"The rest of him is pretty much goulash," said Martinez. "Personally, I think it's amazing we got what we did. The train must have hit him at what-forty, fifty miles per?"

The room was cool, immaculate, odorless. Empty steel tables equipped with drain basins, overhead microphones, a wall of steel lockers. A junior high student would recognize all of it; too many TV shows had dimmed the shock. But television rarely offered a glimpse at the contents of the lockers. Dead people on TV were intact, clean, bloodless props resting peacefully.

I hadn't been down here since internship, wasn't enjoying the experience.

"How'd you identify him?" said Milo.

"Welfare card in his pocket," said Martinez. "The lower extremities still had pieces of pants on and the pocket was in one piece. All he had on him was the card and a couple of bucks. The interesting thing is, you could still smell the booze on him. Even with all the other fluids. I mean, it was really strong. Only other time I smelled it that strong was this woman, died in childbirth, must have drunk two bottles of wine that night and she arrested on the delivery table. Her amniotic fluid was red-wine-red, you know? Almost purple. She must have been saturated with Thunderbird or whatever. The baby was dead, obviously. Probably lucky."

Martinez touched his crucifix.

"When's Beatty's autopsy scheduled?" said Milo.

"Hard to say. It's the usual backlog. Why?"

"It might be related to something. So you're saying Beatty must have been pretty juiced."

"To smell that strong? Sure. My guess would be way over the limit. He probably got blasted, wandered onto the tracks, lay down for a nap, and boom." Martinez smiled. "So, could I be a detective?"

"Why bother?" said Milo. "Your job's more fun."

Martinez chuckled. "Those tracks-they really should do something about them, no fence, no guardrail when they get close to the train yard. I grew up around there, used to play on the tracks, but they weren't running trains back then. You remember last month? The little kid who wandered on, walking home from school? Not far from where Beatty got hit. That kid, we didn't get anything recognizable on him. They should put a fence up, or something.... So, anything else?"

"I'd like to look at Beatty."

"Really? How come?"

"I want to think of him as a person."

Martinez's thumb and forefinger closed around the bottom of the crucifix. "A person, huh? Well, maybe looking at him isn't the right way to do that, you know?"

Milo said, "Humor me."

Martinez walked over to a locker, slid the drawer out silently, drew back white sheeting.