I GOT HOME from Christine’s house at two-thirty in the morning feeling exhilarated, the happiest I’d been in years. I thought about waking Nana and the kids to tell them the news. I wanted to see the surprised looks on their faces. I wished that I had brought Christine home with me, so we could celebrate together.

The phone rang moments after I stepped inside the house. Oh no, I thought, not tonight. Nothing good comes from phone calls at two-thirty A.M.

I picked up in the living room and heard Sampson’s voice on the line. “Sugar?” he whispered.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Try again in the morning. I’m closed for the night.”

“No you’re not, Alex. Not tonight. Get over to Alabama Avenue, about three blocks east of Dupont Park. A man was found there naked and dead, in the gutter. The guy is white, and there’s no I.D. on him.”

First thing in the morning, I would tell Nana and the kids about Christine and me. I had to go. The murder scene was a ten-minute ride across the Anacostia River. Sampson was waiting for me on a street corner. So was the John Doe.

And a lively, mean-spirited crowd. A naked white body dumped in this neighborhood had prompted lots of curiosity, almost like seeing a deer walking down Alabama Avenue.

“Casper the Friendly Ghost been offed.” A heckler contributed his twenty-five cents as Sampson and I stooped down under the yellow plastic crime-scene tape. In the background were rows of dilapidated brick buildings that almost seemed to scream out the names of the lost, the forgotten, the never-had-a-chance.

Stagnant water often pools on the street corners here since the storm drains are hardly ever inspected. I knelt over the twisted, naked body that was partly immersed in the cesspool. There would be no tire marks left at the watery scene. I wondered if the killer had thought of that.

I was making mental notes. No need to write them down; I’d remember everything. The man had manicured fingernails and toenails. No calluses showed on either his hands or his feet. He had no bruises or distinct disfiguring marks, other than the cruel gunshot wound that had blown away the left side of his face.

The body was deeply suntanned, except where he’d worn swim trunks. A thin, pale ring ran around his left index finger, where he’d probably worn a wedding band, which was missing.

And there was no I.D. —just like the Jane Does.

Death was clearly the result of the single, devastating gunshot to the head. Alabama Avenue was the primary scene — where the body was found — but I suspected a secondary homicide scene, where the victim was actually murdered.

“What do you think?” Sampson crouched down close beside me. His knees cracked loudly. “Sonofabitch killer is pissed off about something.”