“After midnight?” he said. He glanced at my face.

“I told you I didn’t give it much thought. I had no reason to.”

“I know you’re a police officer, Mr. Robicheaux, but I don’t like loading dead college kids into the back of an ambulance. This is the second one in two days. The coroner says this one has been dead at least thirty-six hours. Your wife hear anything?”

“No.”

“Let’s ask her,” he said.

“She’s not dressed,” I replied.

“How about we eat some breakfast and work on this afterward?” Albert said.

Joe Bim Higgins studied the hillside, his chest rising and falling. He folded his notebook and put it in his pocket, then buttoned the flap on the pocket. His face was fatigued, his breath sour. “You worked a lot of homicides?” he said.

“A few.”

“Thursday evening a girl by the name of Cindy Kershaw went hiking with her boyfriend up Mount Sentinel, behind the university. She ended up at the bottom of the canyon with a broken skull. We couldn’t find her boyfriend and thought maybe he was involved. Late last night a man called in a tip from a pay phone and told us where to look. He told us the kid was alive and tied to a tree, but we’d better get our asses up there soon. You ever get tips like that?”

“Yeah, from people who were jerking us around.”

“The boyfriend’s name was Seymour Bell. He was twenty years old. He wasn’t tied up. He was shot four times at close range, all in the face. According to the coroner, he was shot on the hill, not moved there from somewheres else. From the looks of his britches, he died on his knees. The shooter took his brass with him. You didn’t hear any shots?”

“No sir.”

“You were in Vietnam?”

“A few months, before it got real hot.”

“Maybe this prick used a suppressor. Why you figure he’d kill the girl in one place and her boyfriend in another?”

“Was the girl raped?”