"I hope so," Virgil said. "If it's like that, I'll get him. He'll have told his friends about it, and they'll rat him out."

Virgil's cell phone rang, and he slipped it out of his pocket and she said, "I hate it when that happens during lunch," and Virgil said, "Yeah." The call was coming in from a local number, and he opened the phone and said, "Hello?"

"Virgil, Jim Stryker. You know that Bill Judd had a heart bypass fifteen years ago, and also had some work done on his lumbar spine?"

"Yeah?"

"My crime-scene girl found a coil of stainless-steel wire in the basement of Judd's house, and she swears it's what they used to close up his breastbone after the bypass. And eight inches away, she found a couple of titanium screws and a steel rod that she says came out of Judd's spine. She says there should be X-rays up at the medical center, and she can check, but she thinks that's what she's got. She also thinks she found the back part of a skull, looks like a little saucer, pieces of two kneecaps and maybe some wrist and ankle bones."

"So he's dead," Virgil said.

"I believe so-DNA will tell, if they can get some out of the bone marrow. The arson investigator says that there was an accelerant, probably ten or twenty gallons of gasoline, because he says the fire did a broad lateral flash through the house, instead of burning up," Stryker said. "He means it spread laterally much faster than up, and with all this wood, it should have gone up faster."

"How can he tell?"

"Beats me. That's what he said-so, we've got another murder."

"Huh," Virgil said.

"What's that mean?" Stryker asked.

"You up there? At the Judds'?" Virgil asked.

"I am. I'll be here for a while."

"See you in a bit," Virgil said.

JOAN POINTED her fork at him. "Bill Judd?"

"Yeah." Virgil dabbed his lips with a napkin. "They think they might have found some remains. I gotta go."