Things skittered through his mind, and fear made him glance over his shoulder many times as he hurried down.

What he said later, much later, to Gebhart was this:

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I guess I felt sorry for him. Or maybe his parents, Christ, Gebi, they look so worn out. I don’t know. Maybe the air up here got to my brain.”

Gebhart had made the call, and was soon a panting, red-faced, out-of-shape policeman with a bauch full of strudel and coffee, his chest going in and out as he stood there after the climb.

Himmelfarb, hardly noticing the steep climb, was standing there too, with a face full of alarm and bewilderment.

“The boy wanted to go for a walk,” Felix said, uselessly.

“A walk,” said Gebhart, his breath whistling. “And look what you got. Holy shit.”

Gebhart took only a few steps, with his hand on his pistol, standing on tiptoe to get another look at the bodies. Felix watched the vein throbbing along his neck.

“This is a crime scene,” he muttered more than once, his voice barely above a whisper. “Be careful.”

“Jesus and Mary,” Himmelfarb said, many times. He had blessed himself a half-dozen times. “Are there more, farther in?”

The blood on their faces was black and brown. One of the men’s heads was swollen at the forehead, and though Felix didn’t’ want to look, there was that slight grin, and a tiny parting between the eyelids.

“When’s the last time you came by here, Karl?” said Gebhart.

Felix had his notebook out. He felt stupid with it hanging there, so he wrote down the time. Then he wrote that Karl Himmelfarb didn’t give a direct answer but merely shook his head.