kicked off the covers, and lay flat on his back in the cold room, arms outstretched, until he was fully awake.
Four-twenty in the damn morning. He got up, threw on a robe, and went to the kitchen, then ground up some Jamaican blue, poured cold water into the coffee machine, and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later he was dressed in corduroy slacks, a wool sweater, and hiking boots. He doctored two large mugs of coffee, dumped several files from his desk into his briefcase, and when the phone rang he was ready to roll.
He snatched up the phone and said. 'This better be good,' and hung up. Throwing on a thick sheepskin car coat, he headed for the lobby ten floors below.
Major Abel Stenner sat ramrod straight behind the wheel. He was impeccably dressed in a grey pin-striped suit. When Stenner had accepted the job of Vail's chief investigator, Vail had promoted him to major, a rank rarely used except in the state police. It was a diabolical act on Vail's part - Stenner now outranked everyone in the city police but the chief. Vail handed him a mug of coffee.
'Thanks,' Stenner said.
'I thought you said to wear old clothes. You look like you're on your way to deliver a eulogy.'
'I was already dressed,' he answered as he pulled away from the kerb.
Stenner, a precise and deliberate man whose stoic expression and hard brown eyes shielded even a hint of emotion, was not only the best cop the city had ever produced, he was the most penurious with words, a man who rarely smiled and who spoke in short, direct, unflourished sentences.
'Where the hell are we going?'
'You'll see.'
Vail crunched down in the seat and sipped his coffee.
'Don't you ever sleep, Abel?'
'You ask me that once a week.'
'You never answer.'
'Why start?'
More silence. That they had become close friends was a miracle. Ten years ago, when Vail had been the top defence attorney in the state and had worked against the state instead of for it, they had been deadly adversaries. Stenner was the one cop who always had it right, who knew what it took to make a good case, who wouldn't bite at the trick question and could see through the setup, and who had been broken on the stand only once - by Vail during the Aaron Stampler trial. When Vail took the job of chief prosecutor, one of his first official duties was to steal Stenner away from Police Chief Eric Eckling. He had fully expected Stenner to turn him down, their animosity had been that profound, and he had been shocked when Stenner accepted the job.
'You're on my side now,' Stenner had explained with a shrug. 'Besides, Eckling is incompetent.'
Ten years. In those years, Stenner had actually begun to loosen up. He had been known to smile on occasion and there was a myth around the DA's office, unconfirmed, that he had once cracked a joke - although it was impossible to find anyone who actually had heard it.
Vail was half asleep, his coffee mug clutched between both hands to keep it from spilling, when Stenner turned off the highway and headed down the back tar road leading to the sprawling county landfill. His head wobbled back and forth. Then he was aware of a kaleidoscope of lights dancing on his eyelids.
He opened them, sat up in his seat, and saw, against a small mountain of refuse, flashing yellow, red, and blue reflections against the dark, steamy night. A moment later Stenner rounded the mound and the entire scene was suddenly spread out before them. There were a dozen cars of various descriptions - ambulances, police cars, the forensics van - all parked hard against the edge of the landfill. Beyond them, like men on the moon, yellow-garbed cops and firemen struggled over the steamy landscape, piercing the looming piles of garbage with long poles. The acrid smell of the burning garbage, rotten food, and wet paper permeated the air. For a moment it reminded Vail of the last time he had gone home, to a place ironically called Rainbow Flats, which had been savaged by polluters who repaid the community for enduring them by poisoning the land, water, and air. First one came, then another, attracted to the place like hyenas to carrion, until it was a vast island of death surrounded by forests they had yet to destroy. He had gone home to bury his grandmother thirteen years earlier and never returned. A momentary flash of the Rainbow Flats Industrial Park supplanted the scene before him. It streaked through his mind and was gone. It had always angered him that they had had the gall to call it a park.
Three tall poles with yellow flags snapping in the harsh wind seemed to establish the parameters of the search. They were bunched in a cluster, a circle perhaps fifty yards in circumference. The sickening
