."

They stood outside, "being eaten alive by the mosquitoes," George recalled. "We knew. But we just kept praying and praying and praying."

A kindhearted couple, as George described them, who lived nearby, invited George, Ann and Lelah into their home at some point so they could get out of the humid, oppressive weather and sit down for a moment with a glass of water. The three of them were dehydrated, running on adrenaline. They had no idea what time it was or how long they had been waiting.

It was near three o'clock in the morning when two investigators came out of the house, carrying something in a bag. George, Ann, and Lelah looked on as they approached; both men had serious looks on their faces.

George knew.

"We have something here," one of them said. "Yes, it is your daughter."

Rachael's wallet.

Ann fell backward to the ground and screamed so loud, George remembered, it hurt his ears. George caved in and began whimpering. Lelah kept slowly repeating, "No . . . no . . . no," almost in a whisper.

Confirmation. The worst result ever. Rachael's driver's license.

Ann and Lelah walked off after a time and got into the car; both women were shells of themselves, overcome with emotion, curled up, crying, now locked inside all that pain.

George stood and stared at the house.

I don't know what to do.

One of the investigators asked George if he was okay. George looked out of it, staggered and dazed. "A blubbering fool," he called himself later.

A statue.

"What do I do now?" George whispered to the investigator. He was crying.

"Mr. Koloroutis, you have to go home and take care of your family." The cop looked over toward the car where Ann and Lelah sat, waiting.

There was nothing more George and his family could do at the crime scene.

George and Ann both had cars there. George got into his, as Ann was able to pull herself together enough to drive her vehicle.

"I got to the end of the street," George recalled. He was leading the way home. "And I didn't know what to do-which way to turn. Here's the big leader . . . the big man of the house, and I have no idea what I'm doing, where I'm going."

Ann pulled in front of her husband and took off toward the house.

George followed.

The sun was coming up as they arrived home. Not knowing what to do, having no playbook to follow, George got out of his car and walked into the house.

"Here it is," George remembered, "my little girl is dead. Dead! Not hit by a car or struck by lightning. But another human being murdered her."

Ann went for the couch, where she lay down and wailed. Lelah walked straight for the bathroom, vomited, then sank against the wall, crumbling to the floor, crying until it seemed there were no more tears left.

George had a hard time processing what happened. He walked up the stairs, went into Rachael's room, and looked around. Then he walked into Lelah's room. Did the same. After that, he found himself in his and Ann's room. Finally he realized he was wandering the hallways of the house, head in his hands, unable to come to terms with the night's events. George was the provider; he was the man of the house who was supposed to make everything better. But this-how in the hell was he going to manage?

How do I fix this? If I could only fix this. . . . Something's broken. . . . If I could find out what it is, I could put it back together.

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Nichole Snchez saw her brother, Adelbert, on Wednesday afternoon, July 16, 2003. Being cousins, Adelbert Snchez and Marcus Precella hung out together. Marcus had been living with Tiffany Rowell. They were in love and planning a life together. On this day Marcus had called Adelbert, who was at his older sister's house with Nichole, often called "Nona." Marcus said something about a party at Tiffany's that night. Did Adelbert want to go?

"Yeah," Adelbert said. "Come and pick me up."

When Marcus arrived, Adelbert looked at his little sister and said, "Nona, I'm leaving now. See you later."

"Well," Nichole said, "you need to be careful." Nichole had no idea why she said it. It was just a feeling she had on that day; and Nichole was someone who went with her feelings. She and Adelbert were not prone to wish each other safety or hug and make good-byes into sentimental displays of affection. But something told Nichole on this day to reach out and say something to the brother she idolized and adored.

D, who was also sometimes called "AD," gave one of his signature smiles to his little sis, saying, "I'm always careful, Nona."

Marcus piped in, "Hey, don't worry. I'll take care of him."

Adelbert sensed that Nichole was acting a bit strange. He walked over, gave her a big hug, and then kissed her on the cheek. "Don't worry, Nona. I'll be fine."

"We really weren't ever touchy-feely with each other," Nichole recalled. "If I got a hug from him, it was usually followed by a slap in the head." You know, a big-brother thing.

