I had forgotten the pictures I’d taken at the Lion’s Pride when I was waiting for an ambulance to collect Sonia Kiel. I stopped to look at her, poor little bundle of rags under the iron staircase, and then at the frames of Naomi, the college student, comatose on the concrete stairs, her pink cami straps slipping from her shoulders.

I’d photographed a trio of young men who’d been gawking and making crude jokes about Naomi, taken a couple of shots of them emptying their little bags in the gutter when the cops arrived. I wondered now if their stash had included the roofies that knocked out Naomi and Sonia, but of course those pills would be long gone.

I was about to move forward to the pictures I’d taken at Riverside and St. Silas Churches when a face behind the trio of punks jumped out at me. It wasn’t quite in focus, an observer behind them in the street who’d faded from sight when the EMTs showed up.

That was why I’d thought I’d met Marlon Pinsen when I met him at the hotel last night. First introduced to me as a student cadet up on the hill, identity changed tonight by Colonel Baggetto to computer hotshot at the army college in Fort Leavenworth.

I put his name into every database I subscribe to, but none of them had ever heard of him.

33
Picking Through the Bones

I came fully awake, heart pounding. Someone was in the room, bumping into the furniture. I rolled off the bed onto the floor, fumbled until I found my phone on the nightstand. I crawled to the outside door, stuck up a hand to undo the chain lock, and yanked it open, backing outside before switching on my phone flashlight.

My light discovered Peppy, whose head was stuck underneath the low-hanging drawers of the corner desk. She inched out and looked at me sheepishly.

“Dog, what on earth? It’s two-thirty in the morning.”

I got to my feet, my teeth chattering as my muscles relaxed: I was nearly naked, and it was cold outside. I locked the door again and turned on a lamp before investigating the space where Peppy had been scrabbling. I shone my flash under the space where the drawers ended. One of the chicken bones that I’d dropped earlier had landed there.

“You are a merciless hunter, aren’t you?” I said severely.

Peppy’s eyes were bright; she started licking my face, delighted that I was helping her. I pushed her aside, lying on my back so I could stick my arm all the way underneath.