“Tell you what, I worked a lot of burn cases, and I never seen nobody just burst into flames, I don’t care what they tell you at the wacko conventions. Always something chemical involved, if you ask me. Murder, accident …” He made a seesaw motion with his hand. “Who the hell knows? Whatever it was, he was one messed-up guy, I can say that.”

“Did he smell of anything? Gasoline? Anything like that?”

This time he really looked at her, but it wasn’t much of an improvement; now it was suspicion, not weariness.

“Playing detective?” he asked, and gave her a cool smile. “No, nothing like that. Smelled like any other burned body. Okay, pal, you’re fixed up. Make sure you get those breaks X-rayed.”

“Danks,” Mark mumbled, and stood up. He had a large waffled shoeprint on the front of his shirt, and a smear of blood along his collar. “Gan I go home dow?” The paramedic had already closed up shop, snapping his red box together like a fisherman who’d caught his limit. He nodded toward a harassed-looking black patrolman a few feet away.

“See that guy.”

Mark actually started walking toward the policeman. Robby caught his elbow and pulled him gently aside to stand next to an overweight woman wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt. The woman was arguing loudly with her son, a pale young man with brittle eyes.

“I wadt to go home,” Mark said again. “Robby—”

“You don’t go through him. I’ve had about enough trouble for one day. Go to the bathroom and go out the other exit. It’s around the corner, he won’t be able to see you leave. I’ll talk to him and meet you outside.”

He walked toward the bathroom like a condemned man going to the chair. She waited until she was sure he’d got it right before approaching the patrolman.

As she’d suspected, the cops were too busy, too confused, and too harried to do much more than take a name and an address. She provided both—completely fictitious—and stood with a crowd of gawkers as a white-sheeted lump was carted out of one of the tunnels. She couldn’t tell if the crowd’s silence was respectful or avid, and decided it didn’t really matter, not to the man on the cart.

What did he have in common with Arnold, burned to death in his kitchen? Velvet’s Burt, dead in a hotel room?

The thought occurred to her that it might be random. She shivered, pulled her coat closer, and walked, head down, to the exit.

A blue-white glare hit her in the face like lightning; she put up one hand to shield her eyes and heard shouting. The glare zipped away, leaving green after-images like hostile ghosts.