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tell if it was a woman or a young man. Some of the pictures had been taken quite close. Some were from further away. It didn't look like the parts were ever rearranged. But the bag was sometimes pulled down to reveal more.
    Okay, Stephanie, put yourself in the photographer's shoes. Why are you taking these pictures? Trophy shots? I didn't think so, because none showed the face. And there were twenty-four pictures here, so the roll was intact. If I wanted a remembrance of this grisly act, I'd want a face shot. Ditto for proof that the job had been done. Proof of a kill required a face shot. What was left? A visual record by someone who didn't want to disturb the evidence. So maybe Uncle Fred happened on a bag of body parts and ran out and got himself a point-and-shoot. And then what? Then he put the pictures in his desk drawer and disappeared while running errands.
    That was my best guess, as weak as it was. The truth is, the pictures could have been taken five years ago. Someone could have given them to Fred for safekeeping or as a macabre joke.
    I stuffed the prints back into their envelope and grabbed my shoulder bag. I thought searching the neighborhood around Grand Union would be wasted effort, but I felt the need to do it anyway.
    I drove to a residential area behind the strip mall and parked on the street. I grabbed my flashlight and set out on foot, walking streets and back alleys, looking behind bushes and trash cans, calling Fred's name. When I was a kid I had a cat named Katherine. She showed up on our doorstep one day and refused to leave. We started feeding her on the back porch, and then somehow she found her way into the kitchen. She went out at night to roam the neighborhood, and slept curled up in a ball on my bed during the day. One night Katherine went out and never came back. For days I walked the streets and alleys, looking behind bushes and trash cans, calling her name, just like I was doing now for Fred. My mother said cats sometimes wander off like that when it's their time to die. I thought it was a lot of hooey.
     
     
    I STUMBLED OUT of bed at four-thirty, staggered into the bathroom and stood in the shower until my eyes opened. After a while my skin started to shrivel, and I figured I was done. I toweled off and shook my head by way of styling my hair. I didn't know what I was supposed to wear for interior decorating, so I wore what I always wore . . . jeans and a T-shirt. And then to dress it up, just in case this actually turned out to be interior decorating, I added a belt and a jacket.
    Ranger was waiting in the parking lot when I swung out the back door. He was driving a shiny black Range Rover with tinted side windows. Ranger's cars were always new and their point of purchase was never easy to explain. Three men took up the backseat. Two were black, one was of indeterminate origin. All three men had Marine buzz cuts. All were wearing black SWAT pants and black T-shirts. All were heavily muscled. Not an ounce of fat among them. None of them looked like interior decorators.
    I buckled myself into the seat next to Ranger. "Is that the interior decorating team in the backseat?"
    Ranger smiled in the predawn darkness and cruised out of the lot.
    "I'm dressed different from everybody else," I said.
    Ranger stopped at the light on Hamilton. "I've got a jacket and a vest for you in the back."
    "This isn't interior decorating, is it?"
    "There's all kinds of interior decorating, Babe."
    "About the vest—"
    "Kevlar."
    Kevlar was bulletproof. "Rats," I said. "I hate getting shot at. You know how I hate getting shot at."
    "Just a precaution," Ranger said. "Probably no one will get shot."
    Probably?
    We rode in silence through center city. Ranger was in his zone. Thinking private thoughts. The guys in back looking like they had no thoughts at all—ever. And me, debating jumping out of the car at the next light and running like hell back to my apartment. And at the same time, as ridiculous as it sounds, I