The trees were always sickly looking over on the east side, always looking like the ground itself was poisoned, drying up the roots. They'd had a rainy fall, though, the dirt soft, damp.

Good for footprints.

Oliver Franks was already on scene, taking shots and measuring the evidence, bald head sort of glowing in the early morning light, crime scene jacket dangling off his bony frame. "Mornin', Ollie. How's it hanging?"

"Not bad, Hammer, honey. Your vic's over by the dumpster waiting for Bones and Fran." Hannah MacTavish gave Oliver a nod, watching where she stepped, fingers pushing her short curls back over her ears.

The uniforms didn't hassle her as she came over; there was no need to flash her badge. Most everybody knew Hannah "the Hammer" MacTavish -- either for her spectacularly messy and vicious divorce with Special Agent Donalds or for the abduction and escape that had precipitated said break up.

Hannah grinned, nodding to the newbie who held the crime tape up for her. It wasn't everyday a five foot three police officer beat her attacker into a bloody pulp with a ball pein hammer.

She'd fought her ass off to be in homicide -- two years in traffic, three years driving a computer for vice, another three years on a special assignment hunting a kiddie porn ring in conjunction with the feds. With a particularly decent, loving fed who couldn't look at the scar on her belly without getting all emotional and touchy and teary and...

Fuck.

Just fuck.

Lou was shooting the body when she got to the dumpster, flash bulbs just going like mad.

"Lou. What do we have?"

Lou grinned up at here from where he squatted next to the high-heeled encased feet. "We got us a girly-man, Hammer. All dressed up and nowhere to go."

The body was sprawled, legs open, mini skirt hiked up, make-up smeared all over the face. The shoes had to be a size twelve. Who knew you could get stilettos that big. One silk stocking was missing, though. Or rather, misplaced, wrapped as it was around the vic's neck.

"Well, well. Will you look at that?" She shook her head. Christ, someone'd whacked the living Hell out of that man. The sequins and spangles looked tawdry out here among the broken bottles and empty cardboard boxes. "You think someone got a surprise and turned ugly?"

"Well, no five o'clock shadow, broken choker over there, no doubt to hide the Adam's apple... he woulda been a pretty girl. So that's my guess, yeah." Lou screwed up his face. "There's some sick folks in the world."

"You know it." She pulled out a notebook, started scribbling. "We have any witnesses? Where's the one that called it in?"

"Ricky's questioning him. He showed about five minutes before you did." Lou pointed somewhere down the alley towards the streetlights. Excellent. Her partner had that trustworthy face that seemed to tempt lying assholes toward telling the truth. She tended to make priests want to lie.

"Check out the angle on that neck. Man who did this had to be strong as hell."

She nodded, tilting her head. "Tall, too, unless the vic was on his knees..."

Which wasn't outside the realm of possibility...

"Could be. But not here. Not enough staining on the knees to have been in this freakin' alley." No wonder Lou was doing the duck waddle squat. There was some nasty stuff around that dumpster.

She mucked around, used condoms, porn. Christ, people were filthy disgusting assholes. Filthy, disgusting, irritating...

"Lieutenant MacTavish?" She glanced over at a young, blond uniform.

"Yeah?"

"Nogales wants to see you. Says you need to hear what the witness has to say."

Oh. Goodie.
 

Continued in First Section