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there.”
    “Who found the bodies?” Rebecca asked.
    “A woman named Shelly Parker. She’s a real looker. Vastagliano’s girlfriend, I think.”
    “She here now?”
    “Inside. But I doubt she’ll be much help. You’ll probably get more out of Nevetski and Blaine.”
    Standing tall in the shifting wind, her coat still unbuttoned, Rebecca said, “Nevetski and Blaine? Who’re they?”
    “Narcotics,” Harry said. “They were running a stakeout on this Vastagliano.”
    “And he got killed right under their noses?” Rebecca asked.
    “Better not put it quite like that when you talk to them,” Harry warned. “They’re touchy as hell about it. I mean, it wasn’t just the two of them. They were in charge of a six-man team, watching all the entrances to the house. Had the place sealed tight. But somehow somebody got in anyway, killed Vastagliano and his bodyguard, and got out again without being seen. Makes poor Nevetski and Blaine look like they were sleeping.”
    Jack felt sorry for them.
    Rebecca didn’t. She said, “Well, damnit, they won’t get any sympathy from me. It sounds as if they were screwing around.”
    “I don’t think so,” Harry Ulbeck said. “They were really shocked. They swear they had the house covered.”
    “What else would you expect them to say?” Rebecca asked sourly.
    “Always give a fellow officer the benefit of the doubt,” Jack admonished her.
    “Oh, yeah?” she said. “Like hell. I don’t believe in blind loyalty. I don’t expect it; don’t give it. I’ve known good cops, more than a few, and if I know they’re good, I’ll do anything to help them. But I’ve also known some real jerks who couldn’t be trusted to put their pants on with the fly in front.”
    Harry blinked at her.
    She said, “I won’t be surprised if Nevetski and Blaine are two of those types, the ones who walk around with zippers up their butts.”
    Jack sighed.
    Harry stared at Rebecca, astonished.
    A dark, unmarked van pulled to the curb. Three men got out, one with a camera case, the other two with small suitcases.
    “Lab men’re here,” Harry said.
    The new arrivals hurried along the sidewalk, toward the townhouse. Something about their sharp faces and squinted eyes made them seem like a trio of stilt-legged birds eagerly rushing toward a new piece of carrion.
    Jack Dawson shivered.
    The wind shook the day again. Along the street, the stark branches of the leafless trees rattled against one another. That sound brought to mind a Halloween-like image of animated skeletons engaged in a macabre dance.

3
    The assistant medical examiner and two other men from the pathology lab were in the kitchen, where Ross Morrant, the bodyguard, was sprawled in a mess of blood, mayonnaise, mustard, and salami. He had been attacked and killed while preparing a midnight snack.
    On the second floor of the townhouse, in the master bathroom, blood patterned every surface, decorated every corner: sprays of blood, streaks of it, smears and drops; bloody handprints on the walls and on the edge of the tub.
    Jack and Rebecca stood at the doorway, peering in, touching nothing. Everything had to remain undisturbed until the lab men were finished.
    Vincent Vastagliano, fully clothed, lay jammed between the tub and sink, his head resting against the base of the toilet. He had been a big man, somewhat flabby, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows. His slacks and shirt were blood-soaked. One eye had been torn from its socket. The other was open wide, staring sightlessly. One hand was clenched; the other was open, relaxed. His face, neck, and hands were marked by dozens of small wounds. His clothes had been ripped in at least fifty or sixty places, and through those narrow rents in the fabric, other dark and bloody injuries could be seen.
    “Worse than the other three,” Rebecca said.
    “Much.”
    This was the fourth hideously disfigured corpse they’d seen in the past four days. Rebecca was probably right: There was a