Flynn groaned.

"What about dental records?" Hadley asked. It was a lot easier to risk sounding dumb when most of the force was someplace else.

"Dental records are great when you're comparing an unknown victim to a known missing person. They're useless in tracking down an identity. We'd have to go through every dental office in New York State-assuming this guy was from New York. Where we are, he could just as easily be from Canada or northern New England."

"Anything on John Doe one?" Flynn didn't sound hopeful.

"No." The chief sat on the table and planted his boots against a chair seat. "It's making me nuts. We got prints. We got those damn tattoos. Even if there's no-" he cut himself off. Hadley was pretty sure the rest of the sentence would have been connection with the guys Knox saw. No one believed she had seen the same tattoos on Stud Boy: Santiago. She didn't know why that bothered her. It shouldn't matter. She got paid whether they caught whoever did this or not.

"John Doe one did time," the chief went on. "I'm sure of it. So why don't we have an ID for him yet?"

It was a rhetorical question. Hadley and Flynn looked at each other. "Eric." The chief pitched his voice to include McCrea. "You got anything to add?"

"Hadley and I interviewed the members of the volunteer search-and-rescue team yesterday. No one noticed anything unusual."

Hadley didn't realize she was making a face until the chief asked her, "What is it?"

She glanced toward McCrea. He grinned. "John Huggins wanted to know what a sweet little thing like Officer Knox was doing on the force."

The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. "Huggins has some… difficulties with women that don't fit his-ah, traditional ideas." He looked at Hadley. "He's harmless, though. And our departments often work closely together, so let's try to keep things civil."

Hadley frowned. "So I shouldn't have told him to eat shit and die?" The expression on the chief's face was priceless. She held up her hands. "Just kidding. I was very civil."

He gave her a withering look. "Kevin?"

"Between Mr. McGeoch and Agent Hodgden, I got a list of area farms that employ immigrant workers year round, and the names of laborers with legal permits and sponsors."

The chief's eyebrows went up. "Paula Hodgden just passed on that info?"

Flynn looked as if he couldn't decide to be embarrassed or proud of himself. "I-um, may have given her the impression that I was going to be rounding up anybody I found who wasn't on her list."

"I see."

"I didn't promise anything."

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway, I'm ready to get out and interview people, but I have a problem. I don't speak Spanish." Flynn's forehead creased, as if he were afraid his language skills were letting the department down. "I do speak some German. I took three years in high school."

"That's great, Kevin," the chief said. "The next time we find a John Doe wearing lederhosen, you're on it. In the meantime, however-"

"Hadley can go with Kevin instead of me," McCrea said. "I'm going to be tackling the Christie relatives today, and it might be better if I don't have someone inexperienced around."

Well. That stung. But at least McCrea was up front with her.

The chief crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the middle distance. She was beginning to recognize it as his thinking stance. Finally he said, "Okay. But if I'm going to send the two of you out there, I want to maximize the possibility of getting useful information. I want you two in civvies."

"What?" Hadley said.

"We've already noticed that the sight of a cop car and a uniform doesn't exactly inspire confidence in these guys. Change into something you can wear with a shoulder or a pancake holster and go in one of your own cars."

"I don't have a pancake or a shoulder holster," Hadley started to say, but her objection was drowned by Kevin's excited, "You want us to go undercover?"

"No, Kevin. I want you in plainclothes. There's a difference." He looked at Hadley. "You can draw a holster from the gun locker."

"Plainclothes," Flynn breathed, in the way someone might have said, "The Holy Grail."

"I haven't practiced with a pancake or shoulder holster!"

A disapproving sound rumbled out of the back of the chief's throat. He stood up. "Look. Maybe this is going too far too fast for you two-"

A clamor of noise from the front of the station cut him off. There was a flap-flap of footsteps, and a squeaky-pleased "Hel-lo!" from Harlene, and then MacAuley was ushering in Reverend Clare, whose neat black clerical garb looked at odds with her flushed face and falling-down twist.

"The Reverend here arrived near the end of the press conference," MacAuley said. "Some of the reporters got a little overexcited."

"Thank you so much, Lyle." She laid a hand on MacAuley's arm. "I wasn't expecting to be keelhauled by the Fourth Estate."

MacAuley's eyes half closed, and he smiled a wide, wicked smile. "Shucks, ma'am. 'Tain't nothing."

"Don't you have a case to clear?" the chief snapped. "What are you doing here?" he asked Reverend Clare. "Is it the Christies?"

"The Christies? No. I, uh"-she glanced around, taking in Hadley, Flynn, and McCrea-"need to speak to you."

The chief gestured impatiently.

"Privately."

He exhaled. "My office." He motioned for her to go through the doorway ahead of him, perhaps not noticing Reverend Clare's narrowed eyes and set jaw. They stalked away through the dispatch room. This time, Harlene didn't say anything.

MacAuley pursed his lips. When they heard the chief's door slam shut, he asked, "Did he have that stick up his ass before Reverend Fergusson got here?"

Hadley looked at Flynn to see if he was going to say anything. No way she was going to answer that one.

"Nope," McCrea said.

"Interesting."

Flynn shook his head, as if dismissing the chief, his moods, and the minister from his mind. "I've got a change of clothing in my car. Do you have something here, or do we need to hit your house before we go?"

"Wait a minute," Hadley said. "I think he was about to tell us not to go."

He looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "That's why we have to move now. Do you wanna take your car? Or my Aztek?"

She thought about her less-than-half tank of gas. "Your Aztek," she said, then realized she was committing herself. "Wait!"

"I'll get you a pancake holster. Trust me, it'll feel just as natural as the one you're wearing now."

Oh, there was a great recommendation.

"Do you want me to drive you to your house or meet you over there?"

"Meet me," she said without thinking. Flynn nodded and headed out the door. "Wait!" she said.

A bellow from the chief's office stopped her short, but Flynn kept right on going. The baritone yell was followed by a loud and impassioned alto voice, which was drowned out by more deep and angry words, which were topped by an even more strident female response. Hadley couldn't make out what they were fighting about, but it sounded like a doozy.

"Interesting," MacAuley repeated.

McCrea pushed back from his desk and gathered his notepad and phone book. "I'm getting out of the kill zone," he said.

MacAuley nodded. "You might want to think about that as well," he told Hadley.

She groaned and shouldered her tote. Looked like will-she, nil-she, she was going to be driving around the North Country acting as Kevin Flynn's translator. As she ducked down the stairs, the sound of her minister and her boss going at it hammer and tongs, she was already trying to come up with a civilian outfit as ugly and unflattering as her uniform. It wouldn't do to give Flynn any ideas.