Tanaka, shorter than Gilda by half a head, was a delegado titular. A man in his position had no need to risk his shoes. In fact, he had no need to be out there in the rain forest at all. But within the confines of his domain, the area covered by his precinct, Tanaka could do whatever he damn pleased. And what pleased Yoshiro Tanaka was the adrenaline rush he got from visiting crime scenes.

Gilda took a lead from his misstep and leaped clear of the slime. Her two assistants, Fernando and Geraldo, burdened by the tool-kit, body bag, and stretcher (and in Geraldo’s case the extra weight of the camera cases), were unable to follow her example. They squished their way through the mud, muttering imprecations as they went.

Beyond the rise was a clearing. On the far side, perhaps fif-teen meters away, a ball-like object protruded from the ground. Hans stopped and waved his arms.

“I was right about here,” he said, “when The Mop spotted me.”

Hans-his last name was something Teutonic, and Gilda had promptly forgotten it-was about twenty-five, blue-eyed and blond-haired, clearly the offspring of German immi-grants. The Mop, twenty years younger, brown-eyed and properly called Herbert, was an old-English sheepdog, owned by Hans’s employer, Senhor Manfredo. To hear Hans tell it, the animal was an escape artist, the Houdini of the dog world. Hans claimed he spent half of his working life chasing after him.

“He picked up this big bone,” Hans said, moving forward again and holding his hands apart as if describing the prover-bial fish that got away, “and came running toward me with the damned thing in his mouth. I thought it was from a cow-until I saw that.”