Lawless tapped her shoulder and pointed to the tape player. She nodded and turned it on.

"Tony, do you mind if I record our little talk?"

"Do whatever turns you on, lady." He giggled.

"Tony," Jensen put some edge in her voice. "I want you to open your eyes and look at me."

Tony giggled again. They could see his eyes moving under their lids.

Jensen knew she had to come up with something to get Tony's attention, or they would never get him to talk.

"Tony!" she said, almost yelling at him. "What did the bitch do to Bobby?"

Mrs. Fruega startled and rolled out of her chair onto the floor. She snorted, looked like she was going to wake up, but the whistling started and she went back to sleep.

Tony's eyes stopped moving, and he stopped smiling.

"Tony! What did the bitch do to Bobby?" Jensen repeated.

"I told the doctor about the bitch and he told the nurse I was loco en la cabeza."

He opened his eyes and looked at Jensen.

"He brought a different doctor and made me tell him about the bitch. He shook his head and wrote something on a little piece of paper. They brought me another pill, a blue one. I took the blue pill and my tongue, like, froze. I couldn't talk nothin', so I know they don't wan me telling about no bitch no more. I didn't take their bitch blue pill today. Good thing for you, aye ese?"

He closed his eyes and smiled. "Man, I hope they give me some of this shit to take home. This shit makes you float." He gigged again.

"Tony," Jensen said, trying the soothing voice again.

"I tell you what. I tell you about the bitch if you get me some more of this shit. Deal, lady?"

"Deal," she said, hoping it was the right thing to say.

It was.

"Bobby and me was partying, you know? We was bros. We had us some cervezas, some weed, a bag of munchies ..." He paused, reliving the night on the canal.

"We party on the canal 'cuz nobody gives you no shit there. Know what I mean? Noooo shit." He paused again. "We had us a good buzz, me and Bobby. He was my bro. Bobby always had my back, bitch. You know?"

"I know, Bobby always had your back," Jensen said.

"Bobby's takin' a piss in the canal." He laughed. "That bitch could piss for an hour, man. That big fat bitch pissed like a bitch cow."

A tear leaked out of his right eye.

"That big black bitch came out of the canal and ate Bobby when he was takin' a piss."

Lawless got excited, fought back the urge to start asking the questions.

"What did the bitch look like?" Jensen asked.

"Like a snake, lady. Bitch was a big black bitch snake. Had big-ass silver teeth, like knives."

He was crying now; tears rolled down both cheeks, wetting the pillow.

"Bobby was just takin' a piss, man. Bitch bit him in half and his guts fell out."

He sobbed. Jensen caressed his hand, trying to calm him.

"What happened next?" she cooed.

"I ran! I ran from the bitch! Bitch would eat me! But I could hear it in the canal so I ran into the field, and I stopped and looked, to see if the bitch was following me in the field, like a big bitch snake. Bitch was in the canal. Bitch picked up Bobby's ass and ate it. Bitch ate Bobby's ass! Bitch ate Bobby's ass!"

Jensen felt a tear rolling down her face.

"Bitch picked Bobby up by the ass. His feet was hanging out her mouth, man. She looked, she looked at me in the eyes, man -" he pointed at his closed eyes with two fingers "- and ate Bobby's ass. Bobby's feet fell in the dirt."

It took a while for Jensen to calm Tony down. Mrs. Fruega's snoring sounded like someone was sawing their way up through the floor.

Lawless put his hand on Jensen's shoulder, signaling her it was time to go.

As she reached to shut the recorder off, Tony said, "Bobby was my bro. Bobby always had my back."

He fell asleep.

Jensen stopped the recorder and they walked to the door.

"Shouldn't we wake her up?" she asked.

"Let's tell a nurse do it, we need to get going. If we wake her she'll start asking questions we can't answer."

She looked at Tony. "Think he'll ever pull out of it?"

"Sure, sure he will. He's young."

They were about to exit the hospital when Jensen said, "Didn't his doctor look like the guy with the eye patch in the Austin Powers movies?"

"Who?"

"Let's go see Brouchard, see what he has," Lawless said as they exited the hospital. "He said he was going to have Janis fax me something yesterday, but when I checked this morning, nothing had come in. We need something from him about the DNA."

Lawless was hoping for something brief and concise; half a page of lean writing would work better than twenty pages of medical mumbo jumbo. He knew his odds of extracting such a document from the coroner weren't good; long wordy detailed descriptions of wounds and necrotic tissue were standard for a coroner's report.

He rang the Coroner's Office to make sure Brouchard was there. Janis answered: "Coroner's Office."

"Hey, Janis. This is Danny Lawless. Larry in?"

"Dr. Brouchard is in today, but he's busy right now."

"Think he could take a minute to talk to me if I stopped by?"

"Well, he's in a meeting with some people from the crime lab in Stockton. And, I might add, what a group of sourpusses they are."

Lawless recalled the heat Brouchard got from the crime lab people over the samples he sent them, and thought maybe he could use some backup.

"I'm stopping by anyway. Bunch of bullies."

"He might like that. See you when you get here, Danny." She hung up.

They were stopped at an intersection when a big-chested woman, clearly braless, in short-shorts, crossed the street in front of them. Lawless followed her with his eyes and thought, Fake. Jensen was right. Someone honked. Someone whistled. Someone hooted. A smile started on the woman's face, then disappeared as she tried to appear offended.

"I saw that," Jensen said.

