Merlo nodded. He gestured toward nothing in particular. "Scout the area, why don't you. Maybe you'll turn something up."

Curry nodded back and began a reluctant search. Not thirty feet away, under more brush, was the other headless corpse. This oak-colored, stocky, emasculated body seemed a match for the items the railroad dicks had dug up in the sand.

Also under the brush was a dark blue suit coat with a B.R. Baker Com-pany label, and a white shirt and underwear. All three garments were stiff as cardboard in places where they were stained a reddish brown.

"Finally found some blood," Curry told Merlo, handing him the pile of clothes.

"They weren't killed here, then," Merlo said, eyes narrowing. "These look like they belong to the older, heavier guy's clothes; he was killed wearing them, but not here. Both bodies were drained of blood, somewhere else, and in the case of the older man possibly treated with some chemical, God knows why."

"Preservation?"

"Good guess, but why? A murderer should want his victim to decom-pose. Why preserve evidence?"

"Decay attracts attention; preservation might delay the bodies being found."

"Maybe," Merlo shrugged, his expression like that of a math teacher pondering a problem. "But in Kingsbury Run, who'd notice the smell?"

"Sir, how could somebody haul these bodies here without being seen?"

"He may have done it after dark; or maybe he was seen. Only who could see him, but some 'bo?"

"Is that who these men are? Were? Hobos?"

Merlo looked in the direction of the shantytown. "It's our job to find out, isn't it?"

About seventy-five feet from the second body was more earth that looked "disturbed." Curry (now wearing gloves) found the second head and the second penis buried there. He had nothing left in his stomach, by this point, and was getting numb to the horror of the afternoon. Dusk was settling in, threatening evening, and the dimness gave less reality to the round head he cupped in his palm. It had a young, curiously innocent face, male but with feminine lips.