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gawkers that stood shivering in the morning chill, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone else’s misfortune. Magozzi was surprised there weren’t more of them—murder in Minneapolis was always big news, but in this neighborhood, it was
really
big news.
    He eased the car up to the curb, got out, and showed his badge to Baby Cop, who actually moved his lips trying to sound out the name.
    “Good morning, Detective … Mago-zee?”
    “Ma-go-tsee. Tsee. Like in tsetse fly.”
    “Oh. Like a what?”
    “Never mind. Is Detective Rolseth here?”
    “Rolseth … shorter guy, light hair?”
    “Sounds about right.” Magozzi had to give Baby Cop diplomacy points for leaving out some of the more colorful terms he’d heard used to describe his partner, like “paunch” and “receding hairline.” The kid maybe wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, but he might have a future as chief of police.
    Baby Cop jabbed a finger toward the row of huge, expensive old houses perched high above the street on sloping, manicured lawns. “He took some of the guys to do a door-to-door before people started leaving for work.”
    Magozzi nodded, then stepped over the yellow crime-scenetape and crunched through the litter of fallen leaves, shoving his bare hands deeper into the pockets of his trench coat against the chill of the river wind.
    BCA techs were fanning out over the strip of grass between the boulevard and the riverbank, marking the perimeter, walking the grid. He nodded greetings to the few he knew as he passed, then headed toward the edge of the river embankment where a tall, lanky man in an olive green coat was crouched over a body. Although his back was toward Magozzi, the black hair gave away the man’s identity as surely as the sloped shoulders that seemed to apologize for excessive stature.
    “Anantanand Rambachan.” Magozzi loved wrapping his tongue around this guy’s name. It was like eating a cream puff.
    Dr. Rambachan turned his head and welcomed Magozzi to the crime scene with a toothy, white smile. “Detective! Your Hindi accent is excellent this morning!” His dark, hooded eyes crinkled with mischief. “And look at this! You are so pretty! You must be on the hunt.”
    “Huh?”
    “You have lost weight, your muscles are more toned … which means you have finally grown weary of the solitary life and are now seeking the companionship of the fairer sex.”
    “Department physical’s coming up next month.”
    “Or it could be that.”
    Magozzi crouched down to take a quick visual inventory of the body. The victim was young, barely twenties, wearing nylon jogging pants and a faded sweatshirt. His still, waxen face was expressionless and his open eyes were filmy with the cataracts of death.
    “See here?” Rambachan pointed to a small, dark hole just above the left brow. “Tiny hole.” He stated the obvious. Healways did. “Very clean. And either excellent marksmanship or a lucky mistake for our shooter. Very unlucky for our friend.”
    “Twenty-two?”
    “Oh yes, very likely.”
    Magozzi sighed and looked out over the river. The sunlight had broken through the low veil of clouds, creating sparkling prisms in the icy mist that rose from the water. “Cold this morning.”
    “Oh. Oh! I have recently learned from a book my wife gave me that the proper response to that statement is: ‘Could be worse.’”
    Magozzi picked up an evidence bag and peered at the driver’s license inside. “Oh yeah? What book is that?”
    Rambachan’s brow wrinkled. “It is a linguistics book. I believe the title is
How to Talk Minnesotan.
You have heard of it?”
    Magozzi almost smiled. “Any more personal effects?”
    “Just the license and the twenty-dollar bill. But there is something else, something very strange. I have never seen such a thing. Take a look at this.” Rambachan slipped gloved fingers between the corpse’s lips and pried open the jaw.
    Magozzi squinted and leaned forward, close enough to smell it, then