She has a great smile. I mean, it really looks like she’s glad to see you. An honest smile, I suppose you’d call it. She’s about ten years younger than I am, which makes her mature enough for most anything, and still young enough to do it. At about five feet six, she’s also close to a foot shorter than me, very fit, with short hair. That makes her look even younger. Just based on appearances, you wouldn’t consider her much of a threat. Not unless you knew her.

‘‘Sure, Carl.’’

‘‘Thanks, Hester.’’ I grinned back. I must have looked a little more stressed than I thought.

Her smile faded. ‘‘This is a bad business, Carl. Very bad.’’

‘‘You got that right.’’ I stopped at the body. ‘‘We don’t know who he is?’’

Agent Dahl spoke up. ‘‘No. Not yet, anyway. We’ve checked him for ID, but there’s none on him.’’ He paused. ‘‘There probably shouldn’t be any, anyway.’’ I wasn’t aware he’d been following us.

‘‘Can I move him a bit?’’ You should always ask, to make sure all the photos are done, and all the ‘‘in place’’ data has been gathered.

‘‘Go ahead, Carl,’’ said Hester. She lifted the blanket.

The body was a real mess. Blood had soaked his faded blue jeans, and the front of the unbuttoned shirt was so sticky it matted to his ribs. He’d been torn up from the lower belly through the side of his head. Half dozen wounds, at least. The head wound had pretty well removed the top of his head, making a channel as it did so, so that he looked like a purple smiley face with a bite out of the top. His lips puffed out, and one eye was completely gone, probably having come out under the terrific pressure that builds up with wounds like that. But I thought I recognized him. His chin, the scraggly beard, and the awful teeth. I pulled a pair of rubber gloves from my camera bag, put them on, and very gently moved the body over in a quarter roll to his left. I pulled aside his blood-soaked red-and-blue short-sleeved shirt. The tattoo of a skeleton on a motorcycle, hair streaming in the wind, was on his right shoulder blade.