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nuts,’ McLaren grumbled.
    ‘God, the Irish are so impatient,’ Jimmy sighed, pointing to a section of wooden floor marked off with tape. ‘We found wheel marks. From the couch, through the kitchen, out the door and into the garage. Four wheels, not two. Your shooter brought a gurney.’
    ‘Whoa.’ McLaren’s red eyebrows shot up. ‘Premeditation with a capital P. ’
    ‘I’d say so.’ Jimmy’s plump arms reached for the ceiling in a stretch. ‘Well, we’re about to clear this place and head back to the lab. Apparently they’re bringing in a ton of trace from that scene down at the tracks . . .’ He stopped in mid-sentence, his hands falling to his sides. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Did you say Fischer went three bills?’
    Langer nodded. ‘At least.’
    Jimmy closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Man, that blew right past me. My tech said the guy on the tracks was a beefer.’
    ‘Do they have an ID on him?’
    Jimmy shrugged, and Langer pulled out his mobile. ‘Tinker and Peterson caught that, right?’ he asked McLaren.
    ‘Right.’
    Langer punched some buttons, put the phone to his ear, listened for a few seconds, then said, ‘Tinker, this is Aaron. Tell me about your man on the tracks.’
    No one had ever accused Tinker Lewis of being reticent. You asked him how he was, you got the story of his life with no hope of a reprieve. Langer tried to interrupt a couple of times, finally gave up and listened in resigned silence, his face infuriatingly expressionless.
    McLaren fidgeted and paced for as long as he could stand it, then finally cozied up to Langer and tried to get his ear near the phone.
    ‘Okay, Tinker, thanks,’ Langer said. ‘I have to go now. McLaren is making a move on me.’ He signed off, tucked the phone away, then simply stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels with a grim smile.
    McLaren flapped his arms in frustration. ‘Goddamnit, Langer, you want me to beg?’
    ‘There was no ID on the body at the tracks. The man was elderly, easily three hundred pounds, with a big hole in his left arm, just above the elbow.’ He gave Jimmy Grimm a nod. ‘Artery hit, just like you said, Jimmy.’
    ‘So he bled out?’
    Langer’s lips tightened, erasing the remainder of his smile. ‘No, he didn’t. They think he had a heart attack, probably when he saw the train coming.’
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ McLaren muttered, seeing too vividly the picture of an old, injured man tied to the tracks, looking up and seeing the single headlight of a moving train, heading toward him.
    ‘But if he’d lived,’ Langer continued, ‘the ME says he would probably have lost the arm. Somebody put a tourniquet on it, way too tight, and it was on there way too long.’ He raised his brows at McLaren. ‘It was a tapestry thing, Tinker said, with little blue birds all over it.’
    McLaren blinked at him, then blew out a silent whistle. ‘So their guy is our guy.’
    ‘Looks like it.’
    ‘Jesus.’ McLaren looked over at the couch and shivered a little, absorbing the totality of what had happened here. ‘This is really sick, Langer.’
    ‘No argument there.’
    ‘What we’ve got is some sadistic son of a bitch coming in here, shooting the poor old guy in the arm, strapping him to a gurney and rolling him out, then driving him over to tie him to the train tracks . . .’
    ‘. . . making sure to keep him alive the whole time so he would know what was coming,’ Jimmy Grimm finished. ‘God in heaven.’

6
    Magozzi watched them load Morey Gilbert’s body into the ME wagon, wincing when the bag bounced hard as the gurney wheels folded. He’d seen a lot of bodies go into that wagon over the years, but he never got used to that final bounce as they all left home for the last time.
    It was a relief when the wagon’s doors slammed shut and the children masquerading as Medical Examiner assistants climbed in and drove away.
    ‘Who are those kids?’
    ‘Just a sec,’ Gino said into his cell phone, then