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man latched his thumbs through his belt buckle, extending his elbows. “I’m taking charge and I’m delegating. I’m putting you in charge.” He pushed a finger into Fin’s chest.
    “Me?” Fin would have laughed had it been in any other circumstances. Had he not been in the presence of a dead man. “I’ve been a police officer for a day. You’re the chief. You…you’ve got others who’ve been on the force for years.” He indicated Pete, who had led the witness back down the alley toward the boardwalk.
    “Pete can’t do this.” Sean shook his head, almost in a frenzy. “You know he can’t. But you could do it, Fin. You’re…you’re good at this. It’s what you do. You investigate. For the sept. You investigate murderers all over the world.”
    Fin groaned in frustration. “This is different, Uncle Sean. I follow men. I keep track of what they do, where they go, who they see. I just report back what I see.”
    “So report back to me what you see here.” Sean turned his teary gaze to the dead man. “Please, Fin…” he begged in a whisper. “Fer the boy, if not for me.”
    Fin drew his hand over his face, down his chin, exhaling. He could see there was no sense arguing with Sean. The chief was a good man, but not a strong man. The beheadings had taken something out of him and he just didn’t seem to have regained it. The weight loss, the heavy drinking—anyone in the town could see it if they looked carefully.
    Fin glanced at the dead man. “He’s obviously posed,” he observed aloud.
    “Posed?”
    “Like the body was set there, positioned after he was dead.” The surfer’s eyes were still open. Blue. But they were beginning to cloud. The body was already in the first stages of decomposition, although Fin didn’t know yet how long it had been here. The human body started decomposing the moment the heart ceased to beat.
    “Posed,” Sean repeated. “Looks posed to me.”
    “No blood here, either,” Fin observed, moving closer to the body, his hand on his uncle’s so the older man couldn’t walk away. “What’s it mean?”
    “What’s it mean?” Sean repeated.
    Fin hadn’t meant the statement to be rhetorical. “It means the kid was killed somewhere else,” he said, thinking aloud. “He bled out elsewhere and was then brought here and posed against the Dumpster.”
    “Right. Right. Maybe he was killed in another town,” Sean offered eagerly. “In someone else’s jurisdiction.”
    “Maybe,” Fin said. But he doubted they’d get that lucky. He looked behind him, up the alley and toward the ocean, noting the bits of refuse on the ground; a paper cone from a serving of cotton candy, a crushed soda can, cigarette butts, the foil wrapper from a condom. Typical alley trash, but there could be evidence lying here anywhere. “We shouldn’t be walking around without shoe coverings. We could be destroying evidence. We need disposable gloves and shoe covers and whatever evidence-gathering tools we have. Digital cameras. Paper sacks to store the evidence.”
    “We…we’ve got all that stuff we used two years ago,” Sean offered. “In boxes in the basement back at the station. Should I send someone for it?”
    “Yeah. And you already called in every officer you have on the force, right?”
    Sean nodded. “Dispatcher is on it. She’s calling in everyone but Johnny K. He’s in Myrtle Beach with his family. Vacation.”
    “Call him, too.” Fin walked over to the body and crouched, studying the kid carefully. “And get the witness to the station. We’ll question him there. And call Doc Caldwell. We got an ambulance coming?”
    Sean didn’t answer.
    Fin glanced over his shoulder. “Chief. You have to call the paramedics.”
    “I hate to be the one to say, Fin, but he can’t be revived.” He’s a human , Sean telepathed.
    “There’re procedures. We have to have an ambulance to transport the body to the morgue.” He spoke slowly, not wanting to be disrespectful. “We