"I suppose that's what that's all about, isn't it?" he asked.

"What?"

"The attention."

"Yeah, for some it is." She sighed, but was glad to take her mind off Tony Fruega. "There are dozens of reasons why women get boob jobs. Attention's only one of them.

"Some get them because they didn't grow any of their own. I had a friend in high school like that. She had absolutely no boobs and she was always complaining how her clothes never fit right. She was pretty, but didn't get asked out much because guys go for girls with boobs. I saw her after high school, in a math class at jc, and she looked completely different. She said she got a boob job the summer after we graduated, for two grand."

Jensen rolled her eyes. "I think she said it was her graduation present from her parents, if you can imagine. I got a card and a hundred bucks. Anyway, she said guys who wouldn't look at her in high school were now calling her all the time."

"Pigs," Lawless said. "Why would she even take phone calls from those losers?"

"Everyone likes to feel wanted. Besides, girls are programmed. We see celebrities in movies and magazines and want to be like them: want their boyfriends, their stuff, their life. Everyone in the magazines and movies are thin, have flat stomachs and big boobs. I bet ninety percent of them have had boob jobs."

Lawless thought she was right, now that he was enlightened.

"Look what it did for Pamela Anderson's career," she went on. "There's a woman who's as dumb as a doornail and can't act, but has her pictures plastered everywhere. Do you think she'd get any attention if she was a b cup instead of a double d?"

"I don't know who she is," Lawless said. "What does she do?"

Jensen turned and stared at him in disbelief. "You don't know who Pamela Anderson is? Baywatch? Playboy centerfold? Tommy Lee?"

Lawless shrugged his shoulders. "I don't watch much TV and girlie magazines never did anything for me. I always thought it was kind of humiliating."

" 'Girlie magazines'?" Jensen roared with laughter until tears squirted out of her eyes. "You've got to be kidding me," she said, when she was able to talk.

"Glad I could entertain you today," he muttered. Then he smiled. He liked her laugh. It was a good laugh, from the gut.

"Where have you been? I haven't heard 'girlie magazine' since my grandfather died." She started laughing again.

He let her have her laugh at his expense, it sounded to him like a lot of built up emotions being released.

She was wiping her eyes as they pulled into the Coroner's parking lot. Lawless saw a plain white sedan that screamed "government vehicle" and parked next to it.

"You think you can get a grip, deputy?" he asked as they got out of the car. This set her off again and it was two minutes before they could go into the building.

Jensen's sides were killing her and the remnant of a smile hung on her face when she asked Janis for directions to the ladies room. Janis pointed to a door, caught Lawless watching her walk away. She arched her eyebrows at him.

"What?" he said.

"Don't 'what' me. I'm not blind."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh. You didn't just watch that young female deputy walk all the way to the restroom?"

"What else is there to look at in here?" Lawless felt his face flush. He sat on a plastic chair and picked up an old magazine, pretending to read.

"I haven't seen a man look at a woman like that since Richard Rountree looked at-"

"Mind your own business, Janis."

"I'll mind my business and your business if I want to, so don't go thinkin' you can start bossin' me around, Danny Lawless."

"She's assisting me on several of my cases. She happens to be bilingual and has a knack for getting people to talk." He set the magazine down. "Not that I need to explain myself to you. Don't you have something to do? Doesn't Larry make you do any work around here?"

"You are going to get yourself in ten kinds of trouble, Mr. Fancy Shoes, you get caught messin' around with-"

Jensen came out of the restroom, composed, and Janis shut up. As Lawless and Jensen passed the front desk on their way to the coroner's office, he looked back at Janis to give her the eye; she was fanning herself with a file folder and batting her eyes at him.

He mouthed the words "Very funny," but couldn't stop a smile from spreading across his face.

They heard voices coming out from somewhere at the end of the dim hallway. They neared Brouchard's office and heard someone shout, "Impossible!"

Then, "How dare you imply incompetence in my office!"

When they were several feet from the door, two men and a woman came rushing out. The man in front almost crashed into Lawless because he was shouting over his shoulder, "We shall see, Doctor!" Lucky for Lawless the man stopped in time; he was a human bowling ball.

"Pardon me," he said, his face red, oily finger smudges on his glasses. He carried a briefcase and a box Lawless recognized as an evidence transport carrier.

Trailing him was a tall man, at least six-four, but thin as a light pole. He didn't seem as angry as his stout coworker, but hurried with the same speed and determination.

The woman brought up the rear, looking more embarrassed than anything.

"I'm so sorry," she said as she hurried to catch up with the men. She wore a blue suit purchased sometime in the early 90s and had thick legs bound by industrial-strength nylons. Her legs rubbed together as she hustled down the hall, making a sound like a knife edge being sharpened on a steel.

Inside the office, Brouchard sat fuming at his desk, his usual untidy bushy appearance intensified by the argument. His customary starched white lab coat even seemed affected by its wearer's conflict: half a collar stuck straight out, one sleeve was rolled up a turn but the other wasn't, and a long, shiny metal tool, some kind of probe used to poke at dead tissue, protruded from the breast pocket.

Lawless felt bad for arriving too late to support the coroner. Something Tony Fruega said ran through his mind: Bobby always had my back. He should have been here earlier, to get the coroner's back.

"You okay Larry?" he asked, stepping inside.

"Sons of bitches," the coroner growled. "He practically called me a liar! Said I couldn't have recovered those samples from a human corpse."