"I know, Chief," Dignazio said, nodding slowly. "It's our mess. We'll take care of it."

  Vickie stepped back out of the picture, remembering Dignazio's wishes that she remain as unnoticed as possible. Chet walked up to the others.

  "Chet," Dignazio introduced, "this is Chief Lawrence, of the Calvert City force. He discovered the body a little while ago. Same guy who found the sixth girl."

  Chet shook hands with the big man but said nothing.

  "I guess that just about does it, Chief," Dignazio said. "We'll contact you if anything comes up."

  "Right," returned Lawrence. "If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know."

  "Thanks."

  With that, Lawrence walked back over the soggy grass, got into his car, and left.

  "Where is it?" Chet asked.

  Dignazio pointed to the side of the cross. "Around back. Nothing out of the ordinary, though. The good humor men are on the way."

  The two men walked casually around the twenty-foot base of Peace Cross, almost looking like father and son from behind, or a threshold between generations. Vickie followed them around the cement monument shyly, afraid of what she was about to look at.

  The area in which the eighth murder victim lay had been cordoned off by a perimeter of rope supported on wooden stakes. Vickie inched up behind Chet and Dignazio, and she looked down through the space between them, fixing her eyes on the pale white flesh of a human body which lay in a tied heap inside of a large sheet of transparent plastic. The body had been dumped at the foot of the Peace Cross, and it rested there in such stillness that Vickie thought she could have been looking at a color photograph. Large beads of rainwater spotted the plastic wrapping like crystal jewels on a regal cloak. The top of the bundle had been pulled away to expose the shape of a female head. It seemed so obscene to Vickie: what this girl must have felt when she died, the way she died, and what the killer did to her after she was dead. She couldn't bear to look at her—it—the wasted figure under the rough folds of crumpled plastic. Instead of disposing of the body in one of the usual inconspicuous places, this time The Electrocutionist had left it behind a religious monument, not only mocking his freedom to kill, but also intensifying the outrage of what he had done by leaving the girl under a symbol of salvation. Nothing is sacred anymore, Vickie thought, not in this world.

  Even the cross itself had been desecrated by countless graffiti crimes. Up to an arm's length, multicolored lines curved and crisscrossed over the surface of the cross, remaining evidence of the nightly deeds of spray-can poets who had covered the cement with numerous scrawls of profanity and useless self-expression. GONZAGA EAGLES, LEMMY & IRENE 4 EVER, MOTORHEAD, URBAN VERBS, VAMBO ROOLS.

  Chet ruptured the silence. "Any idea who she is?"

  "Nope. No ID was left on the body like some of the others. Probably means she was a hooker. Another Jane Doe."

  "Are there any trackmarks or anything that might indicate that she was a hooker? If we could establish that she was a prostitute, we'd at least know that The Electrocutionist is still going to the block."

  "Well, there aren't any railroad tracks, but it does look like she had a lot of makeup on."

  Vickie squinted at the corpse and moved around to the side so she could get a good look at the face. The band of tape over the mouth blocked her recollection, but when she closely examined the hair and the eyes, Vickie recognized it.

  "She was a hooker," Vickie said, looking over at Chet. "Remember that girl who was giving me a hard time last night just before it started to rain? The one in the green dress?"

  Chet nodded. "I couldn't see her face from the car. She had her back to me."

  "Well, I saw her face. This is her. I'm sure of it."

  "You're positive?" Dignazio asked. "You saw her on the block yourself?"

  "Yeah, just a few hours ago, really. About one in the morning. She tried to pick a fight with me 'cause I wouldn't get off the corner."

  "Was she with any other girls?"

  "No. She was alone."

  "Did you see her with any men?"

  "I wish I did, but I only saw her that one time. She never passed me again, and I didn't see her with any Johns."

  "Well, that solves that," Chet broke in. "We know that she was working the streets, and The Electrocutionist is still coming to 14th Street."

