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annoy the only detective in the homicide unit who did not actively dislike him. Paz didn’t actually know how Cletis felt about him personally, although coming as he did from five generations of the most viciously racist people in the nation, one might assume that his very first choice of a partner would not have been a black Cuban. On the other hand, no one had ever heard Barlow use a racial epithet, something that made him fairly unusual in the Miami PD.
    “Uh-huh, terrible,” Cletis agreed. “You know, you read about abominations in the Bible, but Satan is usually more roundabout in his works, these days.” Cletis mentioned the name casually, as if the Prince of Darkness were a suspect now hanging out in some local pool hall.
    “You think it’s a ritual killing?”
    “Well, let’s see now. No signs of forced entry. No one heard anyone holler the night we think she died, which was Saturday, or not that we heard about yet, although we’ll check some more. Then there’s the body. Look at that girl. What do you see? I mean besides what they did to her.”
    Paz looked. “She looks like she’s sleeping. I don’t see any abrasions on her wrists or ankles …”
    “There ain’t any. I checked. And the doc said she was alive when the cutting started. So …” Barlow paused and waited.
    “She knew the people. She let them in. They drugged her unconscious. And then they cut her. Je … um, gosh, what in the world did she think was going to happen to her?”
    “Well, we’ll just have to ask the boys who done it when we find them. Oh, yeah, another thing. What do you make of this here?”
    Barlow took a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket and handed it to Paz.
    It contained a pear-shaped, woody thing an inch or so across, like the thick shell of some nut or fruit, dark and shiny as a piano on the convex surface, dull and rough on the concave side, which bore a straight ridge down its center. Paz saw that two tiny holes had been drilled through either end.
    “Looks kind of like a piece of a nutshell, drilled. Part of some necklace?”
    They heard steps and a metallic rattle and the two guys from the morgue came in with their gurney.
    “Holy fucking shit!” said the lead man when he saw what was on the bed.
    “Watch your mouth, son!” said Barlow. “Have some respect for the dead.”
    The ambo man, who was relatively new on the job, was about to come back with some smart remark when he wisely took in the expression on Barlow’s face and the expression on his own partner’s and decided to keep his mouth shut and get on with the job.
    As he watched them place the remains of Deandra Wallace into a black plastic body bag, Paz reflected, not for the first time, that humor and cheerful obscenity were what made it possible for normal people to endure daily exposure to horror. That Cletis Barlow did not so indulge demonstrated that he was not a normal person, which Paz knew already, but neither did he seem to have any trouble bearing up. Paz liked figuring people out and had found that most of them were as simple as wind-up toys. The major exceptions to this in his experience were his mother and Cletis Barlow. Another thing that kept Paz willingly at his side.
    “There’s another one,” said Barlow. “A baby. In the kitchen.” The morgue guys looked startled. The younger one went into the kitchen. There was silence, and the sound of slamming cabinet doors. He came out holding a white kitchen trash bag with a dark bulge at the bottom.
    “No,” said Barlow. “Get a body bag.”
    “A bod … for Christ’s sake, it’s a fu … it’s a fetus,” said the ambo man.
    “It’s a child and it’s the image of God,” said Barlow. “It goes out of here in a body bag like a human being, not like some piece of garbage.”
    The older ambo man said, “Eddie, do like the man says. Go down to the bus and get another bag.”
    The two detectives waited in silence until the dead were removed from the apartment. They