Coakley thought, Huh. Working on a Saturday.

She punched redial, and a woman answered, and she said, "This is Lee Coakley down in Warren County. I'm returning a call from Ike."

"Yeah, just a minute, Lee," the woman said. She added, "This is Martha, Ike's in the back. I'm gonna put the phone down-"

"What're you doing working on a Saturday? Something happen?"

"I think so," Martha said. "Let me get Ike."

And Coakley thought, Uh-oh. Patras came up a minute later and said, "There's something fishy in Battenberg, and it ain't the lutefisk."

"What happened?" Coakley asked.

"I looked at Flood. The back of his head had two deep cuts and impact impressions like you'd expect from a grate. Same pattern as the grate. But there was another blow, before those two. Hit him right in the back of the head, and it came before his head hit the grate."

"Like something from the truck hit him?"

"Well, something hit him, but I don't think it was the truck," Patras said.

"What was it?" Coakley asked, with a bad feeling about the question.

"I think the boy there might have hit him. I don't know with what. A big pipe, a baseball bat, something on that order. The boy says he was the only other one there… and I think somebody hit Flood on the head."

"He's a pretty good kid, Ike," Coakley said. "Bobby Tripp, I know him and his folks."

"Well, something happened, good kid or not," Patras said. "Let me give you a couple items. I did some dissection around the wound. The grate cut sliced through a small artery in his scalp. It bled some, but not nearly enough."