I struggled silently with an almost-overwhelming urge to jump up and run. After several deep breaths, I won. I steeled myself to do what I had to do, but I couldn’t face doing it in the dark.

I reached into my windbreaker pocket and pulled out a narrow, lightweight, powerful little flashlight that had caught my fancy at Wal-Mart. I shifted in my squatting position so that my body was between the apartment building and what was on the ground. I switched on the flashlight.

I was angry at myself when I saw my hand was shaking as I separated the bags. I fumbled them apart some four inches and stopped. I was looking at a torn, rather faded shirt, a man’s plaid shirt in green and orange. The chest pocket had caught on something; it was partially ripped from its stitching and a fragment was missing.

I recognized the shirt, though it hadn’t been torn when I’d seen it last.

I worked the bag up a little at the side and found a hand; I put my fingers on the wrist, where a pulse should be.

In the chilly Shakespeare night, I squatted in the middle of the trees, holding hands with a dead man.

And now I’d left my fingerprints all over the plastic bags.

About forty minutes later, I was sitting in my bedroom. I was finally tired to the bone.

I’d taken the bags off the corpse.

I’d confirmed the corpse’s identity, and its corpse-dom. No breath, no heartbeat.

I’d worked my way out of the arboretum, knowing I was leaving traces but helpless to avoid it. My incoming traces were unerasable; I’d figured I might as well make a trail out, too. I’d emerged from the bushes on Latham and crossed the street there, well out of sight of the apartments. I’d gone from cover to cover until I circled Carlton Cockroft’s house, silently crossing his yard to arrive in my own.

I’d found that the cart thief had replaced my cart and reinserted the garbage cans, but not as I’d had them.