  "Fucker's got balls, doesn't he?" Dignazio said. "He thinks he can come and get it off the block whenever he fucking wants to." Dignazio seemed excited. "We have to let him keep on thinking that. Christ, we're closer than we know. The Electrocutionist was on the street last night, and so were you two. He could've walked right by. Did either of you see anyone who looked like him? Any guys at all?"

  "Couple of black guys," Chet answered. "And a couple of kids. But no one who resembled the description we have."

  "Maybe our description's wrong," Dignazio said. "But it doesn't really matter. He's still going for it, whatever he looks like."

  One of the uniformed D.C. cops came up to Dignazio. "The meat wagon will be here in a few."

  Dignazio was almost smiling. "Right. Have them take the body to the lab for a quick print run. Probably won't be anything on the plastic or tape, unless the killer's getting careless. Then send it to the morgue and tell Green to do his stuff right away. I want the results ASAP."

  The cop nodded and went to his cruiser. As he loped back around the side of the cross, something in the grass caught Vickie's eye. It was a tiny glint, like the reflection from a sliver of broken mirror. She walked over to it and stooped. At first, she thought it was a pen, but then she noticed a strange protuberance from its metallic body. "Hey, what's this?" she said, and reached down to grab it.

  "Whatever it is, don't touch it," Dignazio warned. "Could be evidence with prints." Dignazio and Chet rushed over to where she stood, and they both looked down into the grass, hands and knees. A silver cylinder lay in the soil, pushed into the ground as if someone had stepped on it. Dignazio motioned to one of the uniformed officers who sat on the hood of a cruiser. He came over to them, got down on one knee, and pulled the metal cylinder out of the dirt with a pair of big tweezers, holding it up in front of them.

  "Looks like a Parker pen," said Chet.

  Dignazio shook his head. "No, can't be. What's that thing sticking out of the end?" He addressed the cop. "Take this thing to the lab right now and have it dusted. Then let Green have a look at it. If it's what I think it is, then maybe we've got a clue."

  "Yes, sir," the cop said, and dropped the cylinder into a baggie as he went back to his cruiser.

  Just as the patrol car backed up and left, an ambulance arrived, its sirens and flashing lights off, and it pulled up to the curb surrounding the cross, jolted over it in a cumbersome lurch, then drove right up on the grass. Two portly men in faded dark blue uniforms got out of the back, one dragging a wheeled stretcher along, and they followed the remaining officer to the reverse side of the Peace Cross where the body was.

  Dignazio watched them for a moment, then returned his attention back to Vickie and Chet. "Maybe things are looking up. Meet me down at the ice box in about an hour. We'll hear what Doc Skivy has to say."

  "Okay," Chet said. "We'll see you then."

  While they tramped through the wet grass back to the station wagon, Vickie asked, "He said the ice box, didn't he? That means the morgue."

  "Yeah, but it'll only take a few minutes. Dr. Green might know something about that gadget you found. Shit, if that thing has any prints on it, that could be all she wrote. You may have broken the case."

  "What was that thing?"

  "Damned if I know. I've never seen anything like it before, and it's not the sort of thing you'd just happen to find lying around at Peace Cross. The Electrocutionist may have dropped it when he was dumping the body. What do you say we go get some coffee? Then we'll head out to D.C. General and see what's up."

  "Sounds good to me."

  Chet got into the wagon first, and when he turned over the ignition, a rough grinding sound shrilled out from under the hood for a second. Chet made a wincing face and said, "Damn. I'm going to have to get this starter replaced soon. Sounds like it's beat to shit." He looked over at Vickie, who stood stooped by the open passenger door. She was staring at something, the same way she had been when she found the metal cylinder in the grass. "What are you looking at?" he asked, leaning toward the open door.

  She glanced over at him, then threw her eyes back down onto the street. "I think it's a cigarette."

  "A cigarette? Big deal."

  "It's black."

  "Wha...let me see it."

