“It looks like a bomb went off, Tony,” Matt said as they walked up to the room with the missing window.

“May as well have been. Pretty much the same result,” Harris said as they looked inside.

Javier Iglesia stood in the middle of the room. His hands gripped the tubular frame at the end of a heavy-duty gurney, on top of which was strapped one of the black body bags. The other bag was gone, already loaded into the back of the medical examiner’s panel van. The photographer was in the van’s front passenger seat, downloading the digital files of her photographs onto a notebook computer hard drive and packing up her camera gear. Both the bodies and the images were going to the morgue, where Dr. Mitchell, or one of the medical examiner’s assistants, would perform the autopsies and review the crime-scene photos.

Harris and Payne’s appearance in the window caught Iglesia’s attention.

“Hey, Detective Payne! How the hell are you? Shot any bad guys lately?”

Payne grinned and shook his head. “Not in the last couple hours, Javier. But keep it up and I might have to use you for practice.”

Iglesia laughed appreciatively as he started pushing the gurney toward the blown-out door.

“Glad to see you back,” Iglesia said. “The cops need a classy guy like you, is what they need-”

“This isn’t my job, Javier. But thanks.”

“-and, as I was telling Detective Harris here, we damn sure need someone like you to put a bullet in these godless pendejos.”

Iglesia either let pass or did not hear what Payne had said. Instead, he loath ingly slapped at the body bag with the back of his left hand, then pushed the gurney through the door.

“Hold up a minute, Javier,” Harris said as he walked to meet him at the back of the Ford van. “Show Matt the bag, would you?”

“Are those the new-style ones?” Payne said.

Iglesia smirked and nodded. “You know about them?” he said.

He then reached down and tugged at the foot of the bag until it turned enough to reveal the manufacturer’s tag. It was imprinted in a white rectangle designed to resemble a cadaver’s identification toe tag.

Payne leaned forward and read it:

Remains Recovery Unit

Then he smirked, too. “Clever company, all right. I’d heard these were coming. A retired Philly detective came up with the idea, right?”

“Yeah,” Iglesia said. “Don’t know what he got paid for the patent, or maybe he’s got a piece of the company. But at forty, fifty bucks a pop, someone’s making a mint. Every agency with any budget is stockpiling the biohaz version, with the feds buying semitrailers full ‘just in case.’ ”

He tugged at the bag and with some professional pride added: “These really are better than the old ones, in every way. The old ones, they had zippers, and those could get really messy.”

Payne understood what he meant. The zippers allowed for the risk of contamination of the evidence, or for the viewer possibly to be exposed to any biological or chemical hazard that may be part of the remains, or both.

Not so with the new design. The bag-made of heavy-duty vinyl, oval-shaped and ringed with padded loops that doubled as lifting points and tie-down points-had two unheard-of features that made it unique and, more important, preserved the chain of custody.

The first was that the top of the bag had a black flap running its length that, when folded back, revealed a clear vinyl viewing panel. One could examine the bag’s contents without having to open the bag, which was important, as there was no zipper on the bag.

And that pointed to the bag’s second main feature: a chemically sealed main flap. Once the remains went into the bag and the clear panel was closed, a chemical reaction occurred as the seams touched, heat-sealing them securely closed. If someone opened the bag, it could not be resealed. A new bag, with a new, unique serial number, was required. And, as an added bonus, no zippers also meant no zipper teeth for bodily and other fluids to seep out through.

Harris pulled back the solid black panel, uncovering the clear vinyl viewing one.

“Actually, Javier,” Harris said, “what I meant was for you to show Matt the critter, not give a sales job on the damn bag.”

“Oh.”

The clear vinyl panel, despite being somewhat smudged on the inside by viscous fluids, did its job of allowing a remarkably clear view of the remains.

So clear that, for a moment, Matt Payne feared that he-and everyone else-was about to see his breakfast again.

But he gulped his coffee, pushing down the feeling in his gut while trying to maintain a detached inspection of the remains.

He saw that the Hispanic male victim’s face was disfigured beyond belief. And from head to toe the outer layer of skin was blackened and blistered. There were crude cracks and gouges in his darkened flesh, particularly about the face and arms and hands, which at points were scorched to the bone.

Scorched and seared, like a steak on a hot grill.

It would take more than a little imagination to piece this guy all back together for an ID shot.

Right now he looks like something out of a really bad sci-fi flick.

“Javier,” Harris went on, “is that the one with-”

“The circumcision?” Iglesia said, smiling. “Yeah.”

In Harris’s peripheral vision, he saw Payne looking between him and Iglesia, trying to decode what was being said.

“Give Detective Payne a peek, would you?”

Payne thought: I don’t want to see what’s left of his damn- Javier Iglesia slipped his hand under the bag, at the point just under the back of the dead man’s neck, and lifted.

– Oh, Jesus!

Payne felt the lightness rise in his stomach again. It went away when Iglesia pulled back his hand and the neck wound closed.

“Go on, Javier,” Harris egged him on, “tell him.”

Iglesia looked at Payne and, clearly pleased with himself, said, “The dickhead got himself circumcised.”

Then he unceremoniously flipped the body bag’s top flap back in place and rolled the gurney to the back bumper of the van. He aligned it there, and with a shove collapsed its undercarriage and slid it in beside the other gurney holding the other body bag.

Watching Iglesia close the van’s back doors, Matt suddenly thought: … forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

Jesus. Where did that come from?

Where else? From years of reciting the Lord’s Prayer-sitting in the same sanctuary as Becca.

Then he thought: How bad can Becca be?

Matt looked at Harris and said, “Was Becca, the girl in the Mercedes-”

Tony Harris shook his head.

“Nothing like that, Matt. Curiously, what hurt her is also what saved her from something worse. When the windshield blew inward and struck her, it appears to have also acted like a shield that deflected the brunt of the blast.”

They walked back to the window. As they surveyed the scene, Harris put down his coffee and pulled out his notepad, flipping to a fresh page.

“Matt, how about giving me that information you said you have? You asked about the Mercedes. Do you know the Benjamin girl well?”

“Yeah, fairly well. We grew up in Wallingford. Went to the same church. And she was two years behind me at Episcopal Academy.”

Harris started writing on his pad, then said, “Any reason to believe she’s involved with running drugs, specifically meth?”

“No reason at all. And I sure as hell hope she’s not. Her boyfriend, however, is another case…”

“What about the boyfriend?”