"Jesus Christ," Davis said. "I’ve been a Port Authority cop for fifteen years, almost as long as you, McManus. I’ve never seen anything like this." He mopped his brow with a bandana, his dark skin gone ashen. Behind him on a launchpad about a kilometer away, a transport rumbled skyward on its impellers, adding to the drone of Brooklyn’s Koch Municipal Spaceport.

"Take it easy, Davis," I said. "Just tell us where the body is."

Davis shuddered. "There ain’t no body. Just clean picked bones lying in a pool." He pointed toward the marsh grass beyond the tarmac. I spotted the yellow crime scene tape.

"Ok. We’ll go take a look."

I gestured to my partner, Regina Delmar, who’d remained quiet while I spoke to the unnerved patrolman. Reg was fresh from the Academy, new body, new mind, undamaged psyche and ambitious as hell. She had the looks of a model, olive skin, dark-brown hair and big brown eyes. She could also drop the carryall she was hauling and run a marathon. Only an actual appearance by the Grim Reaper could get me to run any distance. I was built for power, not speed, and about twenty years before her.

We walked into the weeds. Reg carried our bag of sensors and remotes, easily managing the uneven and spongy ground. Ah, youth. I crunched behind her, sinking deeper into the soil. It wasn’t far to the tape and the shallow pool of rainwater from last night’s storm.

We looked into the pool. A cool white skeleton looked back at us accusingly.

Reg put her bag down and set up the usual sensors. They’d sample water, air and soil. The robot, which looked like a mega-cockroach, stalked off to search for man-made items and fibers. Reg triggered a small disk camera. It flew over the middle of the pond to start imaging 360-degree holos.

"Dial up a satellite look-down," I said. "Let’s get a full photo run down to 1mm length."

"Got it," she keyed the request into the portable comp, then joined me in my morose study of the skeleton. "Male," she observed. "Big guy, about your size."

"Less handsome," I returned.

"Damn. You know, you’d gone nearly a whole hour without a wisecrack."

"He hasn’t been here long," I knelt by the skeleton’s left arm, which projected from the pool. "These bones are as clean as if they’d come from a lab. And here, look at this."

"What?"

"Cut marks on the bone. Saw something like this on a National Geographic special on cavemen. Somebody took the meat off these bones."

"Yuck," she responded. "So someone carefully skinned and gutted a human somewhere else and dumped the bones here to be found by a patrolman looking to relieve a full bladder."

"Yep."

Reg’s portacomp beeped. She consulted the screen. "Air normal, water normal, the grass has been crushed but no tracks. There are a number of very odd hairs that the roach picked up. They look canine but they aren’t coming up in the DNA database."

"Any DNA on the bones?"

"Negative. That’s going to take the crime lab guys."

I looked around for a last time. "Call them in," I said. "Time to collect Mr. Bone-a-part here."

Reg sighed and reached for her belt radio.

An hour later we were back in the PA station at Koch. Reg and I normally worked out of the New World Trade Center, but we’d been loaned to the actual spaceport detail after the Rigellian flu put half of New York on its back.

I was savoring a donut and coffee when Reg walked up with her usual bad timing.

"Brian, you have crumbs on your suit," she observed. "What will your wife say?"

"That I was saving them for later."

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