Sheriff busied himself with official business while I lay like a corpse for two forensics experts to painstakingly powder, photograph, wrap and peel my arm with some kind of special Polaroid film-like stuff. It was not a speedy process and by the time I realized this was going to take three days past forever, I couldn’t get away. The sound of their muttering indicated it was not especially fulfilling for them either, but the arm hair comments and speculation about my soaping and lotioning habits were just uncalled for. Apparently most of their customers were not adept as I at snappy comebacks—or any kind of comebacks for that matter—since every time I said something to defend myself they just about jumped out of their own skins. While it was amusing the first two or three times, it didn’t help speed things along so I finally just played dead. They seemed a lot happier with that.Since I had nothing better to do, I tried to remember exactly what, if anything, Saide had revealed. He hadn’t said anything I didn’t know, but when his briefcase fell open, I had seen an aerial photo, similar to the one I’d printed.
