I'LL SEE IF I CAN MAKE A BREAK BY 6. FIRST NEED A SHAVE amp; SHOWER.

He reread what he'd written, hit SEND, then stuck the phone back in his pocket.

Harris, trying to stifle a yawn, was saying, "Even as much as Howard probably reamed those guys in the forensics lab, I doubt they've had time to pull anything off Kendrik Mays yet."

Payne looked at him-noticing that he, too, had a face dark with a five-o'clock shadow-and nodded.

"Number eighteen coming up," Kerry Rapier said.

The main bank of monitors then showed an image of Kendrik Mays on the blood-soaked carpet on the sidewalk at Francis Fuller's Old City office building. Then an inset image popped up. It was his Wanted sheet mug shot, which showed an angry young man with foul-looking black dreadlocks and a full black beard that was matted. It was not difficult to see his nasty stubs of teeth and bad gums, both severely eroded by the caustic chemicals used in the manufacturing of crystal meth.

The bottom right-hand corner ID stamp read: Richard Saunders Holdings/Lex Talionis Third amp; Arch 1241 hours, 01 Nov

The text box read: Name: Kendrik LeShawn MAYS Description: Black male, age 20, 5'9", 200 lbs. L.K.A.: 2620 Wilder St, Phila. Priors Arrests: 8 total: possession of marijuana (7); possession with intent to distribute Methamphetamine (3); Conviction of and time served for Involuntary deviant sexual intercourse amp; rape of an unconscious or unaware person (1). Call Received: 01 Nov, 1230 hours. Cause of Death: GUNSHOT to head (99 percent probability). Case No.: 2010-81-039614-POP-N-DROP Notes: Fugitive. Shauna MAYS, mother of deceased, stated in interview that he was killed by SNU in basement of L.K.A. She described SNU as a skinny white male approximately her age (40), and suggested his motive was that someone in his family may have been robbed or raped by Kendrik Mays. Assailant left Wanted sheet with body. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City.

"Well, no surprise. No SNU number yet," Payne said. "And even if it was our doer, all we'd know is that he's added another bad guy to his exclusive death club. We'd still be no closer to figuring out who the hell he is."

Then Payne glanced back at the image and saw that 2620 WILDER ST was blinking.

"That what I think it is, Kerry?"

Corporal Kerry Rapier said, "I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that we're now getting a live feed coming in from the Mays crime scene."

Rapier typed a couple commands on the keyboard, then clicked on the blinking address with the Colt.45 Officer's Model cursor. After the pistol fired and smoked, the big-screen image of Kendrik Mays returned to monitor eighteen. Then two new images appeared on the main bank of monitors, which Rapier had turned to split-screen mode.

The top row of three monitors had a stationary digital image of the exterior of the Mays house. In the bottom right-hand corner was a white orb that contained the image's numerical designation, "1a." Next to that, a text box read: 2620 WILDER STREET-EXTERIOR.

The middle and bottom rows of monitors-each with a black "1b" in a white orb next to the text 2620 WILDER STREET-INTERIOR-displayed the feed from a portable digital video camera. The shaky image was mostly black as the camera's lone beam of light pierced a circle in the darkness, lighting up bits and pieces of the trashed house.

"My God!" Payne said. "It looks as if they're going down into some hellish black hole."

Harris said, "Yeah, like out of a horror movie."

The unseen technician who carried the camera was carefully walking down a flight of unstable wooden steps. As he went, the beam of light showed busted-up Sheetrock and exposed wooden studs on the wall. Then, when the technician was almost to the bottom of the stairs, the lens caught images of roaches and a black rat scattering.

"Unbelievable," Payne said.

Then the room began to fill with more artificial light, and when the tech panned the camera back to the wooden steps, another tech could be seen slowly descending. He wore blue jeans, a light blue T-shirt with a representation of the Crime Scene Unit patch-a cartoon Sherlock Holmes and basset hound sniffing the Philly skyline-on its left chest, and transparent blue plastic booties and tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves. A white surgical mask covered his nose and mouth. He carried a pair of telescopic lightpole stands-each of which had two halogen floodlamps burning brightly at the top and a power cord snaking back up the steps-and a telescopic tripod.

The tech reached the bottom of the steps. He then set up the stands at opposite ends of the basement, adjusting the brilliant floodlamps so that the entire room was more or less evenly lit. Next he set up the tripod, and the tech with the camera walked to it. The camera image shook, then became stabilized as it was mounted on the tripod. The camera's lens was adjusted so that the entire room was visible.

The brilliant halogen lights clearly showed all the incredible filth. There were clothes scattered everywhere, pile after pile of pants and shirts and more, and stacks of suitcases. The walls were mostly bare wooden studs.

And in the middle of it all: a stack of wooden pallets with a blood-soaked, torn mattress on top. On the wall behind it, the exposed brick and the wooden studs were covered in blood and brain splatter that resembled some sort of morbid Rorschach inkblot test.

"Well, there's where Kendrik Mays went off to meet his maker," Harris said.

"More like to meet Satan," Payne said, shaking his head out of disgust. "Though this place looks like hell on earth. No wonder Shauna Mays looked and smelled so damn awful."

"Someone busted all the Sheetrock off the walls," Rapier said.

"Probably to pull out the electrical wiring," Harris said. "Pretty common if it's copper wiring. And they also rip the copper from air-conditioning units to sell it as scrap."

Payne then remembered thinking, after Shauna Mays had said crack houses didn't have clocks, that everything not nailed down got sold for drug money.

And here's proof that even things that are nailed down get hocked.

Unbelievable…

"And all the suitcases and clothes?" Rapier asked.

"From home invasions," Harris said. "Those wheeled suitcases make it easier to haul off all the loot. The clothes cover up whatever they stole, and they're easy to sell, too."

"They don't sell the suitcases?"

"Some are sold, some reused. Who knows about the rest. Maybe it's hard to hock them if they have someone's name written on them in Magic Marker." Harris shrugged. "Hell if I know. Hard to say what dopeheads think-or don't think, as the case may be."

Harris then pointed to a far corner of the basement. "Is that what I think it is?"

"A shit bucket," Payne said disgustedly.

The first tech, who had carried the video camera down, came into the frame. He held a professional Nikon digital camera with a squat zoom lens and an enormous flash strobe.

They watched as he began putting out the four-inch-high inverted-V evidence markers. The first yellow plastic marker bore the black numeral "01." It was placed in the middle of the bloody mattress, next to a pair of torn women's panties. He then raised the Nikon to his eye and took a series of four photographs of the panties and marker, overlapping the angles of the shots so that later a computer could create a three-dimensional rendering of the evidence.

A couple minutes later, after repeating the process with three other markers, the tech bent over in a corner of the basement. He placed an inverted-V marker bearing the numeral "05" next to a shiny black metal object that was on a dirt-encrusted, sweat-stained T-shirt.

"It's a pistol," Kerry Rapier said.