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things.”
    “I have noticed. So why are you
looking at the usual sort of ring?”
    “Just getting a baseline. Anything
wrong with that?”
    Peter’s phone rang. He grabbed the
receiver. “Dourson. . . Yeah. . . We’ll be right down.” He hung up.
“That was Jeffers. Time to go see a doctor about a corpse. You up
for a ride to the University?” He headed down the hall, Brent
behind him.
    “This isn’t over. It’s my job to
watch your back and right now, I’d say you’re a train wreck waiting
to happen. Lia ever suggest to you that she even wants to get
married?”
    “Marriage is what people do when
they grow up. I know you’re unfamiliar with adulthood, but maybe
you’ve heard something about it?”
    “You do know you’re in the
twenty-first century, don’t you?”
    They exited the building. As Peter
turned left, toward his Blazer, Brent put a hand on his shoulder
and redirected him to the right. “This way, my man. You’re in for a
ride.”
    “Meet Celeste,” Brent said as he
clicked his fob. A midnight blue Audi A4 obligingly flashed her
lights and beeped. “She’s my sexy new girl.”
    Peter let out a low whistle as he
walked around the sporty sedan. “Isn’t Celeste a French name?
Shouldn’t she have a German name, like Helga or
Gertrude?”
    “It may be a German car, but Audi
is Latin. Celeste is Latin for heavenly. And that, my man, she
is.”
    “If she didn’t set you back a
year’s pay, I’ll eat my badge.”
    “Start chewing, Brother. Even with
the Bluetooth and the iPod interface, the walnut inlay and those
very snazzy wheels, I managed to skim under.”
    “That include
insurance?”
    Brent held open the passenger door
and waved his arm. “I refuse to dignify that. Slide your manly rear
onto that leather seat and Celeste will show you what she’s all
about.”
    Peter got into the car. Brent shut
the door and headed for the other side.
    “Did you get the sissy seat
warmers?”
    “No, I did not get the sissy seat
warmers.”
    “Too bad, that could come in handy
on a stake out.”
    “Celeste does not do stake outs.
Celeste draws too much attention. Don’t you, Baby?” Brent patted
the steering wheel and started the car. “Hold on to your
metaphorical hat.” He pulled out onto Ludlow Avenue.
    “So my Blazer is good for
something then.”
    “You’ll be ashamed to climb into
that rolling pile of scrap metal after Celeste is done with you.”
He cut neatly through traffic and headed up the hill, toward
University Hospital.
    “Insult me all you want. My truck
is paid for. While you’re bleeding the equivalent of a house
payment every month, I’m socking it away.”
    “House payment? You buying a
house?”
    “Not yet, but I’ve got my eyes
open and I’m going to be ready when the right place comes on the
market.”
    “Lia know about this?”
    “I’ve been saving that money for
years. No reason to talk to Lia about it until something
interesting comes along.”
    “Rings and house payments. You do
have it bad. I bet she’s perfectly happy with things as they are.
You’d better have a chat with her about all this before you go any
further down the road to Fantasy Island.”
    “There is no road to Fantasy
Island. You have to take a plane. Don’t you know
anything?”
    “I know trouble when I see
it.”
    “You want to make love to your
car. And you think I’m in trouble?”
~ ~ ~
    Peter again smelled the scent of
urine and putrefaction when he entered the morgue. Deputy Coroner
Amanda Jefferson stood by a steel table holding an array of bones
arranged roughly as a skeleton. The bones had been cleaned of all
scraps of meat and sinew since Peter and Brent last saw them,
revealing an abundance of gouges in the surface. There were a
number of gaps where bones were missing.
    “Gentlemen, meet John Doe. He was
a Caucasian male, age somewhere between forty and sixty. He had
white hair and he was five foot, six to five foot, eight inches
tall. Clothing fragments found at