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not wanting to dip into Griswold’s callous pool. “Any blood in the trunk of the car?”
    “Nothing obvious. Won’t know for certain until forensics gets their test results back.”
    “Cut a guy’s head and hands off, the body is going to bleed until the heart stops. Make a hell of a mess. Which means he was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the car,” Mason said.
    Cates smiled. “You do brain surgery too?”
    Mason ignored the dig. “Any signs of wounds to the body?”
    “Nope,” Griswold answered.
    “Rigor?”
    “Full,” Griswold said.
    “So the victim had been dead at least six to twelve hours. Maybe longer with the cold temperatures. The fatal wound was probably a gunshot or blow to the head, right?”
    “Or broken neck, or strangled or poisoned or smothered or half a dozen other ways you can kill someone without leaving marks on the body, especially if you cut the head and hands off,” Griswold said.
    Mason nodded. “Lot to think about.”
    “You do that,” Cates told him. “Tell your client to think about it too and let us know what you come up with. Make it a lot easier on us cops if you lawyers and defendants would solve these murders for us. Make it even easier if your client just confesses.”
    “Can’t do that,” Mason said. “Then you would have to go back to working the midnight security shift at Walmart.”
    Cates took a step toward Mason, but Griswold cut him off. “Okay, kids. That’s enough for today.” He turned to Mason. “You want it this way, you can have it this way. We’ll be on you and your client twenty-four/seven. You want it the other way, remember how that gate swings.”

SEVEN
    Mason studied the well-maintained block as the detectives drove away. Not one of the houses was less than sixty years old. All of them hewn from a rock-solid architecture featuring stone and brick, wide front porches, and detached garages at the rear of long, narrow driveways.
    The houses sat on lots raised above street level, giving neighbors comfortable perches beneath broad spreading oaks and elms. More trees lined the street. Stripped of their leaves by winter, they were bare stout sentries. Mason imagined them in the summer, their leafy branches forming a protective canopy over the pavement.
    Cars were parked in driveways and at curbsides in front of many of the houses. Fish’s car would not have been out of place. Nor would it have been the only one the killer could have chosen. Streetlamps dotted the block, offering enough light in the dead of night to discourage a killer in search of an anonymous random place to abandon a body. Looking at the block, Mason saw what the cops saw. The killer had picked Fish’s car for a reason.
    Fish lived on Concord Avenue in the Concord Historical District. The District was one long block that ran east from Main Street to Wornall Road on the west. Mason never knew it existed until he met Avery Fish even though it was a mile from his own house. Access from Wornall Road to Concord was from Fifty-second Street directly across from the entrance to Loose Park.
    Mason couldn’t remember ever having driven down Fifty-second Street or Concord despite his many visits to the park. He’d grown up in Kansas City and was always surprised when he found pockets that were new to him. They were the city’s secrets.
    He found Fish still sitting at the kitchen table still reading the same book. Fish glanced up at him before returning to the pages
    “Must be some book,” Mason said.
    Fish laid the book down. “It’s about the origins of life and a lot of other things. The author says it’s an incredible long shot that life exists at all and that the odds of any one of us even being born are even longer.”
    “Does that make you feel lucky?”
    Fish shrugged. “Makes me feel religious. But, if you’re asking me, I could use a little good luck. No?”
    “More than a little. I don’t think the cops found anything, but that doesn’t mean they won’t