kid's in the clean-up
room." Then he went back to his paper work.

The lab technicians were standing around watching while the morgue
attendant sluiced the muck off the corpse with a hose, watching to see
if anything showed up in the gooey filth. Inspector Kleek stood to
one side. All he said was, "Hi, Roy."

The morgue attendant lifted up one small arm with a gloved hand and
played the hose over the thin biceps. "Good thing the rigor mortis has
gone off," he said, "these stiffs are hell to handle when they're
stiff." It was an old joke, but everybody grinned out of habit.

The clear water from the hose flowed over the skin and turned a
grayish brown as it ran down to the bottom of the shallow, waist-high
stainless-steel trough in which the body was lying.

One of the lab techs stepped over and began going through the long
hair very carefully, and Doc Prouty, the Medical Examiner, began
cleaning out the mouth and nose and eyes and ears with careful hands.

I turned to Kleek. "You sure it's the Donahue girl?"

He sighed and looked away from the small dead thing on the cleaning
table. "Who else could it be? She was found only three blocks from the
Donahue home. No other female child reported missing in that area. We
haven't checked the prints yet, but you can bet they'll tally with her
school record."

I had to agree. "What about the time of death?"

"Doc Prouty figures forty-eight to sixty hours ago."

"I'll be able to give you a better figure after the post," the Medical
Examiner said without looking up from his work.

A tall, big-nosed man in plain-clothes suddenly turned away from the
scene on the table, his mouth moving queerly, his eyes hard. After a
moment, his lips relaxed. Still staring at the wall, he said: "I guess
the case is out of Federal jurisdiction, then. We'll co-operate, as
usual, of course." He looked at me. "Could I talk to you outside,
Inspector Royall?"

I looked at Kleek. "O.K., Sam?" I didn't have to have his O.K.; it was
just professional courtesy. He knew I'd tell him whatever it was that
the FBI man had to say, and we both knew why the Federal agent wanted
to leave.

Sam Kleek nodded. "Sure. I'll keep an eye out here."

* * * * *

The FBI man followed me into the outer room.

"Do you figure this as a sex-degenerate case, Inspector?" he asked.

"Looks like it. You saw the bruises. Dr. Prouty will be able to tell
us for sure after the post morte