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rolls down his window and hollers out to me, “Did you get me something to eat?”
    “Sorry,” I say, flashing him a fake smile. “The closest thing they had to anything edible at the hardware store was a package of tulip bulbs.”
    “Shit,” I hear him mutter. The window goes back up and his door opens. I hear a series of grunts and groans as he tries to climb out of the car, and I consider offering him my jack to make it easier. Instead I leave him to his struggles and make my way back down to the body dump site. By the time I get there Richmond is standing by the snow berm above us, talking on his cell phone.
    The body has been removed and though Izzy and Junior are gone, Ron Colbert is still here, standing guard over the site and trying to stay warm—newbies always get the dreck work.
    I hand him a couple of buckets and a trowel. “I think all we need is the top, skim layer,” I tell him. “If you can start collecting the surface snow from here up to the berm along the killer’s trail, I’ll do the body site.”
    Colbert nods and the two of us go about collecting our samples like two kids at the beach digging for clams. Fortunately the snow is the light, powdery kind so it’s not difficult to collect, or very heavy once we do. By the time we’re done, we have eight buckets of snow to haul up to my car.
    As I grab two of them and slog my way along the circuitous trail back to the road, another car drives up. Richmond approaches the driver, hands over some money, and takes a pizza in return.
    “Are you kidding me?” I say as the car drives off. “You ordered a pizza to be delivered out here?”
    “Jealous?” he says, setting the box on the hood of his car and opening it.
    As the smells of melted mozzarella, pepperoni, and sausage waft my way, I find that I am. I haven’t had breakfast and it’s now almost lunchtime. And that pizza is making my mouth water.
    “A little,” I confess.
    “Then have a slice.”
    I consider his offer, arguing with myself that I should refuse simply to make a point. But it seems like biting off my nose to spite my face, or biting off some pizza to spite my hips. In the end, my stomach can’t resist the smell and I toss my buckets into the back of the hearse and head back to Richmond’s car. Colbert, who has deposited his buckets next to Richmond’s car for now, has already swiped a slice for himself without asking, a severe breach of rookie etiquette. If looks could kill, Colbert would be as dead as our victim, judging from the expression on Richmond’s face.
    “Find anything?” Richmond asks as I take my first bite, giving my taste buds a mini orgasm.
    Colbert and I both shake our heads. Once I’ve swallowed I say, “Nothing obvious, but once we get back to the lab, who knows?”
    “Wouldn’t count on it,” Richmond grumbles. “The frigging criminals are getting way too smart these days. They watch all those forensic shows on TV and it’s like giving ’em a primer on how to commit the perfect crime.”
    I finish scarfing down my slice of pizza ahead of Colbert and eye what’s left in the box. But Richmond has a go-ahead-make-my-day look on his face that tells me he’s shared all he’s going to.
    “We have four more buckets of snow to bring up,” I tell him. “Want to give us a hand?”
    He shoves a half-eaten slice of pizza in his mouth and lets it hang there while he claps his hands.
    “Very funny,” I grumble.
    He shrugs and takes the slice out of his mouth, tearing off a large bite as he does so. “I’m here in a supervisory capacity only,” he mumbles around a mouthful of pizza.
    “Come on,” I urge. “The exercise will do you good.”
    Judging from the look Richmond gives me, the word exercise is akin to the Antichrist. His smug laziness pisses me off, but rather than show it, I shrug to feign indifference and turn like I’m going back down to the crime scene. Then I accidentally on purpose nudge the pizza box, causing it to slide off the