Susan started the Stryker saw and no one competed with its loud buzzing as she cut through the skull. I continued examining the organs. Heart was good, coronaries terrific. When the saw stopped, I resumed dictating to Fielding.

“You got the weight?” he asked.

“Heart weighs five-forty, and he's got a single adhesion of the left upper lobe to the aortic arch. Even found four parathyroids, in case you didn't already get that.”

“I got it.” I placed the stomach on the cutting board. “It's almost tubular.” “You sure?”

Fielding moved closer to inspect. “That's bizarre. A guy this big needs a minimum of four thousand calories a day.”

“He wasn't getting it, not lately,” I said. “He doesn't have any gastric contents. His stomach is absolutely empty and clean.”

“He didn't eat his last meal?” Marino asked me.

“It doesn't appear that he did.”

“Do they usually?”

“Yes,” I said, “usually.”

We were finished by one A.M., and followed the funeral home attendants out to the bay, where the hearse was waiting. As we walked out of the building, darkness throbbed with red and blue lights. Radio static drifted on the cold, damp air, engines rumbled, and beyond the chain-link fence enclosing the parking lot was a ring of fire. Men, women, and children stood silently, faces wavering in candlelight.

The attendants wasted no time sliding Waddell's body into the back of the hearse and slamming the tailgate shut.

Somebody said something I did not get, and suddenly candles showered over the fence like a storm of falling stars and landed softly on the pavement.

“Goddam squirrels!” Marino exclaimed. Wicks glowed orange and tiny flames dotted the tarmac. The hearse hastily began to back out of the bay. Flashguns were going off. I spotted the Channel 8 news van parked on Main Street. Someone was running along the sidewalk. Uniformed men wed stamping out the candles, moving toward the fence, demanding that everyone clear the area.