sour-sweet odour of death intruded on the wind and occasionally overpowered the smell of decay. Four men came over a ridge of the dump hefting a green body bag among them.
'That's three,' Stenner said.
'Bodies?'
'Where the flags are.' He nodded.
'Jesus!'
'First one was over there, in that cluster. A woman. They tumbled on the second one when I called you.'
A freezing blast of cold air swept the car as Stenner got out. Vail turned up his collar and stepped out into the predawn. He jammed his hands deep in his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind. He could feel his lips chapping as his warm breath turned to steam and blew back into his face.
Two cops, an old-timer and a rookie, were standing guard beside the yellow crime-scene ribbons as Vail and Stenner stepped over them. The wind whipped Stenner's tie out and it flapped around his face for a moment before he tucked it back under his jacket as they walked towards the landfill.
'Jesus, don't he have a coat? Gotta be ten degrees out,' said the rookie.
'He don't need a coat,' the older cop said. 'He ain't got any blood. That's Stenner. Know what they used to call him when he was with the PD? The Icicle.'
Twenty feet away Stenner stopped and turned slowly as the cop said it and stared at him for a full ten seconds, then turned back to the crime scene.
'See what I mean,' the older cop whispered. 'Nobody ever called him that to his face.'
'Must have ears in the back of his head.'
'It's eyes.'
'Huh?'
'It's eyes. He's got eyes in the back of his head.'
'He didn't see you, he heard you,' the young cop said.
'Huh?'
'You said -'
'Jesus, Sanders, forget it. Just forget it. Coldest night of the year, I'm in the city dump, and I draw a fuckin' moron for a partner.'
'There's Shock,' Stenner said to Vail.
He nodded towards a tall, beefy uniformed cop bundled in his blue wool coat, standing at the edge of the fill. Capt. Shock Johnson was ebony black and bald, with enormous, scarred hands that were cupped in front of his mouth and shoulders like a Green Bay lineman. When he saw Vail and Stenner, he shook his head and chuckled.
'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You guys don't even have to be here.'
'What the hell's going on?' Vail asked.
'The dozer operator turned over the first one, so I decided we ought to punch around a little and, bingo, now we got three.'
'What killed them?'
'Better ask Okimoto that, he's the expert. They're a mess. Been in there awhile. Maggots have had Thanksgiving dinner on all of 'em.'
Vail groaned at the image. 'So we don't know anything yet, that it?' he asked.
'Know we got three stiffos been cooking down in that gunk for God knows how long.'
'May be hard to determine when these happened,' Stenner offered. 'Location will be very important.'
Johnson nodded. 'We're taking stills and video, doing measurements. If the weather's okay later I've ordered a chopper flyover. We'll get some pictures from up top.'
'Good.'
Johnson had once been Stenner's sergeant and had made lieutenant when he quit. He was now captain of the night watch, a man beholden to Stenner for years of education and for fostering in him a strong sense of intuition. He was Stenner's pipeline to a very unfriendly police department.
