Now he cursed the world, got close to the girl. Closer even than Schwinn. Taking in the sights, the smell, every wound—drinking in the horror, telling himself shut up, idiot, who the hell are you to complain, look at her.

But the rage intensified, flowed over him, and suddenly he felt hard, cruel, vengeful, analytic.

Seized by a rush of appetite.

Trying to make sense of this. Needing to.

He smelled the girl’s rot. Wanted, suddenly, to enter her hell.

It was nearly eleven by the time he and Schwinn were back in the unmarked.

“You drive again,” said Schwinn. No sign of any hostility, no more possible double entendres, and Milo started to think he’d been paranoid about the normalcy comment. Just Schwinn flapping his lips, because the guy was like that.

He started up the engine. “Where to?”

“Anywhere. Tell you what, take the freeway for a couple exits, then turn around, go back downtown. I need to think.”

Milo complied. Cruising down the ramp, as the killer had done. Schwinn stretched and yawned, sniffed and produced his bottle of decongestant and took a long red swallow. Then he leaned over and switched off the radio, closed his eyes, fooled with the corners of his lips. This was going to be one of those silent stretches.

It lasted until Milo was back on city streets, driving up Temple, passing the Music Center and the dirt lots that surrounded it. Lots of empty space as the rich folk planned additional shrines to culture. Talking urban renewal—pretending anyone would ever bother with this poor excuse for a downtown, pretending it wasn’t a cement grid of government buildings where bureaucrats worked the day shift and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there and everything got cold and black at night.

“So what’s next?” said Schwinn. “On the girl. What do you think?”

“Find out who she was?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard, those smooth nails, nice straight teeth. If she was a street slut, her comedown was recent. Someone’ll miss her.”

“Should we start with Missing Persons?” said Milo.

“You’ll start with Missing Persons. Start calling tomorrow morning ’cause MP doesn’t staff heavy at night, good luck trying to get those guys off their asses at this hour.”

“But if she was reported missing, getting the info tonight would give us a head start—”

“On what? This is no race, boy-o. If our bad boy’s out of town, he’s long gone, anyway. If not, a few hours won’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“Still, her parents have got to be worried—”

“Fine, amigo,” said Schwinn. “Be a social worker. I’m going home.”

No anger, just that know-it-all smugness.

“Want me to head back to the station?” said Milo.

“Yeah, yeah. No, forget that. Pull over—now, boy-o. Over there, yeah yeah yeah stop next to that bus bench.”