Sam announced them as they neared the trailer. "Hello? Excuse me…? Marge?" he said. "We're with the Las Vegas Police Department. Nobody's in trouble, we're just trying to identify someone and were told you might know him."

"I don't know nobody," a woman said from in side. "Not till you call me by my right name."

"Your right…" Sam trailed off.

"Sorry," Greg took up. "He meant to say 'Crazy Marge'."

She threw back the trailer door and stepped out side. "That's better," she said. "Now, who you tryin' to find?"

Greg was glad they weren't trying to identify Crazy Marge, because he could hardly get a sense of her. Her race was indeterminate, her skin dusky and leathery, but whether that was from sun exposure or racial identity was anybody's guess. Her hair was dyed a vivid pink and cropped short, blunt at the edges, and uneven around the sides. She might well have done it herself with scissors. Maybe with out the benefit of a mirror, Greg thought. Her smile was huge, her mouth glinting with gold. She was pear-shaped, narrow above the waist and wide below, and she wore tight-fitting pants, yellow with a bright floral pattern, that accentuated her figure. She also wore jewelry, lots and lots of it, bracelet upon bracelet, necklace overlying necklace, pins and brooches all over her red smock top, what looked like dozens of earrings clipped to or stuck through her ears. None of it looked expensive, but taken all together, it certainly made a statement.

Sam started to show her the photo, but she didn't even look at it. "Someone probably told you old Crazy Marge knows everybody. They all say that. 'Cause it's true." She laughed, throwing her head back, and Greg spotted more gold. If she sold all the gold in her mouth, she could probably afford to buy a house.

"Thing is, I'm one of the originals. Only but a few people been living here longer than me, and most of them's passed on. You stay someplace long enough, and you look like I do -" She shot a hip at them and lowered her eyelashes, looking sideways in what Greg supposed was meant to be a coquettish pose. "People get to know you."

"I'll bet they do," Sam said. There was no malice in his tone; clearly, he was enjoying Crazy Marge's performance just as much as she was.

"Ain't nobody like Crazy Marge, that's what they all say. So of course they wants to be my friend. And some of them menfolks… they wants to be more than just a friend, if you know what I mean." She gave an exaggerated wink.

"Who could blame them?" Sam asked, playing along.

Crazy Marge tched at him. "Well, you ain't gettin' any, so don't get you no ideas!"

Sam made a disappointed face and laughed along with her. Greg was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel himself.

"Now, who is this person you're lookin' to find?" she asked. Her face had gone suddenly serious. Greg didn't think there was anything crazy about her, except maybe for the persona she adopted. But it worked for her, as she said – people remembered her, and she had made herself a kind of celebrity among her peers.

Sam showed her the picture, and this time she perused it intently. "He's met with an accident," Sam said. "We're trying to find out who he is, so we can let his family know, if he has any."

"He's dead." Crazy Marge said it flatly, as if it was an acknowledged fact.

"That's right," Sam said. "He is. Does he look at all familiar to you?"

"I know him."

"Who is he?" Greg asked.

She tapped the picture with a long nail. Fake, Greg was sure, with a glittering rhinestone stuck on near the tip. "That's Crackers," she said.

"Crackers?"

She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, dropping the stage act for the moment. "My real name is Lurlene," she said. "But if you asked anybody around here about Lurlene, they wouldn't know who you meant. Most of us old-timers, nobody here knows us by our given names. I'm called Crazy Marge because… well, you figure it out. He went by Crackers because that's what he was always eating, always had a box of crackers, or else he was scrounging money to get crackers. Sometimes I didn't know how he survived on nothing but crackers, but maybe when I wasn't looking, he ate a salad or two."

"So he's Crackers."

"That's right," she said, slipping right back into character. "Always had him a cracker in his hand and one in his mouth. Surprised there ain't no cracker crumbs in his beard in that picture."

"When was the last time you saw Crackers?" Greg asked.

She tapped her chin with that same studded fingernail. "Maybe four, five days ago. He kinda kept to hisself. Some people said Crackers really was crazy, but you know, I don't judge people that way. Crazy is as crazy does, right?"

"Did he have any close friends here?" Sam asked.

"Like I said, kept to hisself. Some folks, you can't relate to 'em the way you do to others. He's like that. That's why people thought he was crazy, you know? You couldn't really reach him. He was always in his own head. And I tell you what, there was some scary shit in that head. For a while, my place was close to his, and I heard some screams, when he was sleepin'? Like to curdle my blood. Made me worry about him, wonder what he had been through. Or was goin' through in his own mind."

"Well, can you show us where he lived most recently?" Sam asked her. "Maybe one of his more immediate neighbors can help us."

"You can try," she said. "They all just know him as Crackers, I'm pretty sure, but you give it a shot." She beckoned them to follow. "Come on, you. I gots stuff to do, don't have all day to be directin' y'all around."

Greg felt like part of a floor show as he and Sam followed Crazy Marge, who sashayed through the tent city, waving to some, winking to others, offering a word or two to just about everybody they passed, and usually getting a friendly greeting in return. In her company, he and Sam were more readily accepted by those they encountered.

After about ten minutes, she stopped outside a ragged olive-drab pup tent. It looked like military surplus, maybe from the First World War. There were tears in it, some stitched up, some covered in duct tape, a few just open and catching the breeze. "This is it," she said. "This is Crackers's house."

"You said he's an old-timer,' Sam said.

"That's right, like me. Maybe not quite as long. Six, seven years, though, easy. Could be more, I guess. It ain't like I marked it down on a calendar. You know how it is. Some people move in, others move out. Sometimes you don't really notice who's come and gone until it's been a while."

Greg squatted down and pulled aside the tent flap.

Crackers was not one of the tent city's better housekeepers, which did not come as a shock considering how he had looked when he died.

The other thing that didn't come as a shock was that the tent was littered with paper scraps, most apparently written on again and again and again. The ones in his pockets had been just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

"I'm going to have to get my kit," Greg said. "And process this place. It looks like I'll be at it awhile."

"I'll have a uniform come over and keep an eye on things," Sam said. "I was hoping this would be easier."

You and me both, Greg thought. He didn't bother saying it. Some things were just understood.

Anyway, he would need to save his breath for the task ahead – from the whiff he'd gotten when he stuck his head through the flap, he was sure he would be holding his breath a lot while he worked this scene. The reek clinging to the John Doe's body had nothing over the smell he'd left behind in his tent. Processing the tent would require him to breathe that air for a long time, a task he looked forward to without enthusiasm.

And once Greg got all of those paper scraps collected, the people in the QD lab would have enough work to keep them busy for years.