She arrived at the scene and conferred with the assistant coroner. He informed her that the morgue was backlogged and the autopsy would take a while. But cause of death didn’t look to be any great mystery.

Single knife wound, exsanguination, most of the blood pooled beneath the DB, establishing the kill spot. Petra, in powder blue, was glad there wasn’t more gore.

Then she read the victim’s license and got sad because, for the first time since she’d been a detective, this was a name she recognized. She’d never been into the blues- not musically, anyway- but you didn’t have to be to know who Edgar Ray Lee was.

AKA Baby Boy. The driver’s license in his pocket just stated the basics: male Caucasian, a DOB that put him at fifty-one. Height: six-two, weight: two-seventy. Petra thought he looked bigger than that.

As she recorded the data in her pad, she overheard someone- one of the morgue drivers- remark that the guy was a guitar god, had jammed with Bloomfield, Mayall, Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Petra turned and saw a ponytailed and bearded ex-hippie type in morgue coveralls staring at the body. White ponytail. Wet-eyed.

“Talented,” she said.

“Those fingers,” said the driver, as he unfolded a black plastic body bag.

“You play?” Petra asked him.

“I noodle. He played. He- those fingers were… magic.” The driver dabbed at his eye, yanked angrily at the bag, virtually ripped it open. Zzzzzzzip.

“Ready?” he said.

“In a sec.” Petra crouched by the body, took in the details, again. Jotted in her pad.

Yellow T-shirt, blue jeans, shaved head, tiny chin beard. Tattoos blued both arms.

Ponytail walked away looking disgusted. Petra continued studying. Edgar Ray Lee’s mouth hung open exposing broken and rotted teeth that made Petra think: Junkie? But she spotted no track marks among the tattoos.