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all, I had gone my entire life without feeling even a small zephyr from the hurricane winds of human lust—why should I start now, with an unobtainable golden-haired goddess? And seriously, I had much more important things to do, many of them involving duct tape and fillet knives. But I fought down my rising crankiness and, in the spirit of cooperation mandated by Captain Matthews, I gave her an answer.
    “In the first place,” I said, “you’re supposed to say, ‘What have you got?’ Not, ‘Um, have you found anything?’ ”
    Jackie smiled again. “Okay,” she said, and added, “What have you got?”
    “Don’t look so happy,” I said. “It’s kind of a casual, short-tempered snarl. Like this.” I set my face in my very best imitation of Deborah’s Cop Face and said, “What have you got.”
    Jackie laughed. It was such an infectiously cheerful sound that for a moment I forgot we were standing by a mutilated corpse dumped on a heap of garbage. “Okay,” she said. “So you’re not just a forensics geek; you’re an acting coach, too, huh? All right. How’s this?” And she twisted her face into a cranky-fish mask that actually looked a lot like Deborah’s expression. “What have you got,” she deadpanned. Then she chuckled again, and I felt an answering smile creeping onto my face.
    Deborah, however, did not seem to share our good spirits. She scowled even more, and said, “If you two Twinkies are done clowning around, we still got a chopped-up body here.”
    “Oh,” Jackie said, immediately looking serious again. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. Of course you’re right.”
    Although I couldn’t help thinking that Debs was a little bit of a buzz-kill, I also knew she was right. And in any case, I didn’t like the bizarre human feelings that Jackie was causing in me. So I gave them both a short, very professional nod, and went back to work.
    I had only been working at it for a very short time when I heard someone gag and say, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God,” and since I was fairly certain Robert had not come back for another peek at the party, I turned to look at Vince to see what had caused that kind of reaction in someone who was usually so unflappable, even in the face of the most extreme carnage.
    Vince had dragged a box over to the Dumpster. He was standing on it and very carefully examining the body, but something had frozen him in place, absolutely motionless, half bent into the Dumpster, and I felt a new hiss of interest from the Passenger.
    “What is it,” I asked him, fighting to keep the eagerness out of my voice.
    “Oh, holy fuck,” he said. “I can’t believe this.”
    “Believe what?” I said, more than a little irritated at the way he had to emote his way through a long dramatic buildup instead of simply answering my question.
    “Semen,” he said, shaking his head and turning to face me with a look of complete disgust. “There’s semen in the eye socket.”
    I blinked; I have to admit that seemed extreme, even to me. “The eye socket? Are you sure?” I said, and it is an indication of how shocked I was that I said something that stupid.
    “I’m sure,” he said, turning back to look at the body once more. “It’s actually
in
the fucking eye socket, which means— Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ.”
    I stepped over beside him and looked again at the shattered remains of the young woman. She was still dead. Vince had turned her head slightly so the far side of her face was now visible, and although it was just as damaged, her other eye had not been torn out. It was wide-open, staring straight ahead at the improbable death that had come for her. I wondered what she had done to bring this kind of monstrous end to her life. Not that I am parroting the Homicidal Rapist Party Line of,
She deserved it; she had it coming for dressing like that
, and so on. I was quite sure that whoever this young womanhad been, she had done nothing to deliberately provoke anything like this.
    But there is