  She pinched the water-logged thing with her fingers, picked it up, and placed it in Chet's open palm. He held it up and surveyed it with a jeweler's scrutiny. "I think you're right. It is a cigarette, but the paper is black instead of white. Must be an import. I used to work with a guy who smoked blue cigarettes imported from Turkey or some shit. It couldn't have been here very long, otherwise it would have been disintegrated from the rain by now. We'll show it to Dignazio later. You know, you sure as hell notice the damnedest things. First that metal thing, and now this."

  "Eagle eyes," she said, and slammed the door. "Take me someplace and get me some coffee before I start convulsing."

  As Chet backed the car away from Peace Cross, Vickie watched the ambulance attendants carry the girl's body to the back of the orange and white vehicle, their arms pulled straight under the weight. They laughed while they hefted the metal stretcher up onto the back deck, as though they were telling dirty jokes, as though their motionless cargo were nothing more than a bundle of packaged meat on its way to cold storage in some supermarket.

  Dr. Green drew on the end of an unfiltered cigarette, sucking his thin cheeks in as if sipping from a Burger King straw. Vickie, Chet, and Dignazio sat around the doctor's large desk like three misfits waiting to be dealt a hand of poker. The silver object that Vickie had found rested in the middle of the blotter.

  "Sure I know what it is," Green said, with two plumes of Camel smoke puffing from his nostrils as he spoke. "If you'd opened your eyes when you all found it, you'd know what it was too. It's a Busch Automatic Injector. Says so right on the side."

  "I knew I've seen something like it before," Dignazio said. "When I was a kid, I remember my grandmother using one for her insulin shots."

  Green nodded. "That's exactly what it's for. We call them chicken pokes or sissy spikes—for people who can't stand to use a regular hypo." He picked it up and simulated its function. "All you do to use it is load it with a premeasured vial of insulin and touch it to your skin. When pressure is exerted on this trigger at the end, the needle darts out and instantly injects the insulin into your bloodstream. Just like the atropine injectors they use in the army... But as you may have guessed, this injector wasn't used for insulin. Inside, there was an empty vial containing traces of sodium pentothal, and that girl in the other room has pentothal in her veins and kidneys. Plus, the blood on the end of the needle matches the blood type of the girl. There's no question that The Electrocutionist used this to knock the girl out before he took her to wherever he takes them. It must've fallen out of his pocket when he was stowing the body at Peace Cross."

  Dignazio rested his chin in his palm. "We were right about that. He's hitting them up with this injector the second they get in the car with him. It works so fast that there's no time for them to get out and run away. He just pops the girl's in the neck and—bam—they're out like a light."

  "That's right," Green agreed. "Pentothal will produce unconsciousness in fifteen to thirty seconds."

  "Any prints?" Chet asked.

  Dignazio puckered. "Ziltch. Nothing came up but smears. It was covered with mud; the fucker must've walked on the damn thing when he was getting back in his car. But even without prints, this thing that Vickie found is a valuable clue. Without it, The Electrocutionist has lost part of his routine; he may have to change his m.o., unless he has more of them. I mean, Christ, an automatic injector isn't the sort of thing you just walk into Peoples Drug Store and buy over the counter."

  "Let's not get our hopes up about that," said Chet. "Sodium pentothal isn't easy to lay your hands on, either. If he can get that, he can probably also get another injector. The Electrocutionist must have an easy source for this stuff."

  "Yeah, you're right," Dignazio admitted. "With our luck, he's probably got a whole closet full of the things. But at least we've got our foot in the door. The investigation division is checking out all the pharmaceutical suppliers in the area, and Dave's heading up the interviews with the rest of the suspects Major Case gave us. And what's more important is that The Electrocutionist isn't hesitating to go to the block when he wants girls. He's making mistakes now; he's getting ballsy and careless, and those are big points in our favor. If we play our cards right, we'll get him soon."

  "What about the condition of the body itself, Doc?" Chet queried to Green. "How does it stack up to the others? There were some irregularities about that last one."

