Finding the killers in a brutal triple homicide shouldn’t be tough, right?

After all, Gil Grissom and his “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” team require only an hour, with commercial breaks, to solve hard cases, using a piece of duct tape here or a shell casing there or a nightclub matchbook cover somewhere else. A partial shoe print leads to a gouged bed frame and, voila, the guilty party confesses in time for the closing credits. Sometimes, Grissom, Warwick, Catherine & Co. solves two or three cases in the Thursday slot. In a recent episode, they even rescued Nick Stokes from being buried alive in a coffin with a video feed by identifying the type of fire ants nibbling on him.

Unfortunately, life rarely imitates art in homicide investigations.

After more than a month, local, state and federal law officers have yet to break the case involving the mid-May killings of three people – Brenda Groene, 40, her son Slade, 13, and 37-year-old Mark McKenzie – and the disappearance of two younger Groene children from a Wolf Lodge Bay area home.

Investigators are analyzing a van full of evidence. Hundreds on horses, all-terrain vehicles and on foot have scoured back roads and uplands near the scene. Searchers have sifted through 800 tons of garbage. Nothing.

Some are despairing that the homicides will be solved. In an online Coeur d’Alene Press poll, only 41 percent of 1,277 respondents were confident that the slayings would be solved. It’s foolish, however, to seek hope in statistics alone. For hope, it’s better to turn to the words of Wendy Price, an aunt of the missing children, Dylan, 9, and Shasta, 8.

“I’m frustrated because this hasn’t been solved,” Price told The Spokesman-Review, “but encouraged that the FBI is on this full force. I have faith in the authorities that this case will be broken.”

Indeed, family, friends and well-wishers should be inspired that 40 investigators from local, state and federal law enforcement remain on the case.

Their unrelenting effort and reward money of $107,500 could be the keys to solve the homicides and find the children. Someone knows what happened. Somewhere, the story will be told by a drunken or drugged tongue. Or the children will be sighted. Or the reward money will turn the killers’ associates against them.

Also, it’s heartening that none of the blood found at the gory crime scene belonged to the missing children.

For further comfort, concerned citizens should recall the solid local detective work that solved Carissa Benway’s July 2000 murder at the hands of an ex-convict and his son. Beginning with a jaw bone found by hunters, investigators identified the remains and slowly built a case that brought Benway’s killer to justice.

DNA evidence takes 72 hours to process – not a few minutes, as it’s done on television. Warrants must be obtained to conduct legal searches. Every “i” must be dotted to ensure that evidence is admissible in court once the culprits in the Groene case are caught.

It’s a time-consuming process. It has to be done right.