Anyone hear the shot?

Starkey said, Remember, the guy had been dead for a week before we found him. No calls were made to 911, and none of these people remembered hearing anything on or around the day of death. Everyone was probably buttoned up from the heat.

Poitras said, Tell him about the pictures.

Starkey had been watching me, but now she glanced at the floor. She seemed uncomfortable.

He had an album with Polaroid pictures of his victims. There were seven pages with a different vic on each page. We thought they were fake. You see something like that, you think it's gotta be phony, like that porno stuff with girls pretending to be dead? We didn't know the shit was real until Bobby recognized one of the girls. It was fucking disgusting.

The mouth.

I said, Where did you find the album?

On the floor by his feet.

Starkey positioned herself as if she was sitting in the chair and touched the top of her left foot.

Here. We figured it slid off his lap when he went for the gold

She suddenly glanced up.

He only had one foot. The other was screwed up.

Lionel Byrd had lost half of his right foot in a garage accident when he was twenty-four years old. I hadn't remembered it before, but now I recalled Levy telling me about it. The settlement had left Byrd with a modest disability payment that supported him the rest of his life.

Poitras said, It was Bobby put it together. One of the vics was a prostitute named Chelsea Ann Morrow. Bobby knew her, and after we had Morrow, we faxed the pictures through the other divisions. That's when the IDs started coming. Downtown rolled in that afternoon.

I stared at the floor as if I would suddenly see the album. Maybe that was why Starkey kept looking at the floor. Maybe she could still see it.

Did he leave a note?

Uh-uh.

I glanced at Starkey.

So all you found were the pictures?

We pulled a camera and a couple of film packs. There was a box of ammo for the gun. If the task force guys found anything else, I don't know.

Pictures don't mean he killed them. Maybe he bought them on eBay. Maybe they were taken by one of the coroner investigators.

Poitras stared for a moment, then shrugged.

I don't know what to tell you. Whoever took them, the geniuses downtown decided he's good for it.

The scores of black fingerprint smudges seemed to be moving. They were worse than roaches. They looked like swarming spiders.

Can I see it?

What?

The album.

Downtown has it.

What about crime scene snaps?

Starkey said, The task force. They cleaned us out, man. The CI's work and everything from SID went to them. Witness statements from the neighbors. All of it. They hit this place like an invasion.