High Five

He turned and looked at me. 'Were there any other possibilities?'

'Morelli.'

'You back with him?'

Good question. I glanced at the food. Salad. 'Morelli would have brought sausage sandwiches.'

'That stuff'll kill you, Babe.'

We were bounty hunters. People shot at us. And Ranger was worried about trans fats and nitrates. 'I'm not sure our life expectancy is all that good anyway,' I said.

My kitchen is small, and Ranger seemed to be taking up a lot of space, standing very close. He reached around me and snagged two salad bowls from the over-the-counter cabinet. 'It's not length of life that's important,' he said. 'It's the quality. The goal is to have purity of mind and body.'

'Do you have a pure mind and body?'

Ranger locked eyes with me. 'Not right now.'

Hmm.

He filled a bowl with salad and handed it to me. 'You need money.'

'Yes.'

'There are lots of ways to make money.'

I stared down into my salad, pushing greens around with my fork. 'True.'

Ranger waited for me to look up at him before he spoke. 'You sure you want to do this?'

'No, I'm not sure. I don't even know what we're talking about. I don't actually know what it is that you do. I'm just searching for a second profession that'll supplement my income.'

'Any restrictions or preferences?'

'No drugs or illegal gun sales.'

'Do you think I'd deal drugs?'

'No. That was thoughtless.'

He helped himself to salad. 'What I have going now is a renovation job.'

This sounded appealing. 'You mean like interior decorating?'

'Yeah. Guess you could call it interior decorating.'

I tried the salad. It was pretty good, but it needed something. Croutons fried in butter. Big chunks of fattening cheese. And beer. I looked in vain for another bag. I checked the refrigerator. No beer there either.

'This is the way it works,' Ranger said. 'I send a team in to renovate, and then I place one or two people in the building to take care of long-term maintenance.' Ranger looked up from his food. 'You're keeping in shape, right? You run?'

'Sure. I run all the time.' I run never. My idea of exercise is to barrel through a shopping mall.

Ranger gave me a dark look. 'You're lying.'

'Well, I think about running.'

He finished his food and put the bowl in the dishwasher. 'I'll pick you up tomorrow at five A.M.'

'Five A.M.! To start an interior decorating job?'

'It's the way I like to do it.'

A warning message flashed through my brain. 'Maybe I should know more—'

'It's routine. Nothing special.' He checked his watch. 'I have to go. Business meeting.'

I didn't want to speculate on the nature of his business meeting.

*    *    *    *    *

 I BUZZED THE television on, but couldn't find anything to watch. No hockey. No fun movies. I went to my shoulder bag and pulled out the large envelope from the copier. I'm not sure why, but I'd made color copies of the pictures before meeting Morelli. I'd been able to fit six photos to a page and had filled four pages. I spread the pages on my dining-room table.

Not nice stuff to look at.

When the photos were laid out side-by-side, certain things became evident. I was pretty sure there was only one body and that it wasn't the body of an old person. No gray hair. And the skin was firm. Difficult to tell if it was a woman or a young man. Some of the pictures had been taken quite close. Some were from further away. It didn't look like the parts were ever rearranged. But the bag was sometimes pulled down to reveal more.

Okay, Stephanie, put yourself in the photographer's shoes. Why are you taking these pictures? Trophy shots? I didn't think so, because none showed the face. And there were twenty-four pictures here, so the roll was intact. If I wanted a remembrance of this grisly act, I'd want a face shot. Ditto for proof that the job had been done. Proof of a kill required a face shot. What was left? A visual record by someone who didn't want to disturb the evidence. So maybe Uncle Fred happened on a bag of body parts and ran out and got himself a point-and-shoot. And then what? Then he put the pictures in his desk drawer and disappeared while running errands.

That was my best guess, as weak as it was. The truth is, the pictures could have been taken five years ago. Someone could have given them to Fred for safekeeping or as a macabre joke.