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a forty-floor column of staggered balconies. He could see few outside lights at this corner of the building; chances were that no one in the apartments had seen anybody enter last night.
    But they would have to be questioned anyway. And that was something Ross could do—ask a hundred people if they saw anything last night.
    Slipping through the gap between fence and greenhouse, Wager crossed the concrete apron. A policeman and three groundskeepers stood digging through a tall bin of compost. The officer looked up.
    “This area’s closed, mister. Go on back out.”
    “I’m Detective Wager from homicide.” He didn’t bother to show his shield; there was enough identification in his voice. “It looks like you haven’t found anything.”
    “No, sir.” The officer stamped first one shoe and then the other to shake clinging brown shreds from his trousers. “We’ve got one more bin to go through.” There were eight of the tall, open squares, each half filled with mixtures that differed slightly in color and odor. “But if you ask me, it’s a waste.”
    Wager hadn’t asked. But everybody liked to get in on the act. “Why?”
    “Well, if he brought the whole body here and cut off the head, there’d be a hell of a lot of blood somewhere. And we haven’t seen a trace anywhere. I think he did it someplace else and just brought the head because it was easier that way.”
    Wager thought so, too, but that didn’t answer why. “It’s all got to be looked at.”
    “Yeah. What the hell, the pay’s the same.”
    He wandered through the lanes of rose and lily beds toward a cluster of figures near a patio halfway across the open grounds. One or two roses still held flowers, but it was a last effort and the plants looked weary and ready for winter; all but two or three lilies had bloomed and died, and the few remaining narrow leaves hung brown at the tip. He paused a moment: the browning of the long leaves, the flowerless lily stalks like a field of twigs, the weak sunlight finally burning away the overcast—all brought a memory of the tiger lilies that had filled every square inch of his aunt’s yard that the kids hadn’t worn flat with their running and games. Her house was no longer there— the whole neighborhood was no longer there, all of it scraped under and buried beneath brick-and-glass boxes. Urban renewal, they called it, though nothing had been renewed. It was just new. But here, among these lilies pulling life down into their roots, Wager again saw that house, those plants, smelled the cold darkness that wafted from under the wooden front porch and through the browning leaves of late-September mornings.
    Memory. He tugged a brittle tip of a lily leaf and ground it to powder between thumb and forefinger. Maybe that was why the hair was combed and the head set like a bit of statue in the living green of the streamside: memory. And if that was it, then maybe she and her killer had been here before—or had somewhere shared some garden. Wager scooped a pinch of damp earth from the lily bed and sniffed its crisp cleanness. What kind of person? It was easy to shrug and answer, “Some nut.” The evidence—Doyle’s evidence—pointed at some nut. But in the back of his mind, Wager questioned if it was that simple.
    The aggregate walk bent toward a small rectangle of water that reflected mounds of sculpted earth rising like miniature Mayan temples. At first, he had not liked them because they were too angular to be natural. But as he wandered between their straight lines and open faces, they gave a sense that the flower beds were much, much larger; and they blocked the surrounding houses, streets, and apartments to create hollows of sky and privacy. At the highest part of the gardens, the main fountain gushed and splattered to fill the cool air with its sound. The water flowed through the grounds in lines and pools, ending at a final level near the patio where a knot of men gazed over a retaining wall at