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gray wooden doors and an abandoned plaid couch. Why are couches in alleys always plaid? The young man went to the alley and stood there. “I said,” he shouted at Dandelion, “what else do you want from me?”
    Silence. Dandelion had almost reached a big Dumpster, tall as an upended van.
    “Answer me,” he pleaded.
    She screamed. It wasn’t a scream of rage. This was sheer fright mixed with horror, as if she’d seen some hellish sight. She backed away from the Dumpster, still shrieking, ran straight to the young man, stumbled and buried her pale face in his chest. She began rocking back and forth and crying “No! No! No!” He looked bewildered. The off-duty cop knew what her behavior meant: She had seen something so horrible, she didn’t want to believe it. The cop ran down the alley toward the Dumpster, and I ran after him.
    Behind the Dumpster, a woman was lying on her side. She wasn’t moving. Her blond hair was damp and oozing big clots of something that looked black. Oil? Who would smear oil in her hair? As I gotcloser, I saw her hair was thick with blood, not oil. It covered her face like some exotic native mask. Her nose and cheekbone were strangely flattened. Blond hair and black blood were smeared across her eyes. Her lips looked mashed. A gold button winked in a puddle near her shoulder, and dirty gold braid trailed from one bloody wrist.
    I didn’t recognize the face—not in its current condition—but I’d know that outfit anywhere. It was Sydney, very dead in her designer leather.

R ed police lights pulsed on the Casa Loma’s walls and mist rose from the alley potholes, turning the murder scene into a hell’s parody of the biker ball. For music, we had the shriek and wail of sirens. Yellow police-line tape festooned everything like some failed festive decoration. The T-shaped alley behind the Casa Loma was blocked at all three entrances, by what seemed to be every police car, marked and unmarked, in St. Louis. There was even a hook and ladder truck. The Evidence Technician Unit arrived, and police searched the alley carefully with flashlights to make sure they didn’t miss anything before they brought in the bulky vehicle. The ETU pulled up near the murder scene. Harsh lights on the roof illuminated the alley. An evidence technician snapped Sydney’s photo from every angle, and they were all bad. Sydney had been beaten until the fragile bones in her face cracked and collapsed. I could see some of the brutal damageeven through the thick blood. I saw her small, blood-smeared hands, still trying to protect her face. Two nails were broken, but her hands were still beautiful, well tended, and useless. Like Sydney.
    She’d been beaten with what looked like a motorcycle drive chain. It was artlessly draped near the shoulder of her leather jacket, as if the designer put it there for a prop. I’d just about convinced myself that the gobs of dark stuff on the chain were grease. Then I saw the clump of pretty silky blond hair, the size of a skein of embroidery thread, clinging to the drive chain. One end had a saucy curl. The other had a bloody bit of scalp.
    I made it to the back of the old garage before I was sick. I managed to miss my suede boots, which were already sodden from the pothole puddles. I squatted by the garage for a bit, woozy and shaking. Actually, it was a good spot to observe things without being in the way. I could hear the crackle of police radios, see uniformed officers interviewing people in the alley, watch the brass standing around looking important and posing for the TV crews. Four unlucky cops were taking the Dumpster apart. Others had a dangerous assignment inside the Casa Loma. They had to close the bar in a roomful of one thousand bikers and then start interviewing people.
    In the alley, several officers seemed awfully interested in a scrawny biker I’d danced with earlier. I thought his name was Mitch. I caught snippets of questions aimed at him: “Can you describe the