Diamond wrote 6'3". Lean. Muscular.

"And his hair was black and slicked back tight against his scalp.

Short. No sideburns. He had on a lime green leisure suit and white shiny loafers with brass tassels."

"And the car?"

"Lincoln, new. Orange roof, blue body. Roof is vinyl." Newman found himself talking like a television cop. Christ, he thought, even here I'm trying to sound right.

"Okay," Diamond said, "now where were you…" "Eddie," Tinkham said. "Why fuck around with that? You know the statics are going to do this and we're not. We don't even have mug books, for cris sake Whyn't you put out a pick-up on the radio for that car with that description. Then we'll inventory the scene so that when some state police corporal shows up here and looks around he won't think we're a couple of fucking assholes."

Diamond nodded and went to the patrol car.

"Aren't you the writer?" Tinkham said.

Newman nodded. "The one," he said.

"Oughta get a few good stories out of this one," Tinkham said.

Newman nodded.

"I see you running every day," Tinkham said. He stood with his back to the dead woman. The earth had rotated a bit and the dappling shadow of the trees fell across the police cruiser, leaving the woman in shade.

"How far you go?" "I do about ten miles," Newman said. "Three days a week I run up to the health club and lift a little."

"Losing any weight?" Tinkham said.

"Yeah. Maybe twenty, twenty-five pounds so far." Newman said. He was conscious of saying yeah. A regular guy. One of the boys. At ease with cops and jocks and guys that played pool for money.

One of the crows made a swoop down over the dead woman and didn't dare.

He kept in the air and circled back up to the tree branch. There were five crows there now.

Diamond came back from the cruiser. "Couple of statics coming down from the Smithfield barracks," he said. "Alden says don't touch anything till they get here."