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El hijo de la chingada! Lucas Negrete had left a message, and in doing so had brought the police right to the gates. It was an arrogant maneuver. And clever. The game had begun in earnest.

Chapter 4
HAYDON and Mooney turned off of Old Spanish Trail Road, a wide commercial thoroughfare that stretched from South Main across to Interstate 45 and resembled anything but a trail, and drove along the median-divided drive. The new building was situated at the edge of dozens of acres of asphalt which served as additional parking for the Medical Center's South Extension. Signs at both ends of the lot, one at Bares wood and one in the grassy median at Old Spanish Trail, told you where you were. There were gates and chain-link fences surrounding the lots. The medical examiner's office sat just outside the gates.
The lobby of the new office smelled of fresh masonry and caulking and paint. Haydon wondered how long those odors of optimism and new beginning would last. He and Mooney showed their identification to the receptionist and walked through to one of the four autopsy rooms.
Dr. Harl Vanstraten was standing to one side of the room slipping into his surgical gown. Even from across the room his tall, thick-chested frame seemed in clearer focus than everything else. His thinning hair was cleanly parted, his face could not have had a closer shave, and his sharp Nordic features caused one not to be surprised by the Germanic inflections in his speech.
"A real whodunit, huh, Stuart?" Vanstraten was smiling as Haydon entered, his baritone echoing slightly in the starkly furnished room.
He turned aside to a glass cabinet and removed a new pair of surgical gloves from an open box. Adding talcum to the insides, he shook them gently before inserting each massive hand, beginning with the right.
"I went with Renata last night to see a play at the Alley Theater," he said, working with the gloves. "First time in weeks."
    Haydon looked at his friend's broad back. "Did you enjoy it?"Vanstraten laughed and turned around. "I don't know. There was a minute, near the end of the first act, when it didn't hold my attention, and my mind wandered to something here—a woman who died for no apparent reason during a rape—and except between acts when I somehow managed to talk about the play with Renata, I don't remember a thing. Excuse me. I've got to change the tapes."
    Haydon watched him round the corner to his office, and tried to imagine his predicament. Vanstraten was an unrepentant day-dreamer, which infuriated his wife because he also liked to work the social circuits, where he was a popular figure. He loved being around people, but often he didn't pay any attention to them. If he saw or heard something that triggered a change of direction in his thoughts, he was gone. Sometimes he recovered in time to save himself, and sometimes he didn't. It was an embarrassment for Renata, but rarely was anyone ever offended by this eccentricity. Vanstraten's mind traveled in oblique channels, and to destinations most people never knew existed.
    Two aluminum autopsy tables stood side by side in the center of the almost phosphorescent light of the room. Over each table a chrome microphone hung from the ceiling alongside a single silver-bowl surgical lamp. Above that, frosted skylights let in the clean, bright daylight. The Mexican was the only cadaver in the room. Jimbo Finn stood beside him, awkwardly stooped as if he had a catch in his back. The Mexican's head was wrapped in a plastic bag which was taped around his neck. Finn wasn't going to let the ant get away from him.
    When Vanstraten came back he was kneading his surgical gloves, tightening the membranous latex around the fingers. He got straight to business.
    "You have pictures, Jimbo?"
    Finn nodded. "Sure do."
    "Well, Richard, shall we proceed?"
    Richard Hull had been at the morgue nearly ten years, and was the only diener of the several employed there whom Vanstraten would allow to assist him. He was an