I climb up on the tailgate slowly, awkwardly, careful with my leg, dripping water as I walk around inside making a hollow thudding sound on the steel flooring. I search the rear area where the noise seemed to come from while I was driving, my attention fixing on the built-in workstation and a swivel chair secured to the floor with fasteners. On top of the desk are a computer tower and flat-panel monitors with tough polyurethane covers and screen protectors. On either side are watertight rustproof storage cabinets.

I open the one on my right. Nothing unusual, just a printer in the pull-out tray and under it reams of paper. I pause for a moment when Marino’s phone rings. It’s the dispatcher, the one named Helen.

“Okay. Like we thought. That’s too bad. Nope. Me too. Still waiting,” Marino says to her. “If I don’t hear anything soon I’ll let you know. Thanks again.”

His phone is in a waterproof tactical case that he clips to the waistband of his soaking wet cargo shorts.

“No luck,” he says to me. “No earlier radio traffic about any units responding here after you and me left midmorning. And nothing about the Range Rover. If we don’t get some sort of idea of what’s happened to Lapin and Hyde we’ll put it out over the air.”

“She’s trying to raise them on the radio and neither of them are answering.” I summarize as I find what I’m looking for in the cabinet on my left.

“Another few minutes and nothing from them? And we pull the trigger.”

“You might want to pull it now,” I tell him.

THE POLISHED COPPER rod is approximately three feet long and the thickness of a pencil.

It rests against stacks of blue towels, and an alarm is sounding in a remote part of my brain. I notice a stiff yellowish fringe on one end and what looks like a claw of bent razor blades on the other. I bend down to get a better look and detect the acrid pungent stench of decomposing flesh. I begin opening drawers until I find a box of gloves.

“What is it?” Marino watches from outside the open tailgate as he’s blasted by rain and wind. “What did you find?”

“Give me a minute.” I put on gloves and a face shield. “There’s something here that certainly shouldn’t be.”

“I’m coming up.”

“No. It’s best you stay where you are.”