"Any chance I'm thinking the wrong thing?" Wesle/s tone was grim.

"Good God, Benton," I said, stunned.

"They were in the freezer on top of these other things. Ground beef, pork chops, pizza." He nudged packages with a gloved finger.

"I was hoping you'd tell me it's chicken skin. Maybe something he uses for fish bait or who knows what."

"There are no feather holes, and the hair is fine like human hair."

He was silent.

"We need to pack this in dry ice and fly it back with us," I said.

"That won't be tonight."

"The sooner we can get immunological testing done, the sooner we can confirm it's human. DNA will confirm identity." He returned the package to the freezer.

"We need to check for prints."

"I'll put the tissue in plastic and we'll submit the freezer paper to the labs," I said.

"Good." We climbed the stairs. My pulse would not slow down. At the end of the hallway, Marino and Katz stood outside the shut door. They had threaded a hose through the hole where the doorknob had been, the contraption humming as it pumped Super Glue vapors into Ferguson's bedroom.

Wesley had yet to mention the obvious, so finally I did.

"Benton, I didn't see any bite marks or anything else someone may have tried to eradicate."

"I know," he said.

"We're almost done," Katz told us when we got to them.

"A room this size and you can get by with less than a hundred drops of Super Glue."

"Pete," Wesley said, "we've got an unexpected problem."

"I thought we'd already reached our quota for the day," he said, staring blandly at the hose pumping poison beyond the door.

"That should do it," said Katz, who was typically impervious to the moods of those around him.

"All I got to do now is clear out the fumes with the fan. That will take a minute or two." He opened the door and we backed away. The overpowering smell didn't seem to bother him in the least.

"He probably gets high off the stuff," Marino muttered as Katz walked into the room.

"Ferguson's got what appears to be human skin in his freezer." Wesley went straight to the point.

"You want to run that one by me again?" Marino said, startled.

"I don't know what we're dealing with here," Wesley added as the window fan inside the room began to whir.

"But we got one detective dead with incriminating evidence found with his frozen hamburgers and pizza. We got another detective with a heart attack. We've got a murdered eleven-year- old girl."

"Goddam," Marino said, his face turning red.

"I hope you brought enough clothes to stay for a while," Wesley added to both of us.

"Goddam," Marino said again.

"That son of a bitch." He looked straight at me and I knew exactly what he was thinking. A part of me hoped he was wrong. But if Gault wasn't playing his usual malignant games, I wasn't certain the alternative was better.

"Does this house have a basement?" I asked.

"Yes," Wesley answered.

"What about a big refrigerator?" I asked.

"I haven't seen one. But I haven't been in the basement." Inside the bedroom, Katz turned off the window fan. He motioned to us that it was all right to come in.

"Man, try getting this shit off," Marino said as he looked around. Super Glue dries white and is as stubborn as cement. Every surface in the room was lightly frosted with it, including Ferguson's body. With flashlight angled, Katz side lighted smudges on walls, furniture, windowsills, and the guns over the desk. But it was just one he found that brought him to his knees.

"It's the nylon," our friendly mad scientist said with pure delight as he knelt by the body and leaned close to Ferguson's pulled-down panties.

"You know, it's a good surface for prints because of the tight weave. He's got some kind of perfume on." He slipped the plastic sheath off his Magna brush, and the bristles fell open like a sea anemone. Unscrewing the lid from a jar of Delta Orange magnetic powder, Katz dusted a very good latent print that someone had left on the dead detective's shiny black nylon panties. Partial prints had materialized around Ferguson's neck, and Katz used contrasting black powder on them. But there wasn't enough ridge detail to matter. The strange frost everywhere I looked made the room seem cold.

"Of course, this print on his panties is probably his own," Katz mused as he continued to work.

"From when he pulled them down. He might have had something on his hands. The condom's probably lubricated, for example, and if some of that transferred to his fingers, he could have left a good print. You're going to want to take these?" He referred to the panties.

"I'm afraid so," I said. He nodded.

"That's all right. Pictures will do." He got out his camera.

"But I'd like the panties when you're finished with them. As long as you don't use scissors, the print will hold up fine. That's the good thing about Super Glue. Can't get it off with dynamite."

"How much more do you need to do here tonight?" Wesley said to me, and I could tell he was anxious to leave.

"I want to look for anything that might not survive the body's transport, and take care of what you found in the freezer," I said.

"Plus we need to check the basement." He nodded and said to Marino, "While we take care of these things, how about your being in charge of securing this place?" Marino didn't seem thrilled with the assignment.

"Tell them we'll need security around the clock," Wesley added firmly.

"Problem is, they don't got enough uniforms in this town to do anything around the clock," Marino said sourly as he walked off.

"The damn bastard's just wiped out half the police department." Katz looked up and spoke, his Magna brush poised midair.

"Seems like you're pretty certain who you're looking for."

"Nothing's certain," Wesley said.

"Thomas, I'm going to have to ask for another favor," I said to my dedicated colleague.

"I need you and Dr. Shade to run an experiment for me at The Farm."

"Dr. Shade?" Wesley said.

"Lyall Shade is an anthropologist at the University of Tennessee," I explained.

"When do we start?" Katz loaded a new roll of film into his camera.

"Immediately, if possible. It will take a week."

"Fresh bodies or old?"

"Fresh."

"That really is the guy's name?" Wesley went on.

It was Katz who answered as he took a photograph.

"Sure is. Spelled L-Y-A-L-L. Goes all the way back to his great-grandfather, a surgeon in the Civil War."

Max Ferguson's basement was accessible by concrete steps in back of his house, and I could tell by dead leaves drifted against them that no one had been here for a while. But I could be no more exact than that, for fall had peaked in the mountains. Even as Wesley tried the door, leaves spiraled down without a sound as if the stars were shedding ashes.

"I'm going to have to break the glass," he said, jiggling the knob some more as I held a flashlight. Reaching inside his jacket, he withdrew the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol from its shoulder holster and sharply tapped the butt against a large pane in the center of the door. The noise of glass shattering startled me even though I was prepared for it, and I half expected police to rapidly materialize from the dark. But no footfall or human voice was carried on the wind, and I imagined the existentialist terror Emily Steiner must have felt before she died. No matter where that might have been, no one had heard her smallest cry, no one had come to save her.

Tiny glass teeth left in the mullion sparkled as Wesley carefully put his arm through the opening and found the inside knob.

"Damn," he said, pushing against the door.

"The latch bolt must be rusted." Working his arm in farther to get a better grip, he was straining against the stubborn lock when suddenly it gave. The door flew open with such force that Wesley spilled into the opening, knocking the flashlight out of my hand. It bounced, rolled, and was extinguished by concrete as I was hit by a wall of cold, foul air. In complete darkness, I heard broken glass scrape as Wesley moved.