"Then it's an hour and a quarter. So what's next, Officer?"

"I'll give Mr. Fidella another try."

"Great idea."

Milo said, "Looks like Rufus is itching for his walk."

"Already walked him," said Staubach.

"Then I guess he deserves a nice rest."

"Wha--oh, sure, I'll stay out of your way. But keep in touch, okay? We're a block likes to know what's going on."

Another try at Fidella's front door brought the same result.

He peered across the street at Staubach's house. Neatly pleated drapes ruffled as someone moved.

I said, "Your year for helpful citizens."

"Must be El Nino."

We continued up Fidella's cracked driveway. The yard was an unlit patch of dirt or grass--too dark to tell which. High hedges loomed on three sides. The rear door was wood set with a glass panel. The single garage was bolted shut.

No illumination. Milo pulled out his little fiber-optic flashlight, held it high, the way cops are trained to do, aimed at a rusty light fixture over the rear door. "Empty socket, lots of rust. Sal's behind in his maintenance." A rap on the panel was followed by silence. He cast a cool white beam over the property.

Mostly dirt, some weeds, a single struggling orange tree. The hedge was ficus, worn bare in spots by disease and backed by cement block.

A second go-round, closer to the rear of the property, picked up something lying near the hedge.

What looked to be a roll of carpeting. Closer inspection showed it to be a cloth tube, fattened by substantial content.

Giant sausage.

Person-sized sausage.

Milo held me back instinctively, inched forward, scanned. Stopped.

Clamping the flashlight in one armpit, he gloved up. Lit up the dirt separating him from the package. Bent at the knees.

"Footprints... looks like some sort of sneaker."

Shifting to the left, he skirted the prints, checked the ground for other signs of disruption, inched his way toward the roll of cloth. Stooping, he held the flashlight in his teeth, peeled back a corner of sheeting.

"Bald head," he announced. "Cracked like an egg, lots of blood."

He got up, walked backward. "Can't move anything until the C.I. gets here but anyone taking bets this ain't Sal?"

I said, "No good odds on that one."

Three hours later, Fidella's body had been taken to the crypt. Blood spatter freckled the kitchen of the house, including some fairly heavy ceiling castoff. A pool cue coated with skin and brain matter stood propped in a corner, bloody sneaker prints trailed through the hallway near the linen closet. Under strong light, red specks darkening the dirt outside grew visible.

Despite all the blood, no sign of a struggle. Milo's working hypothesis was a blunt-force blitz near the kitchen sink, followed by wrapping of the body in a blanket and three fitted sheets taken from the linen closet and a dump in a corner of the yard. No argument from the C.I. or anyone else.