“Great,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” Ryan asked.

“You’re about to meet Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“That’s not very charitable.”

“Rinaldi’s OK Slidel wouldn’t make the cut forJerry Springer.”

Skinny Slidel exhaled a stream of smoke, flicked the butt, then he and his partner started toward us.

While Slidel lumbered, Rinaldi seemed to move by fits and starts. Standing six-foot-four and carrying just a little over 160, the man looked like a stilt walker dressed by Hugo Boss.

Skinny Slidel and Eddie Rinaldi had partnered for nineteen years. No one on the force could understand the attraction.

Slidel was sloppy. Rinaldi was neat. Slidel mainlined cholesterol. Rinaldi ate tofu. Slidel was beach music and rock-and-rol oldies. Rinaldi was strictly opera. Slidel ’s fashion sense ran toward the blue-light special. Rinaldi’s suits were custom-made.

Go figure.

“Hey, Doc,” said Slidel , yanking a wadded hanky from his back pocket.

I returned the greeting.

“Ain’t so much the heat as the humility, eh?” He ran the yel owed swatch across his brow, jammed it home with the backs of his fingers.

“The rain should cool things down.”

“Good Lord wil in’.”

The skin on Slidel ’s face looked like it had been stretched forward hard then al owed to drop. It hung in crescents below his cheeks and eyes, and drooped from the border of his jaw.

“Dr. Brennan.” Rinaldi’s hair was wiry thin on top, and stood out from his scalp like that of one of the characters in “Peanuts.” I could never remember.

Was that Linus or Pigpen? Though Rinaldi’s jacket was off, his tie was meticulously knotted.

I introduced Ryan. As the men shook, Boyd ambled over and sniffed Slidel ’s crotch.

“Boyd!” Grabbing his col ar, I yanked the dog back.

“Whoa, girl.” Slidel bent and roughed Boyd’s ears. The back of his shirt was soaked in the shape of a T.

“His name’s Boyd,” I said.

“No news on the Banks case,” Slidel said. “Little mama’s stil AWOL.”

Slidel straightened.

“So you found yourself a stiff in the crapper.”

Slidel ’s face remained flaccid as I described the remains. At one point I thought I saw a flicker in Rinaldi’s eyes, but it came and went so quickly, I couldn’t be sure.

“Let me get this straight.” Slidel sounded skeptical. “You think the bones you found in the grave come from one of the hands you found in the dumper.”

“I see no reason to think otherwise. Everything is consistent and there are no duplications.”

“How’d these bones get out of the dumper and in with the bears?”

“That sounds like a question for a detective.”

“Any clue when the vic was chucked in?” Slidel .

I shook my head.

“Any impression on gender?” Rinaldi asked.

I’d made a quick evaluation. Though the skul was large, al sex indicators were annoyingly intermediate. Nothing robust, nothing gracile.

“No.”

“Race?”