Looking at his sister, Adelbert said, "Hey, I love you. . . . Don't worry. I'll be careful. We'll talk soon."

One memory of her brother that Nichole took comfort in was the family's annual camping trips when they were young. "We were always given whatever we wanted," Nichole said. "My parents spoiled us. Clothes. Electronics. The finer things in life kids want."

As they were packing for a camping trip, Nichole looked at D and said, "What are you doing?"

He had a garbage bag filled with sneakers: brand-new, unscuffed, a pair to match any outfit. D had this big suitcase with a change of clothes for what Nichole joked later seemed like "two weeks."

She told him, "We're going only for the weekend-two nights! What are you doing?" But that was D: he would change outfits two or three times a day. He had to have clean clothes, spotless, all the time.

"You'd think," Nichole said, laughing sadly at the memory, "he thought that he might be giving a fashion show in the woods, instead of camping."

That year they went camping, D jumped in the river. "Come on in, Nona. . . . It's shallow. Look, I can touch the bottom. See! Come on, it's warm."

Nichole was hesitant. She did not know the first thing about swimming. But what the heck? She trusted her brother.

She took the leap and went straight to the bottom.

"I was just kidding with you," D said. "It's deep. It's deep."

Their father had to jump in and drag Nichole out.

That was D: the jokester. The consummate chameleon who could adapt to, and have fun in, any situation.

Not long after waking the following morning after seeing Adelbert off with that strange embrace, Nichole recognized that she was mad at her brother. He had promised to call her, but never did. Nichole figured he was having fun with Marcus and some other friends. D had a penchant for the girls. The ladies adored him and he had no trouble keeping a string of them. Perhaps he had hooked up with someone new and took off.

"He had girls chasing him, left and right," Nichole recalled. "We never really saw him with one girlfriend." There was one particular girl that Adelbert was interested in, Nichole added, "and she came around often, but they were really never a couple."

Adelbert was more focused on his music, according to Nichole and other friends. D had dreams of being a rapper, and some said he had the chops to fulfill that dream. For the most part his mind was set on the Houston music scene. He was getting his demo together, before heading off to Los Angeles or New York. New Orleans-based Untouchable Records, Nichole said, was showing some interest in D's music.

D and Marcus grew up together in the same Houston neighborhood: the Northeast end of the city, which is mostly Hispanic.

"Where Adelbert grew up and lived," said a law enforcement source, "the neighborhood is the type that you would see Christmas Lights on the parked cars left on the front lawn. Whereas, where the kids were killed in Clear Lake, the lights would be hung on the house."

Clear Lake was a forty-five-minute drive on a good day, usually fifty to sixty. Marcus and his family moved out to that area at some point when the kids were young, but Adelbert and Marcus stayed tight. As cousins nearly the same age, they gravitated toward each other. Marcus was always coming back to the neighborhood to hook up with Adelbert and buzz around town, even after Marcus met Tiffany Rowell and moved in with her.

Nichole believed Adelbert was going to be back at the house on Thursday or Friday, or at least she'd see him at some point throughout the weekend. By Monday, things would be back to normal. Adelbert might even be sleeping late waiting for his mother to cook him breakfast-"He had to have fresh tortillas with every meal," Nichole remembered-and then he'd get dressed and head out to work on his music. There was even some talk lately from D about going to college.

On the evening news that Friday, July 18, Nichole and her parents saw that there had been a quadruple murder in the Millbridge Drive neighborhood. They had no idea what Tiffany's house looked like, so the news wasn't alarming in that respect. There was no way they could have planned for the horror that was about to be delivered to them because they didn't know where Adelbert had run off to. However, Nichole and Adelbert's grandmother, watching the report, both said, "I pray for whoever's family that is." They knew that the families were going to be dealing with more pain than anyone should be forced to endure. It was such an immense tragedy-the loss of young people always is-but on a scale of this nature, simply unheard of.

Looking closer at the report, Nichole's grandmother said, "That looks like Marcus's car." She pointed to a portion of the report that showed Tiffany Rowell's taped-off driveway; a reporter stood in the street, her back to the house.

