“Some kind of trauma to the side of the head. Doesn’t look fatal, but he bled a good bit before he got shot.”

“You catch the hip holster?”

“The empty one? Yeah.”

Lynch turned to one of the techs. “You guys turn up any weapons?”

Guy shook his head.

Lynch looked down toward the second cluster of uniforms. “Guess we better go see what McCord has for us.”

It was almost half a mile down to the next body. Bernstein and Lynch stayed way to the right walking down. Little crime scene flags were sticking up out of the dirt every couple yards all the way there, and they didn’t want to step in any evidence.

DeGetano was also on his back, some blood on the front of his tracksuit from a wound in his neck. Lynch squatted down and saw a round hole. Shadow fell on him, and he could hear somebody chewing on something. McCord.

“OK, McCord, Karsten didn’t want to rain on your parade. So I give, what’s up?”

“The fat guy back up toward South Shore, he got it with a .22 for sure,” said McCord. “And what made me think maybe your guy again is there’s no powder, no stippling, nothing like that. So he got it from at least a little ways off, and the nice grouping looks a lot like your shelter guy. Now, the skinny guy here, this is real interesting. That wasn’t a gun at all.”

“I was thinking a stab wound of some kind.”

“Bingo,” said McCord.

“Except I haven’t seen a lot of round knives.”

McCord held up an evidence bag. “Killer was kind enough to leave the murder weapon in the guy’s neck.”

Lynch stood up, looked at the bag. “A pen?”

“Yep. Thought you’d like that.”

“Can I see that?” Bernstein said.

McCord handed him the bag.

“Air France,” Bernstein said. “Interesting.”

“Why?” Lynch asked.

“This Hardin guy? From Oprah? Before a couple nights ago, all we hear is he’s from Africa, right?”

“And?”

“And if you want to fly from Africa – or West Africa anyway – to the US, I’m thinking Air France may be your best bet.”

McCord bit another chunk off the Snickers bar he was working on. “Looks like we’ve got prints on the pen, so we’ll run that. If this Hardin’s in a database anywhere, you’ll have your answer. But if you want interesting, we got interesting. You get a look at the fat guy? The head trauma?”

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “Wondered about that.”

“OK, we got this one set of tire tracks that stop right here, skinny dead guy right next to them, some scuffing on the ground. The way the blood ran down the front of him, he was either sitting or standing when somebody stuck that pen in his throat, and he was dead or close to it once he hit the ground here. Otherwise we’d have more blood running down the sides of his neck. With the tire tracks and scuffing, I’m figuring he got it in the car, then got dumped here.”

McCord walked a few yards toward the lake, toward a pile of rubble. He pointed a few yards south. “We got one set of footprints to here, another that stops maybe five yards from old pen neck over there. Some scuffing on the ground here, some more over there, plus over there it looks like someone was down on the ground and there’s some blood – on the ground and on a couple of stones we found. You saw all the flags on your way down from the fat guy, right? Between here and the fat guy, we got a bit of a blood trail. Somebody was dripping. Not bad, not like shot, but dripping all the same.”

“Ah, fuck me,” said Lynch, seeing where this was headed.

McCord nodded. “Yep. Looks like somebody drove out here with these guys, stuck a pen in Skinny, dumped him, and then bounced a few rocks off the fat man. We’ll check the head wound, get some trace evidence, probably match it up to one of the rocks.”

“So some guy plays Nolan Ryan with Fatso way down here,” Lynch says, “then lets him walk most of the way back to South Shore before he drives up and shoots him?”

“Nope. Our tire tracks here? They loop around and head back out to South Shore. We’ve got Fat Guy’s footprints on top of the tire tracks in a couple of spots. So whoever did Skinny and roughed up Fat Guy, he left before fat guy walked back up there and got shot. About ten feet from Fat Guy’s body, you got another set of tracks that pulled up and then pulled away. Different tread, different wheelbase.”

“So we got Mr .22 showing up as a second act?” Lynch said.

“Looks that way,” said McCord.

Lynch blew out a breath, pursing his cheeks. “I notice Fatso’s got an empty holster. Is Skinny strapped?”

“Skinny’s got an empty shoulder rig. Haven’t done the formal test yet, but Skinny’s got some gunshot residue on his right hand. I could smell that.”

Lynch looked out at the lake.

“So some guy drives down here with Skinny and the Fat Man. Since they’ve both got holsters, we gotta figure they’re both armed. And I’m thinking our mystery guest isn’t, since he stabs Skinny in the neck with a pen instead of just shooting him. Skinny gets a shot off but misses. Then our guy disarms Skinny, disarms Fatso, throws rocks at him, gets back in the car, and leaves. Then Fatso walks back up toward South Shore, and Mr .22 pulls in, shoots Fatso dead, and he drives off.”

McCord shrugs. “How it adds up.”

Bernstein’s phone went off, the Kanye noise again.

“What the fuck is that?” McCord asked.

“Ring tone,” said Lynch. “He’s working on his street cred.”

“You threaten to shoot him yet?”

“Threatened to shoot the phone,” Lynch said. “He’s next.”

Lynch’s cell buzzed, he checked the ID. Liz. She was flying back in from her network gig that night, going to be in town for a couple of days. Between her book launch and the network gigs, it was getting hard to see her. Lynch was looking forward to it, though. He took a few steps away from Bernstein and McCord.

“Hey,” he said. “You at LaGuardia yet?”

“Yeah,” she said.

He could hear it in her voice. “But?” Lynch asked.

“But I’m on my way to LA.” A pause, like she wanted him to say something. He had nothing to say.

“I’m sorry, John; it’s some film deal thing. My agent just dumped it on me an hour ago. I know this sucks. It’s just, with everything going on right now, so much crap is up in the air.”

“Yeah,” Lynch said. “Look, I can’t really talk now. I’m down on the South Shore looking at a couple of stiffs.”

“You’re angry.”

Lynch exhaled. “Not at you. Just, ah hell. Call me tonight if you get a chance.” Lynch thinking the “if you get a chance” was a bit of a cheap shot even as he said it. She’d call. He knew she’d call.

“I will. I’ll call tonight.” In the background, some airport PA noise. “We’re boarding,” she said, “I gotta go.”

Another pause.

“Are we OK?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Lynch said, trying to sound like he meant it. She ended the call.

Lynch looked out at the lake. What he’d had with Johnson the last year, it was something he’d given up on. Figured it just wasn’t in the cards, maybe just wasn’t in him. Gotten used to being alone, stopped really trying not to be. Got to where it didn’t matter that much, sort of the way, if you don’t eat long enough, you might be starving, but you don’t really feel hungry anymore. He was hungry now. He’d gotten used to her being in his life, in his bed. Now, more and more, she wasn’t.

It had been kind of exciting at first, Johnson hitting the big time. He’d flown out to New York with her once, been wined and dined with some of the network people, the publishing people. Lynch getting the star treatment too, some guy from Harcourt and Johnson’s agent tag-teaming him, trying to talk him into doing a book too.

At the hotel that night, some five-star joint, Johnson had put her two cents in too, not really understanding why he didn’t want a bite at the apple, Lynch not sure how to explain it, just that it didn’t sit right with him for some reason, Johnson taking that as a shot at her, not how he meant it. Been a little tense then, not a fight exactly, but Lynch looked back at that moment as a kind of divide. Things had looked up until then. Seemed like they’d gone downhill since.