Now it started to feel awkward. Pemkowet didn’t have the budget for take-home cars for its officers and since Cody wasn’t scheduled to work that day, there wasn’t a spare cruiser available. It was strange seeing him in uniform behind the wheel of his pickup truck, and it felt strange as hell sitting beside him, my nether regions still pleasantly swollen and tingling. I didn’t know where to look or what to do with my hands. Plus, I’d discovered in the bathroom mirror that I had a couple of serious love bites on my neck. There wasn’t anything I could do about it except turn up the collar on my jacket.

The storm had passed and the rain was easing by the time we reached the mausoleum. Ken Levitt had cordoned off the scene with police tape. Normally, there would have been gawkers alerted by the grapevine, but between the heavy downpour and the early hour, the looky-loos weren’t out yet.

Cody’s nostrils flared as he surveyed the scene, sniffing the air. “Not much left of a scent trail after the rain. Even if there was, there were too many other people’s scents muddling the scene here.”

“What about inside?” I suggested.

“Good idea.”

Unfortunately, the door of the mausoleum had been left open, and wind-driven rain had sluiced into it, dispersing the trail there, too. The scent of decay emanating from the coffin made Cody gag. “Sorry.” He pressed the back of his hand against his lips and gave me an apologetic look. “My sense of smell isn’t as keen as a scent hound’s, and the scent of the Tall Man’s remains is masking anything else. I’m pretty sure the perp wore gloves.”

I shuddered. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Good point.” He shone his flashlight at the floor. “I’m thinking maybe those grease stains are from a jack. It would have taken a lot of leverage to lift that marble slab.”

“So we’re looking for a physics student?” I said.

Cody shrugged. “Could be. Could be someone who works on cars.”

After Cody had determined there was nothing more to be learned inside the mausoleum, we went back outside and did an informal grid search of the surrounding crime scene. If there had been an identifiable set of tire tracks, which wasn’t likely given the amount of traffic there in the past twelve hours, the rain had obliterated them. The groundskeepers were pretty diligent, so despite the popularity of the Tall Man’s resting place among high school students on the make, there wasn’t a lot of trash. A few cigarette butts and a gum wrapper, all of which looked at least several weeks old, and a more recent coffee cozy from Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery.