Jack threw up his hands. “I’m getting out of here,” he said. “I can tell neither of you will listen to reason.” He again tugged on Vinnie’s shirt on the way out the door.

Jack poked his head into Janice’s office. “Anything I should know about this floater that’s not in the folder?” he asked the investigator.

“The little there is, is all there,” Janice said. “Except for the coordinates where the Coast Guard picked up the body. They told me that someone would have to call today to make sure it wasn’t classified or something. But I can’t imagine that information will matter. It’s not like anyone could go out there and find the head and the hands.”

“I agree,” Jack said. “But have someone call anyway. Just for the record.”

“I’ll leave a note for Bart,” Janice said. Bart Arnold was the chief forensic investigator.

“Thanks, Janice,” Jack said. “Now get out of here and get some sleep.” Janice was so committed to her job that she always worked overtime.

“Wait a second,” Janice called out. “There was one other thing that I forgot to note in my report. When the body was picked up, it was naked. Not a stitch of clothing.”

Jack nodded. That was a curious piece of information. Undressing a corpse was added effort on the part of the murderer. Jack pondered for a moment, and when he did, he decided it was consistent with the murderer’s wish to hide the victim’s identity, a fact made obvious by the missing head and hands. Jack waved goodbye to Janice.

“Don’t tell me we’re doing a floater,” Vinnie whined as he and Jack headed for the elevator.

“You sure do tune out when you read the sports page,” Jack said. “Laurie and I discussed it for ten minutes.”

They boarded the elevator and started down to the autopsy room floor. Vinnie refused to make eye contact with Jack.

“You are in a weird mood,” Jack said. “Don’t tell me you’re taking this Franconi disappearance personally.”

“Lay off,” Vinnie said.

While Vinnie went off to don his moon suit, lay out all the paraphernalia necessary to do the autopsy, and then get the body into the morgue and onto the table, Jack went through the rest of the folder to make absolutely certain he’d not missed anything. Then he went and found the X rays that had been taken when the body had arrived.

Jack put on his own moon suit, unplugged the power source that had been charging over night, and hooked himself up. He hated the suit in general, but to work on a decomposing floater he hated it less. As he’d teased with Laurie earlier, the smell was the worst part.

At that time in the morning, Jack and Vinnie were the only ones in the autopsy room. To Vinnie’s chagrin, Jack invariably insisted on getting a jump on the day. Frequently, Jack was finishing his first case when his colleagues were just starting theirs.