An officer in black beckons from poured concrete steps, “Who’s got the scene?” she calls to him, pointing to a van parked close by the curb, Portland Police it says on the side, Forensic Evidence Division.

“Logan,” he says, “and what’s her name. Hidaka.”

“Fuck,” under her breath. “They done with the fibers and shit? Because I am not putting on a bunny sut.” Her white pullover gone pale magenta in this light, her close-cropped silver hair stained pink, tipped back, she’s looking up, VERN, say those lit-up letters above them, lurid, red.

He holds out a pair of paper booties. “You’re gonna want these.”

Inside, the bar’s lit up in jukebox colors diffusely dim, a woman behind the bar, man on the stool before her, coffee cup in hand, “Bartender,” says the officer, “waitstaff, they didn’t see it go down, but they got good looks at the perp.”

“And have their statements been taken?”

“Of course.”

“Cut ’em loose.” She sets a couple of business cards on the bar, snap. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.” Sends them skating away with a flick of her fingers to fetch up next to the coffee cup. “Get yourselves home. Call if you think of anything. Detective Bauer.”

“We gotta lock up when you’re done,” says the man on the stool.

“Then, as quick as we can. So! Officer…”

“Villaraldo,” he says, tapping the nametag there on his tactical vest, but she’s bent over, tugging a bootie on over a hiking boot. “Corey Villaraldo. We’ve met, like, before.”

“What is this, Officer Villaraldo, number thirty-six for the year?” Yanking the elastic of the other bootie over and around her heel. “And it’s not even June.”

“I thought last night was thirty-six. Out by the airport?”

“What out by the airport.”

“I thought,” he’s frowning, “you caught it.”

“Officer Villaraldo,” she says, straightening, “I caught a body, last night? Out by the airport? I’d be sleeping in, working that, and it’d be Christgau here, having to deal with Ted the FED.” She points toward the back of the bar. “I presume the scene’s through there?”

Past a service window that opens on a still white kitchen, through a low wide doorway into the side room, the dimness here shoved aside by bright white worklights set on tripods at the far end, relentlessly revealing the scuffs that draggle the carpet, the chips and dings in the formica, the rips in the leatherette, the dust that glazes the video poker screens, the nubbled nap of bright green felt, but the lake of blood’s still somehow resolutely dark, harsh highlights struck from the glossily untroubled surface of it, but otherwise quite black. In the middle of it, slumped against one cyclopean leg of the pool table, black boots tipped over, bare knees crooked, marred by streaks and laps of the only red the blood can muster, a motorcycle jacket skewed open over the ruin of a sundress. Two figures in coveralls shapelessly white in all that brightness, one of them cradling the long lens of a camera, lifting it to snap a photo, the other stooped over the body, paper booties islands in that lake.

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“What do we got,” says Bauer.

“Samples,” says the stooped figure, his hood up. “Data, to analyze.” Intent on the tweezers in his hand, peeling back a ripped and sticky flap of cloth.

“Melissa De Voor,” says Villaraldo, flipping back the cover of a notepad, “twenty-seven, Sixty-Two Aught Six, Southeast Fifty-second is what it says on her license, but a, ah, former roommate there says she moved out over a month ago. Current address unknown. Cash and cards weren’t touched.”

“So what you’re saying, Officer Villaraldo, is that robbery doesn’t appear to be the motive.” Turning back to the figure still stooped over the body. “Have we settled on a Cee Oh Dee?”

He spares a look back over a paper-white shoulder. “It’ll be in my report.” The hood’s elastic frames a clean-cheeked face, glasses rimmed with golden wire.

“C’mon, Ted,” she says.

He looks to the other figure in white. “Almost done?” She nods, snapping another photo.

“Criminalist Logan,” says Bauer, then, tone sharpened, arms akimboed. “Upon the conclusion of your preliminary examination of the scene, what, in your considered opinion, is the most likely cause of death?”

He lifts away the tweezers, props a crinkling elbow on a knee. “Exsanguination,” he says.

“And that was the instrument?” She points. Laid in the blood on the other side of the body an enormous sword, the great long blade of it tipped away at an angle, gleaming highlights sedimenting where the tip of it and the edges break the gelling surface.

He shakes a rustling head. “That, she was holding.”

“That?” Stepping to one side for a better view, booties fastidious on the verge of the lake. “Christ, it’s longer’n she is.”

“Perp had two, witnesses said.” The photographer, camera lifted up and away, peers at something beneath a table.

“Two, what,” says Bauer. “Knives? Cleavers? Machetes? Claymores?”

“Actually,” says Villaraldo behind her, pointing, “that’s more like what’s known as a Zweihänder?” blinking as she cocks a dubious brow at him, “a classic claymore,” gesturing with his fingers, “has more of a forward-angled, ah – ”

“Is a renaissance fair in town?” she says. “Maniac running loose, Officer, two bladed weapons, positively dripping blood, and you guys can’t turn up anything on the canvass?”

“We got units rolling. We got a BOLO.” And then, “There’s a, lack of clarity? What happened, when he left? There was a car, but he maybe didn’t get in the car. You want us to pull back? Go house-to-house?”

Bauer’s closed her eyes. “How many wounds,” she says. “On the body, how many wounds.”

“Detective,” says the criminalist, “I can’t possibly answer that question yet.”

“One,” she says, stepping close to point, “just one. It’s a damn big hole, but there’s only the one, you can take that to the bank. And she was loaded for bear. This was a confrontation, this was,” grimacing, at the sight of her bootie planted in blood, “personal,” she says. “Our boy’s scared out of his mind, laying as low as he can. Dumped the weapons for sure within a couple of blocks.” Lifting her foot, wobbling a little to keep her balance, she tugs off the bootie and drops it, plop, to the blood, as she sets her bared boot on dry carpet. “Find them, maybe, we can’t turn him up.”

“Hey,” says the photographer.

“What.” The criminalist hikes up to look over the corner of the pool table. She’s knelt down by one of the red-upholstered booths, peering at something pinched in her fingers, “I don’t know,” she says.

“Let me see,” says Bauer, crinkle-stumping boot and bootie around the pool table, “hold it up, I’m not gonna touch.” The photographer lifts her blue-gloved hand. “It’s a bone,” says Bauer.

“Metatarsal,” says the photographer.

“It’s a bone, covered in purple glitter.”

“That’s not what I don’t know about it,” says the photographer.

“Well, heck, bag it,” says Bauer. “Might just break the case wide open.”