He'd gone to enough of them to know that the bodies would still be there, as if he needed to see another body. The immediate area would be cordoned off by the responding officers, so you weren't going to beat them before the yellow tape went up and get some kind of close-up and personal view. And if friends and neighbors and possible eyewitnesses were what you were after, they'd all still be hanging around, at least the ones willing to talk or wanting to be quoted.

He climbed the pedestrian stairway of the Andrews Avenue Bridge. From the top he could see a television news truck already pulled up onto the sidewalk three blocks to the south. When he got down and made it within a block of the rear entrance of the seven-story jail, he slowed and started observing. Camera guys were up against the chain-link gate to the sally port, trying to get shots through the wire mesh. They would consider themselves lucky if they could get a telephoto of a blood pool or, even better, a shot of the medical examiner guys picking up the body and loading it into their black van. The newspaper's camera guys would be doing the same, afraid somebody else might get a shot they didn't have even though they knew no photo editor was going to put fresh blood on the front page. But better to be safe and get the gore shot than have some boss ask you why you didn't get it.

Bridge traffic going north was backed up, the omnipresent rubberneckers slowing to see what they could see and tell everybody at the office when they got in. Nowadays, they'd probably call it in on their cell phones: Hey, Jody, I'm down on Andrews and there's a bunch of cops and television guys. What's up? Did you hear anything? I mean, wow, the traffic, ya know? It was the electronic version of the backyard fence, instant and without boundaries.

Oh, and Jody? Tell the boss I'm gonna be late, OK?

As Nick approached the growing bubble of press, he recognized the TV reporters from Channels 7 and 10. They had done lots of crime scenes together over the years. It was a fraternity of odd undertakers.