  Green slurped another drag of his Camel. "Well, The Electrocutionist is back to his old ways, if that's what you mean. The girl you just brought in was raped after she was electrocuted. Tissue hemorrhaging was identical to the first six victims; as a matter of fact, so was everything else—same kind of plastic, same kind of tape, same kind of tennis ball as the first six victims. All I can say about the Baker girl is that he must've killed her under a different circumstance. Perhaps he took her to a different place and therefore didn't have access to the same materials. I don't know; you guys are the detectives." He stamped out the stub of his cigarette. "You know, I sometimes pity you fellas. In all my years of criminal pathology, I've never heard of an electrocution killer." He let out a repressed chuckle. "That's about the sickest thing I've ever heard. I don't know how you can hack it."

  Dignazio got up and chuckled himself, rubbing his hands down the legs of his pants. "Well, let me tell you, Doc. We don't exactly envy you and your job, either. Jesus, you see more dead people than living ones."

  Green smiled and held up a finger. "That's the good thing about it—they never argue with me."

  "We better get out of here and let you get back to business," Dignazio returned. "Thanks for your help."

  Vickie, Chet, and Dignazio filed out of the dreary white cast of Dr. Green's office and stepped out into the fresh air of the autumn morning. As the three of them made their way to the parking lot, Vickie tugged on Chet's jacket sleeve and reminded, "Don't forget to tell him about the cigarette we found at Peace Cross."

  "Oh yeah," he said, then turned to Dignazio. "Hey, Captain, before you leave, take a look at this." Chet opened the car door and picked the cigarette butt out of the ashtray where he had placed it earlier. "Might not be anything, but we thought you'd want to see it. Vickie found it on the curb at Peace Cross." He handed the tiny butt to Dignazio, who twisted his mouth quizzically.

  "What the fuck is it?" Dignazio asked in a tone of distaste. "It looks like a turd."

  "It's a cigarette butt," Vickie told him. "Chet thinks it's one of those off-the-wall imported brands."

  "You found this at Peace Cross?"

  Vickie nodded, and Dignazio turned to Chet. "Why the fuck didn't you show me this before?"

  "You had already left," said Chet, "so we figured we'd show it to you now."

  Sometimes I wonder about those jackasses in investigation," Dignazio complained. "They were supposed to have gone over that area thoroughly, yet they missed that automatic injector and this screwy cigarette butt. Shit, Vickie, maybe we should fire them and hire you. So far, you've been doing their job better than them."

  "Anyone could've dropped it there," Chet said. "Do you think it's important?"

  "Fuck yes, it's important. It's no ordinary butt, and look . . ." Dignazio held the butt up into the light. "It's still got a brand name on it. Hasn't been smoked down far enough."

  All three of them strained their eyes on it as Dignazio slowly read the minuscule gold letters printed around the end.

  "Sobranihad."

  "I've never heard of that brand," Chet said.

  Dignazio agreed, "Yeah, neither have I, and that may be another break for us. It's not a popular brand. If The Electrocutionist dropped this butt, all we have to do is find out the tobacco shops that stock this brand and try to get a make on the people who buy it. Christ, nobody walks into the middle of Bladensburg Road to drop their cigarette butts. I'm taking this to investigation right now. I'm glad you guys picked it up and had the sense to tell me. If you feel like earning your pay this week, it wouldn't hurt to check out a couple of tobacco shops around town. It's almost nine o'clock; they should be opening up soon."

  "Okay," Chet said. "We'll run by a few of them before I drop Vickie off."

  "Good." After sealing the butt in an envelope and slipping it in his pocket, Dignazio brushed the sleeves of his jacket with a smirk. That was when Vickie noticed how sloppy he looked. Though Dignazio had about the crudest, foulest, raunchiest language she had ever known, he always dressed sharply, wearing freshly pressed suits, smart ties, and shoes polished to a high gloss. But just then, his jacket was covered with lint, his slacks crumpled and webbed with wrinkles at the knees, his shirt stained with orange juice, and his shoes so scuffed that they looked like they had been buffed with a brick. She also saw that Chet had noticed his captain's sudden sloppiness too; there was a thin smile on his face, and she thought that he might start laughing under his breath.