Jesus Christ! He’d nearly been taken out by a senior citizen.

He’d been sloppy and overconfident. He was lucky he wasn’t flat on the ground with a metal bar sticking out of his skull. Gerald spotted the bar across the room and rose on shaky legs to retrieve it. It was rough and heavy in his hands. Rebar.

Primitive.

He rubbed at his skull. But effective.

His foot kicked his gun. He put it back in his shoulder holster and eyed the prostrate body on the floor.

Dead? He’d smacked his head pretty hard.

Gerald squatted and held two fingers to the old man’s neck. A weak pulse fluttered.

Good. Not dead. He needed some answers.

He stood up and blew out a breath. He was still seeing stars and desperately needed a drink of water. By the light of his cell phone, Gerald found a tap and a glass and drank deep. He filled the cup again and poured it over the old man’s head.

Nothing.

He checked the pulse and barely yanked his fingers away from the snapping teeth of the old man.

“God damn it!” He gave the baker an angry kick in the ribs and was rewarded with the sound of a painful grunt. He hauled the old man up and thrust him into a chair. Finding some twine, he tied the man to the chair rungs and flipped on the single light bulb over the kitchen sink. Gerald slammed a chair directly in front of him and sat, staring the old man full in the face. The man shrank away in horror, averting his eyes.

“Diablo blanco,” he whispered.

“Ah. I see you’ve heard of me.” Gerald grinned. Apparently, Juan was closer to Chris than the townspeople knew. Gerald doubted Chris shared stories from the old days with many people. Gerald kept the memories to himself, visiting them late at night when he was alone. It’d been an addiction, that intoxicating rush of power to his brain back then. Nothing else had ever matched the high of those boys under his thumb.

Now, he was seductively close to having Chris again.

“You can guess why I’m here.”

Old Juan was silent, his gaze on the floor. Blood oozed from a cut above his eye and from his nose.

“Where’s my buddy Chris?”

Nausea crossed Juan’s face. Gerald stood and grabbed him by the chin, forcing the man to look in his direction. “Look at me! Do I look like I’m fucking around? Where is he?”

Terror widened the old man’s eyes, but he looked straight at Gerald.

Silence.

Gerald smiled. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

Mason had showered twice last night but swore he could still smell the ME’s office stench clinging to his skin. He shifted restlessly in his office chair, checking his e-mail, hoping Dr. Peres had sent some reports. No dice. It was too early in the day to expect something. Heck. He’d just been there yesterday. He lifted his wrist to his nose and sniffed.

“Why in the hell do you keep doing that?”

He looked up to find Ray glowering at him from across their desks. Their two desks were pushed together, divided only by their computer monitors and various other desk crap. On his desk, the crap was messy piles of files. On Ray’s desk, the crap was neatly stacked horizontal dividers with the files perfectly tucked inside. Mason kept forgetting to requisition some to clean up his desk.

“I keep smelling the medical examiner’s office. I swear it’s fused to me.”

Ray sniffed the air. “I can’t smell it.”

“I can. I fucking showered twice last night. What is the deal with that place?”

“I hate going there.” Ray shook his head.

“Don’t we all. I don’t know how they work there.”

“My wife would kill me if I came home smelling like rotting death every day. She doesn’t like the way I smell when I go to the practice range. And I think that’s a good smell.”

“Do you think they have showers available? And maybe a laundry for their regular clothes? I mean, I know they wear scrubs and have them laundered. But what about their own stuff?” Mason asked. “It’s got to pick up the odor.”

“Christ, I’d build a room in my garage for taking care of it. I wouldn’t want that laundry getting washed with my kids’ stuff.” Ray tapped on his keyboard. “Hey, speaking of…just got an e-mail from the ME.”

Mason refreshed his e-mail and opened the new message. He scanned it quickly. “Dental records have identified two of the others from the pit. Both with arrest records. Old arrest records.”

Ray made a celebratory horn-like noise with his mouth. “We’re getting closer.”

Mason kept reading. One skeleton belonged to a twenty-nine-year-old woman who had two arrests for prostitution in Portland back in the eighties. The other was a twenty-five-year-old male. One arrest for prostitution. Same city, same decade.

“Our unsub is a perv,” stated Ray.

“Already knew that.”

“Looks like he swings both ways.”

“Or we’re looking for more than one guy,” Mason countered.

“Shit. Why do you always complicate things?”

“I call it being thorough. Makes sense, though, handling all those kids? I would think that would take more than one person.”

Ray sighed. “Give me five minutes alone with one of them.”

“Amen, brother.”

“Anything on those tattoos yet?” Ray scratched at his chin. “I like that lead a lot.”

Mason shook his head. “My tattoo guy over at the gang unit was real interested. He couldn’t tell me anything at the first look. Said he was going to have the symbols interpreted and then dig through the archives and run them by other big-city gang units.”