Milo felt himself using his bulk. Moving closer to Schwinn, looming over the skinny man, his index finger pointing like a gun. “You don’t know shi—”

Schwinn didn’t yield. “I know assholes with master’s degrees don’t stick with this.” Tap tap. “I know I don’t wanna waste my time working a whodunit with a suck-up intellectual who all he wants to do is climb the ladder. You got ambition, find yourself some suck-up job like Daryl Gates did, driving Chief Parker’s car, one day that clown’ll probably end up chief.” Taptaptap. “This ain’t career-building, muchacho. This is a whodunit. Get it? This likes to munch on your insides, then shit you out in pellets.”

“You’re wrong,” said Milo. “About me.”

“Am I?” Knowing smile.

Ah, thought Milo. Here it comes. The crux.

But Schwinn just sat there, grinning, tapping the photo.

Long silence. Then suddenly, as if someone had pulled the plug on him, the guy slumped heavily, looking defeated. “You have no idea what you’re up against.” He slipped the photos back in the envelope.

Milo thought: If you hate the job, retire, asshole. Grab your pension two years early and waste the rest of your life growing tomatoes in some loser trailer park.

Long, turgid moments passed.

Milo said, “Big whodunit, and we’re sitting here?”

“What’s the alternative, Sherlock?” said Schwinn, hooking a thumb at the pink building. “We go in there and talk to this asshole and maybe his daughter’s the one who got turned into shit, or she’s not. One way, we’ve crawled an inch on a hundred-mile hike, the other way, we haven’t even started. Either way we got nothing to be proud of.”

CHAPTER

8

Just as quickly as his moods had shifted, Schwinn bounded out of the car.

The guy was unstable, no question about it, Milo thought as he followed.

The front door was unlocked. Twelve mailboxes to the right. The layout was precisely as Milo had envisioned.

Screw you, expert.

Box Eleven was labeled Ingalls in smudged red ballpoint. They climbed the stairs, and Schwinn was out of breath by the time they reached the third floor. Tightening his tie knot, he pounded the door, and it opened a few seconds later.

The man who answered was bleary-eyed and skinny-fat.

All sharp bones and stick limbs and saggy sallow skin but with a melon gut. He wore a dirty yellow tank top and blue swim shorts. No hips or butt, and the shorts bagged under the swell of his pot. Not an ounce of extra flesh anywhere but his belly. But what he carried there was grotesque and Milo thought, Pregnant.

“Bowie Ingalls?” said Schwinn.

Two-second delay, then a small, squirrelly nod. Beery sweat poured out of the guy, and the sour smell wafted into the hallway.