"Happens all the time."

"Second leading cause of death."

"You sure the ticker isn't numero uno numero uno?"

"No."

"Anything else breaking?"

"Actually, yes."

I told him about the forged b.u.t.ton. He asked what it meant. I told him I hadn't a clue.

Then I told him about Nicol Cataneo.

There was a pause, after which Ryan's voice sounded different. Harder, somehow.

"I don't like the sound of that, Tempe. Wiseguys value life about as much as they value used dental floss. You watch your back."

"I always do."

"Window fixed?"

"Yes."

"I missed you this weekend."

"Did you?"

"Your friend still there?"

"Yes."

"We'll talk when she's gone."

"Anne doesn't bite."

Long pause. Ryan broke it.

"Let me know what LaManche says. Page me if I'm out."

Before launching into my a.n.a.lysis of the third skeleton, I made a detour to the main autopsy room. Pelletier had the first of the crack twins on table one. LaManche had Louise Parent on table two.

Parent had arrived wearing a granny gown. The long flannel nightie lay spread on the counter. Red roses on pink. Lace-trimmed yoke with tiny pearl b.u.t.tons.

Flashbulb memory. Gran, shuffling to bed with her Dearfoam slippers and her chamomile tea.

My gaze shifted to the body.

Parent looked small and pitiful on the perforated steel. So alone. So dead.

Stab of sorrow.

I pushed it down.

LaManche gently twisted the dead woman's head. Opened her jaw. Levered one shoulder. The wrinkled back and b.u.t.tocks were purple with livor.

LaManche pushed a finger into the discolored flesh. The pressure point did not blanch.

LaManche allowed the body to resettle onto its back, then lifted a lifeless hand. Paper-thin peelings were loosening from the underlying dermis.

"Lividity is fixed. Rigor mortis has come and gone. Skin slippage has barely begun."

As LaManche jotted his observations, my eyes roamed the geography of Parent's corpse.

The woman's muscles were withered, her hair gray, her skin pale to the point of translucence. Her shriveled b.r.e.a.s.t.s lay limp on her bony chest. Her belly was going green.

"How long do you think she's been dead?" I asked.

"I see no marbling, no bloating, only minimal putrefaction. The house was warm, but not excessively hot. I will of course check her stomach contents and eye fluids, but at this point I'd say forty-eight to seventy-two hours."

Another stab of pain.

I had blown this woman off on Wednesday. She had phoned me again on Thursday. LaManche's estimate placed her death on Friday or Sat.u.r.day.

I noticed a thin white line on her abdomen.

"Looks like she's had some sort of surgery."

LaManche was already sketching the scar onto a diagram.

My eyes moved to Parent's face.

Both eyes were half open and covered with dark bands.

In death, the eyelid muscles relax, exposing the corneas, and allowing the epithelial tissue to dry. Tache noir sclerotique. Tache noir sclerotique. Normal. But the change gave Parent the macabre look of yesterday's roadkill. Normal. But the change gave Parent the macabre look of yesterday's roadkill.

I leaned in and inspected Parent's teeth. Though worn, they were clean and only moderately discolored. The gums showed little swelling or resorption. Dental hygiene had been good.

I was straightening when my eye fell on something lodged between the right lateral incisor and canine. I drew closer.

Something was definitely there.

Digging a handheld lens from a drawer, I returned to the table.

Under magnification, details were clearer.

"Dr. LaManche," I said. "Take a look at this."

19.

LAMANCHE CIRCLED THE TABLE AND I I HANDED HIM THE LENS HANDED HIM THE LENS. He studied Parent's dent.i.tion, then spoke without straightening. He studied Parent's dent.i.tion, then spoke without straightening.

"A feather."

"Yes," I agreed.

LaManche used forceps to transfer the feather to a plastic vial. Then he spread Parent's jaws and examined her back teeth.

"I see no others." m.u.f.fled through his mask.

"Luma-Lite?"

"Please." He turned to the autopsy technician. "Lisa?"

As I dug the apparatus from a closet, Lisa transferred Parent to a gurney and rolled her next door to the X-ray room. By the time I rejoined them, she had also collected the granny gown and spread it on the X-ray table.

While LaManche and I donned orange-tinted plastic goggles, Lisa hooked up the Luma-Lite, an alternate light source composed of a black box and an enhanced blue fiber-optic cable. With it, we would be able to see trace evidence invisible to the naked eye.

"Ready?" Lisa asked.

LaManche nodded.

Lisa slipped on her goggles and hit the light switch.

In the dark, the pathologist began scanning Parent's nightie. Here and there hairs lit up like tiny white wires. Lisa tweezed and transferred them into a plastic vial.

When we'd finished with the gown, LaManche turned to the corpse. Slowly, the light crept over Parent's feet and legs. It probed the hills and valleys of her pubis, belly, rib cage, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Lit the hollow at the base of her throat.

Nothing glowed but a few more hairs.

"They look identical to her head hair," I said.

"Yes," LaManche agreed.

Parent's hands and fingernails yielded nothing. Her eyes, nostrils, and ears were clean.

Then the beam entered the dark recess of the woman's mouth.

"Bonjour," Lisa said in the darkness. Lisa said in the darkness.

One molar sparked like phosphorous along the gum line.

"That's not a hair," I said.

Lisa withdrew the thing with forceps.

Though we worked another thirty minutes in the dark, our efforts produced only two more hairs, both fine and wavy like those of the victim.

When Lisa restored the lights, LaManche and I headed back to the autopsy room. There he opened the molar vial and examined the contents under magnification. It seemed a decade until he spoke.

"It is another feather fragment."

LaManche and I exchanged glances, identical suspicions crossing our minds.

At that moment, Lisa reappeared with Mrs. Parent. LaManche crossed to the gurney. I followed.

Grasping the tissue firmly, LaManche rolled the woman's upper lip upward. The inner surface appeared normal.

When LaManche pulled Parent's lower lip downward, I could see tiny horizontal lacerations marring the smooth purple flesh. Each corresponded to the position of a lower incisor.

Using thumb and forefinger, the pathologist spread Parent's left eyelids. Then her right. Both eyes showed petechia, pinpoint red dots and blotching of the sclera and conjunctiva.

"Asphyxia," I said, terrible images filling my thoughts.

I pictured this woman alone in her bed. Her safe place. Her refuge. A silhouette looming in the darkness. Fingers wrapping her throat. Oxygen hunger. Heart-pounding terror.

"Petechial hemorrhage can be caused by many things, Temperance. Its presence indicates little more than capillary rupture."

"Resulting from sudden increase in vascular congestion in the head," I said.

"Yes," LaManche said.

"As in strangulation," I said.

"Petechiae can occur due to coughing, sneezing, vomiting, straining at stool, laboring in childbirth-"

"I doubt this woman was having a baby."

LaManche continued speaking as he probed Parent's throat with a gloved finger.

"-foreign object obstruction, gagging, swelling of the airway linings."

"Are you seeing indications of any of those?"

LaManche raised his eyes to mine.

"I have barely begun my external exam."