A police detective is found in an alley, standing over the body of an unarmed African-American boy. Groggy from a concussion, he has no memory of what happened, and he is literally holding the smoking gun.
To the Baltimore County Internal Affairs division, it’s a slam-dunk.
But various forces push psychotherapist Kate Huntington and her P.I.
husband to investigate behind the scenes, and what they find doesn’t add up. Why did the boy’s oldest brother disappear on the same day?
And did the third brother, who’s on the autism spectrum and nonverbal, witness something relevant?
When seemingly unrelated events emerge as a pattern of intentional obstruction and diversion, it becomes apparent that what happened in that alley was more than just a bad shoot by a stressed-out cop.
For Kate, the case has become personal as she’s connected with the grieving mother, whose dead son was the same age as her Billy. The answers may come from unexpected sources, but she and Skip better find them soon... before another life is lost.
In her youth, Kassandra Lamb had to decide between her two greatest passions, writing and psychology. Being partial to food, heat and electricity, she opted to study psychology. Now that she's retired from her career as a psychotherapist, she can focus on creating an alternate universe in which her protagonist, Kate Huntington, is always the kind, generous and insightful person that Kassandra wishes she was herself.
She has recently launched a new series, the Marcia Banks and Buddy cozy mysteries, in which Marcia (pronounced Mar-see-a, not Marsha) trains service dogs for combat veterans and solves mysteries in her spare time, with the assistance of her black Lab sidekick, Buddy.
When Kassandra's not at her computer, transported in mind and spirit into the world of her characters, she physically lives in Florida, with her husband and her dog.
Kassandra was born in Baltimore and lived in Maryland for the first 50 years of her life. Like Kate Huntington, she was a specialist in trauma recovery for two decades. She also taught psychology at Towson University.