The following morning, July 19, Nichole was at home by herself. Her parents had left early on a fishing trip so they could drive down to a family member's house and stay the rest of the weekend. Nichole was supposed to go, too, but she stayed home. It was that nagging feeling about Adelbert, still weighing on her; she had not heard from him and had no idea where her big brother-"my protector"-had gone off to. Adelbert hadn't come home the night before, nor had he called. He was having a few issues with his father and mother, but it wasn't something, Nichole said, that would keep him away from home. Nichole didn't know it, but D was sleeping at the Rowell house these days. To her it wasn't such a shock or big deal when D didn't come home-he was twenty-one. Nichole felt a pang of something's wrong as she woke up. There was a reason, she knew, why she had stayed home. Maybe it was just a sense of something heavy holding her back, even though she didn't quite know what. Close siblings experience this phenomenon: they have a Karmic sense about them, a way of knowing without actually understanding the feelings, almost like twins.

Sure enough, near nine in the morning, Nichole's parents' telephone rang. There were two lines in the house.

"Hello?" Nichole said, still a bit groggy from just having woken up.

It was her aunt. She was asking for Nichole's mother's cell phone number, or a number for the house they were staying at.

"Let me look it up for you. . . ."

"I'll call back."

Nichole started cooking herself some breakfast. She didn't figure it was that urgent for her to find the number, but the telephone rang again.

This time it was Marcus's sister.

"Is this Melissa (Nichole and Adelbert's older sister)?"

"No."

"Is this Nona?"

"Yes." Nichole's radar went up. She could sense the urgency in Marcus's sister's voice, a definite panic. It woke Nichole right up. This heightened sense of anxiety on the other end of the line even scared her.

"Where's Melissa?"

"She's out of town fishing right now."

"Where's your mom?"

"She's there . . . too. What's going on?"

"I need to speak to them."

"Why? What's happening? What's going on?" Nichole was getting nervous, more concerned by each word; that thumping in the chest when you know-you just know-bad news is forthcoming.

"You need to have them call me."

"Why? . . ." She paused. "Where's my brother?" Holding it together best she could, Nichole's cousin lost it. She started crying. Then she handed the phone off to Nichole's aunt.

"What is going on?" Nichole demanded.

"Marcus and Adelbert were shot last night."

"Okay . . . okay. Well, where is he? I need to see him right now. Where's he at?" She thought D was in the hospital somewhere, fighting, needing his family by his side.

"You need to have your mother call me right away."

"Why? Where is my brother?"

Worry. Dread. Fear. All there. It was beginning to consume Nichole.

There was a brief silence, just the buzz of the static on the telephone line between them.

"Marcus and Adelbert were . . . shot . . . and killed last night," the aunt finally said.

They hung up.

Nichole had just turned seventeen. She was home alone. This news, this horrible pain, which would change her family for the rest of their lives, was all on her. She didn't know what to do with it, how to immediately react, or if what she had just heard was real.

She found her mom's number and called. As she did this, Nichole remembered that at some point between the calls she had started breakfast. She went back into the kitchen to find that the stove was on fire. The smoke alarm was going off-same as her insides. There was chaos in the house, and she was all alone.

Getting the fire under control, Nichole phoned her mother. Before she even spoke, Adelbert's mother knew something was wrong.

"Nichole, what's going on there?"

Not long after she got the words out of her mouth, Nichole could hear her father and mother screaming and wailing in the background. The worst news a parent could be given had ripped their hearts open.

Life was never going to be the same for the Snchez family.

CHAPTER 7.

LATER THAT MORNING, the Seabrook Police Department (SPD) responded to a burglary call. Seabrook is a workingman's waterfront community comprised of shrimpers and oil rig workers. It's located on the northeast corner of Clear Lake, about a ten-minute ride from the murder scene. The woman claimed she'd been robbed while she was out the previous day.

"What time?" the responding officer asked.

"Oh, between six P.M. and three A.M.," she said.

"What's missing?"

"A rifle and a pistol."

The red flag here was that there was no sign of damage to the back door of the single-family dwelling. The front door faced a busy street, so the woman and the police believed the thief must have entered the house through the back. But there was no indication of a break-in.