Monty retrieved the mail from his letter box and climbed the stairs to his apartment. He wasn’t sure he would spend the night there. He wasn’t sure a man alone, even a police officer, who was known to work with the terra indigene would be safe in this part of the city. Between the fires that burned down so many businesses on Market Street and the flash floods caused by the localized storm the same night of the fires, this part of Lakeside was in turmoil, and the police were breaking up several fights a day between members of the HFL, who blamed the terra indigene for all of the city’s troubles, and people who now blamed the HFL for the city’s troubles.

And then, today, the package that was delivered to the Courtyard. He believed the deliveryman when the fool claimed he didn’t know what was in the package. The hysteria after they had shown him what he’d delivered hadn’t been feigned.

Two hands with some of the bones showing through where the flesh had been eaten away. Two feet covered in maggots. And a bullet. Not a spent round. Nothing they could test.

After impounding the delivery truck, and ignoring the shrieks of the company’s owner about customers waiting for the items in the truck, Louis Gresh and his team checked every package, making a record of each item. They found three other packages from the Dead Cops Club—three other packages with the same items. Those were handed over to the forensics team after the bomb squad confirmed the packages weren’t booby-trapped.

They were searching for four bodies, or, at least, the identities of the deceased. Burke didn’t think they would be found since cremation was standard except for the wealthy, who could afford a family crypt and literally be buried with their ancestors. None of the hands and feet were fresh enough that the body would still be in the morgue or at a funeral home for the final viewing.

But the police would search for the bodies, and they would search for the people who were responsible for directing such ill will toward a member of Lawrence MacDonald’s family.

According to Burke’s grapevine, the delivery company’s owner and all its employees belonged to the Humans First and Last movement, and the workers at the crematorium, who were also HFL members, swore they hadn’t left any body unattended for “more than a minute” and hadn’t noticed any hands or feet missing on their return. And it seemed like, when fingerprints confirmed that the hands that had been sent to the Courtyard had belonged to Lawrence MacDonald, every police officer in Lakeside knew about it within an hour. And after hearing that news, every officer who had secretly, or openly, belonged to the movement removed his HFL pin and threw it away.