"Probably not fella," Swanson said. "Why would anybody write 'fella' on their wrist?"

"Could be a name," the AME suggested.

"Strange name," Swanson said.

"See what you can do to bring it up," Lucas said. "Get some photos over to homicide."

"Okay."

Lucas stood. "Let's see the other one."

The door to the guest bedroom was another six feet down the hall, and Lucas stepped over Lansing's body, Swanson following along behind. Two crime-scene guys stepped out of the room just as Lucas came up. "Video," one of them said. "Crying goddamned shame," said the other.

Inside, a photographer lit up, and began taping the crime scene, while a second guy maneuvered a light. All Lucas could see of Alie'e Maison was one bare foot, sticking out from behind the bed; the body was lodged in the space between the bed and the wall.

He waited until the video guy was finished, then looked over the edge of the bed. Maison was lying faceup, one hand over her head, one trapped beneath her back. Her filmy green dress had been pulled up under her arms, exposing her body from the navel down. Her hips were canted toward the wall, and her ankles were crossed, but the wrong way: The one that should have been on the bottom was on the top.

"Looks like she was thrown in there," Lucas said.

One of the cops nodded. "That's what we think. Tried to hide her."

"But not too hard. You can see her feet."

"But if you just poked your head in, from the door, you probably wouldn't."

"Who found her?" Lucas asked.

"One of the people at the party." He looked at a notebook. "A woman named Rowena Cooper. Cooper knew Maison was back here, supposedly sleeping, and hadn't come out. She went back to seeif she was awake. She says she opened the door but couldn't see anything, so she turned on the lights. She was just turning around to go back out when she saw the underpants. She went over to pick them up, and she saw the feet. Started screaming."

"Where's Cooper now?"

The cop tipped his head toward the other end of the house. "The library. We called Sloan, he's coming in to talk to her."

"Good." Sloan was the best interrogator in the department. Lucas took a last look around the room. The bedspreads coordinated with the window treatments and the carpet. He asked, "The windows were locked?"

"In this room, yeah. But we got an open window down the hall," one of the cops said.

"Let me see."

"Check this first," the cop said. He leaned forward, hovering an index finger over the inside of Alie'e's left elbow.

Lucas would have known what that meant even if he couldn't see the BB-sized bruise. A needle user. He sighed, nodded at the cop, said, "Swanson," and stepped back into the hallway. Swanson was a step behind.

"Look, you know what's gonna happen, so we've got to nail everything down," Lucas said. "Everything. I want everything sampled, swept, vacuumed. I want every test there is, on both women. I want interviews with everyone at the partyask everybody for a list of names, and make sure you get every goddamn last one."

"Sure."

"Who takes over when you get off?"

"I think Thompson."

"Brief him. Do everything. We'll pay for every bit of science anybody can think of." He looked back at the room. "Did you look at her fingernails?"

"Yeah. They're clean. We'll get her vagina swabbed and get a rush on the semen."

"And blood, we need blood right away. I want to know what kind of shit she was shooting."

"Heroin."

"Yeah, I know, but I wannaknow."

"You gonna call Del?"

"In a minute."

"There's a phone in the office. I was keeping it clear for incomings," Swanson said.

"Show me the unlocked window This place doesn't look like the windows should be unlocked."

"Hanson says they never are," Swanson said. "But she got them washed a couple of weeks ago, and they were all opened thenthey're some kind of tilt thing, so you can wash both sides from the inside."

"I dunno."

"Yeah, well, the window could have been unlocked then. Hanson says she never went around and checked them. She assumed they were all locked."

The unlocked window was in another guest room, one door down the hall; this room had a different set of coordinated bedspreads, window treatments, and carpet. Lucas looked out through the window glass. Nothing but lawn and shrubs. "Any muddy footprints outside the window, with a unique brand-logo impressed in the mud?"

"No fuckin' mud. It ain't rained in two weeks."

"I was joking," Lucas said.

"I wasn't. I went out and looked," Swanson said. "The grass ain't even crinkled."

"All right. Where's that phone?"

Hansons home office was a small, purpose-built cubicle with cherry-wood shelves at one end for phone books, references, and a compact stereo. The cherry desk had four drawers, filing drawers to the left, envelope drawers to the right. A wooden Rolodex sat on the right side of the desk, a telephone on the left. A Dell laptop computer sat on a pull-out typing shelf, the wiring dropping out of sight, to appear behind a laser printer that sat on a two-drawer wooden filing cabinet beside the desk.

"Hanson still in the living room?" Lucas asked Swanson.

"Yeah."

"Go talk to her. Keep her entertained Ask her questions, start the witness list."

"You got it." Swanson glanced at the laptop, nodded, and headed toward the living room.

When he was gone, Lucas shut the office door and turned on the computer. Windows 98 came up, and he clicked ProgramsAccessoriesAddress Book. The address book was empty. He jumped back to the opening page and clicked on Microsoft Outlook. When it came up, he checked the Inbox and Sent folders and found that Hanson had a small e-mail correspondence.

He picked up the phone and dialed Del's number from memory, and as the phone began ringing, clicked on the Inbox folder again, clicked again on Find, and typed in "Alie'e."

He was still typing when Del's wife answered the phone. The answer was more like a groan than a word: "Hello?"

"Cheryl, this is Lucas. Is Del there?"

"He's asleep, Lucas. He was trying to get you all night, but he couldn't find you." She was crabby. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Sorry. Wake him up, we gotta talk."

"Just a minute"

After a few seconds of background mumbling, Del came on the line. "You heard?"

"Yeah, just now. What were you doing here?"

After a moment's silence, Del said, "What?" He sounded only semiconscious. Then, "Where'shere?"

"Sallance Hanson's. You were at the party last night, right?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah, but what're you doing there?"

"The Maison thing," Lucas said.

"What?"

Lucas looked at the phone and then said, "You don't know?"

"Yeah, I called in," Del said. "I called all over, looking for you. I even had your neighbor up north go look in your cabin, but you'd gone."

"You called in that somebody strangled Alie'e Maison?"

Longer silence. Then, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Somebody strangled Alie'e Maison and threw her body behind a bed in a guest bedroom," Lucas said. "Another woman was killed and stuffed in a closet. Hanson thinks a street guy did itsaid he was wearing an 'I'm with Stupid' shirt."

After a moment of silence, Del said, "You're not joking.'"

"I'm not joking."

"Jesus Christ." Del was awake now. And again, "Jesus Christ."

Behind him, Cheryl asked, "What happened?"

"That was me, all right," Del said. "I was there until one o'clock. I didn't see Maison there after midnight or so."

"What were you doing?"

"Runnin' drugs, man. That goddamn place was an ocean of shit."

"Maison's got fresh tracks on her arm."

"Yeah, they were all doing a little something," Del said. "I was trying to figure out where it was coming from."