"Where is everyone?" I asked.

I was talking to Sam, but Frank said, "Cooper's been and gone"--Cooper is the state pathologist. "I figured he needed to have a look at her as fast as possible, for time of death. The Bureau can wait; forensic evidence isn't going anywhere."

"Jesus," I said. "It is if we walk on it. Sam, ever worked a double homicide before?"

Frank raised an eyebrow. "Got another body?"

"Yours, once the Bureau get here. Six people wandering all over a crime scene before they've cleared it? They're gonna kill you."

"Worth it," Frank said cheerfully, swinging a leg over the wall. "I wanted to keep this under wraps for a little while, and that's hard to do if you've got Bureau guys swarming all over the place. People tend to notice them."

Something was badly wrong here. This was Sam's case, not Frank's; Sam should have been the one deciding how the evidence was handled and who got called in when. Whatever was in that cottage, it had shaken him up enough that he had let Frank sweep in, bulldoze him out of the way and instantly, efficiently start arranging this case to suit whatever agenda he had today. I tried to catch Sam's eye, but he was pulling himself over the wall and not looking at either of us.

"Can you climb walls in that getup," Frank inquired sweetly, "or would you like a hand?" I made a face at him and vaulted into the field, up to my ankles in long wet grass and dandelions.

The cottage had been two rooms, once, a long time ago. One of them still looked more or less intact--it even had most of its roof--but the other was just shards of wall and windows onto open air. Bindweed and moss and little trailing blue flowers had rooted in the cracks. Someone had spray-painted SHAZ beside the doorway, not very artistically, but the house was too inconvenient for a regular hangout: even prowling teenagers had mostly left it alone, to collapse on itself in its own slow time.

"Detective Cassie Maddox," Frank said, "Sergeant Noel Byrne and Garda Joe Doherty, Rathowen station. Glenskehy's on their patch."

"For our sins," said Byrne. He sounded like he meant it. He was somewhere in his fifties, with a slumped back and watery blue eyes, and he smelled of wet uniform and loser.

Doherty was a gangly kid with unfortunate ears, and when I held out my hand to him he did a double take straight out of a cartoon; I could practically hear the boing of his eyeballs snapping back into place. God only knew what he'd heard about me--cops have a better rumor mill than any bingo club--but I didn't have time to worry about it right then. I gave him the smile-and-stare number, and he mumbled something and dropped my hand as if it had scorched him.

"We'd like Detective Maddox to take a look at our body," Frank said.