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have you been working out? Remember those tests we ran last week? Well, they didn’t turn out so well.
    Finally, Dr. Rambachan stood on one leg while he removed a shoe and pulled on a rubber wading boot. Gino watched in amazement as he repeated the process with the second boot. ‘Jeez, Doc, how the hell did you do that? You looked like a flamingo standing there, didn’t even wobble. I gotta sit down to put on my socks or I keel over like a bowling pin.’
    ‘Balance in all things,’ Anant smiled, then turned sad eyes to the body in the water. ‘So this is our lady friend. I can
    Gino made a face. ‘No reason to start messing with a possible crime scene when the victim is obviously dead.’
    ‘But we must always confirm the obvious.’ He went into the water without creating a ripple, then bent to his task. After a moment his hands went still in the water. ‘Ah. Here we have a little surprise.’
    When Magozzi and Gino finally walked up from the river to the staging area, the sergeant who’d been running the canvass was back on site, leaning against his car and draining a can of Red Bull. Dark stains made Rorschach patterns on his uniform shirt, and his face was a particularly vivid shade of ripe tomato.
    ‘Hot one today, Detectives,’ he said, giving them the customary weather-related Minnesota greeting as he raised his can in their direction. If it had been winter, the greeting would have been, ‘Cold one today, Detectives.’
    ‘Are you gonna be okay?’ Gino asked, mopping at his own brow. ‘You look like you’re already in full meltdown.’
    The sergeant grunted. ‘I grew up on the Iron Range. If the temp rises above sixty, I go into full meltdown. So what’s the news on that poor gal? I’m telling you, never in my life have I seen such a sad and sorry sight.’
    ‘Well, we got a newsflash for you – our bride down there? She’s sporting a package.’
    ‘What kind of package?’

    The sergeant’s brows jumped up his forehead. ‘No way.’
    ‘Yes, way.’
    The sarge thought about that for a minute while he chucked his empty can into the car. ‘I guess there’s no surprise there, come to think of it. We get all kinds down here after hours, especially the creative dressers – the Tiara’s just a few blocks up, you know, and they’ve got that big drag show that runs every night.’
    Magozzi nodded. ‘We know.’
    ‘Any idea whether it’s a homicide or an accident?’
    ‘No real signs of foul play that the ME could see. And Crime Scene didn’t have a whole lot of luck with trace. If there is any, most of it’s probably on the way to the Gulf of Mexico by now.’
    ‘Probably an accident.’
    ‘Probably. But we’re going to have to wait for the autopsy before we know for sure.’
    ‘Well, I can tell you from experience that there’s a lot of booze and a lot of drugs down here. I’m surprised we don’t get more tooted-up riffraff falling into the drink.’
    ‘How did the canvass go?’ Magozzi asked, trying to find a patch of shade in the one spot along the river that didn’t have much tree coverage.
    ‘All the respectable citizens we talked to didn’t see a damn thing. But then we stumbled across Wild Jim, drunk as a skunk, taking a nap under some bushes.’
    ‘Who’s Wild Jim?’
    The sergeant gave them a wry smile. ‘Oh, you guys have
    Magozzi got interested. ‘For what?’
    ‘Public drunkenness, disturbing the peace. Every now and then he brings one of his guns down by the river and fires off a clip and wakes the neighbors, but mostly he’s harmless; just a real pain in the butt. We’ve pulled his guns a half a dozen times, but he just gets clean and another judge gives them back. Some of those bastards really stick together. Anyhow, he was ranting about some “crazy faggot” raising hell down here last night, but who knows? He hasn’t been able to see straight since he got kicked off the bench, and I’m guessing his blood alcohol is around point-three right