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her. Jack had finally reached the far-side shoreline, winded and drenched with sweat, when he saw a flock of pigeons vying with a pair of mallards over some sort of bread that lay scattered in crumbs before a park bench. A bag on the ground beside a trashcan. Or was that a purse?
    It was the woolen handbag; Jack remembered. The one she was carrying when she got on the trolley.
    “Get off, you,” Jack swiped at the pigeons on the bench. Made sure no one was looking as he rifled Sally’s purse.
    Next to nothing inside. A pair of glasses, busted. Underwear. Some crumbs of bread. A waft of chilli and cinnamon. The scrawl of her signature on the prison receipt—Jesus, was that all? But at least he knew Sally was here. Or had been here.
    Jack’s heart hammered as though he were still in the infantry as he kneeled to inspect the ground around the park bench.
    A carpet of elm and maple leaves were freshly turned to expose some injury to the soft earth beneath. You didn’t have to be an Indian to see the gouges along the ground where something or somebody had been dragged away from the bench. Sally digging in her heels, maybe? And what was this? He wasn’t a fucking Mohican, but wasn’t that a boot print? Jack knelt to inspect an imprint too large for Sally or any woman he’d ever met. The heel’s mold was stamped much more deeply into the sammy soil than the toe. Light on the toe, heavy on the heel. Like he was walking backward.
    “Oh, shit.”
    Jack looked past the rim of the trashcan along the path of the troweled earth and boot prints to the lake beyond. It was shallow along the shoreline. You could see ducks breaking a smooth crease on water smooth as glass. And then he saw it.
    “Mary and Joseph.”
    Jack shed his shoes and socks on the run as he plunged into Swan Lake. What looked like a dozen strands of hair spread like a spill of oil on the water. Jack waded in knee deep to grab that meager purchase. He reached out. Gave a tug.
    Sally Price’s scalp popped free of a bloody skull.

Chapter four
     
    “Shill”— one who displays a ticket to an attraction for the purpose of enticing another.
     
    J ack heaved what little was left in his stomach into the trash can beside the park bench.
    “Oh, boy. Oh, boy.”
    Jack had seen bodies dismembered before, had seen limbs blown off from artillery, had ministered to men with gangrene, men hideously wounded in the trenches. But a body shattered by shell or gunfire was impersonally violated. This corpse looked as though it had come from an abattoir, flayed along the belly, deep cuts into the tendons of her knees and hamstrings. That awful, naked skull.
    Like a monkey skinned for meat.
    Jack was pushing away from the bin when he noticed the half-eaten chilli-dog inside, a wad of grease and beef wreathed in brown paper and vomit. He glanced about the bench—no other trash obvious except a soda bottle still fizzing on the ground.
    Some last meal, a chilli dog and a root beer. He turned his attention back to the trash.
    “What’s that?” Was that a scrap of stationery wadded inside the chilli-dog’s wrapper?
    Jack struggled to keep a fresh wave of nausea at bay as he retrieved the stained wrapper from the trashcan. You could see the watermark on the paper, Eaton’s Highland Linen. Pretty fancy paper to waste on an ex-con, but then, you wouldn’t want your friends talking behind your back. Jack returned to the bench, pinching his fingers to separate the stationery from its larded encasement. Moments later he had Sally’s letter.
    … Glad you’re out…Money…See you…Hotel Milner …
    “‘ Alex Goodman ’?” Jack muttered aloud.
    Who the hell was Alex Goodman?
    Jack brushed off the letter as best he could before slipping it into the breast pocket of his suit. Arno would not have thrown this letter away, he was sure of that. If Becker had seen this letter, he’d have kept it. Sooooo…
    Arno must have surprised Sally at the bench. She managed to toss the letter