He saw me and gave me a barely visible nod. “Morning.”

“Morning, Carl. Helluva way to spend a Sunday.”

“Busy week. The fridge is full.” The way he said it made it sound like he’d just gone grocery shopping.

“Where’s Doc?”

“Traffic. On his way.” He pushed the stretcher up against the metal table that was locked into place at the sink. “Gonna cut the Roths today,” he continued as he smoothly unzipped the bag. “The councilman will probably be tomorrow.”

I felt almost overwhelmed by what was the equivalent of a verbal barrage from the normally silent and seemingly emotionless morgue tech. I also couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment that Doc wouldn’t be doing all three while I was here, though I knew that I was being selfishly unrealistic, especially since it was a Sunday. But I really wanted to find some connection between Brian Roth and Davis Sharp, anything that could point me to an answer as to why both had no essence left. Doc had a shitload of experience, having worked in Las Vegas and Houston before taking the job with St. Long Parish, and I had a lot of faith in his opinion.

Oh, well. Nothing to do but be patient. “You, uh, need any help?” I asked Carl.

He lifted his head to look at me as if he’d never really seen me before. I couldn’t decide if his direct gaze was creepy or not.

The faintest whisper of what might have been a smile shimmered on his face, then he nodded toward a side table. “Gloves and smocks there.”

I turned to the table, forcing myself not to grimace. I’d offered to help more out of courtesy than a desire to handle bodies, but I couldn’t back out now. I found a smock and pulled the blue plastic over my head, tying it at the waist the way I’d seen Doc and Carl do it, then snagged gloves out of the box marked Small and tugged them on.

Carl had folded the flap of the bag back, revealing the body of Carol Roth. The scarf was still wound around her throat, damp and limp from the moisture of being in the cooler, the dark-red fabric stark against the waxy pallor of her skin. Now that the blood had settled and lividity was fixed, I could see faint ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. A little bondage play before the asphyxia, or was there more to it? And, to my relief, I could still feel the faintest hum of essence about her. I knew it wouldn’t be there for much longer. I surreptitiously touched her arm with a gloved finger, confirming for myself that she felt “normal.”

“Stupid way to die,” Carl murmured.

He kept surprising me with the conversation. Or maybe I’d formed an opinion of him as emotionless and dour because I’d never really had a chance to talk to him. “I agree,” I replied. I couldn’t see how the risk of death could be worth the erotic thrill.

He moved to the other side of the metal table, then reached across and grabbed the body by the arm and knee, giving a sharp tug to slide her into position. “She was an easy one,” he said, straightening her limbs on the table.

I frowned, Jill’s comment about Brian and Carol having marital problems suddenly coming back to me. “You mean she slept around?”

He paused, his hands stilling on her legs, and looked up at me. “Actually, I was referring to her weight and how simple it was to get her onto the table. It’s not as pretty when it’s someone weighing four hundred pounds.”

“Ah. Right. Sorry.”

He kept looking at me, hands still motionless on the woman’s thighs. “But it’s funny you should say that.”

“What, that she slept around?”

He made a small motion with his head that I was fairly certain was a nod. “She had a reputation.”

Now, that added a new dimension. “Was she cheating on Brian?”

“I don’t know that. She’d been married before, to a lawyer in Mandeville. Supposedly he caught her with one of the other lawyers who worked in his firm. Divorced her.”

So maybe it hadn’t been Brian after all. A frisson of relief surged through me at the thought. I knew that I was basing a lot of hope on what was—at the moment—merely gossip about Carol, but I also knew there’d be plenty of other people in the department who’d feel the same way if Brian’s name could be cleared.

I tilted my head, regarding Carl in an entirely new light. “How do you know all this?”

The faint smile flickered on his face again. “Most people don’t like the work I do, so they dismiss me from their minds as soon as possible. They forget I’m there, and I hear things.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You must have dirt on everyone.”

The smile was almost real now. “I know a lot of things about a lot of people.”

It made me wonder what he knew about me.

The outer door banged shut and we both looked up as Dr. Jonathan Lanza walked in. He dumped his keys and phone on the desk in the outer office and then continued in to the cutting room, grabbing gloves and smock without breaking stride.

“Morning, Kara, Carl,” Dr. Lanza said, yanking protective gear on as he moved to the table. He peered at one of Carol’s wrists, then shook his head as his gaze traveled over the rest of the body. “God knows I’ve seen stupider ways to die, but this sure isn’t a way I’d want to go.” He shook his head. “It’s definitely a homicide,” he continued, stressing the word, “but I’m inclined to agree with the sex-play-gone-bad scenario. The ligature marks are fairly light, and I’m not seeing any signs of struggle, though I’ll run a full tox screen to make sure she wasn’t drugged up first. Negligent homicide, perhaps? I’m not the one who decides how the charges go. I just tell you guys how she died.” Then he gave a small sigh. “Not that it matters if Brian did this.”

“I’m keeping an open mind as far as that goes,” I said.

Doc nodded, then his gaze shifted to me, taking in my attire. “I see Carl conned you into helping out. Keep this up and I might hire you away from the PD.”

I wrinkled my nose. “No thanks, Doc. This one’s fine, but if this had been a week-old decomp, you and Carl would be on your own.”

He laughed. “Oh, so that’s how it is?”

“Yup. That’s how it is.”

He grinned and picked up his clipboard, beginning his examination of the body.

Carl took a hypodermic syringe and held it out to me. “You said you wanted to help,” he said calmly. “Do you want to get the vitreous?”

“Ugh! No. Way.” I shuddered as Doc laughed, and even Carl cracked a smile. Getting the vitreous involved sticking a needle into the eyeball and drawing the fluid out. At the first autopsy I’d attended, Carl had made a point to show me how the needle could be seen through the pupil after it was inserted. I could handle a lot of things, but the needle in the eye always squicked me out.

Carl gave a soft sigh and shook his head as he swiftly and expertly slid the needle into the side of each eye to extract the clear fluid. “I have to do everything myself,” he teased.

How had I ever thought this man to be dour and humorless?

He squirted the fluid into a tube, then dropped the syringe into a Sharps container. Meanwhile, Doc set his clipboard aside, and pulled a black case out from beneath a cabinet. He popped it open and pulled out three pairs of colored goggles and a device that looked like a complicated flashlight. I recognized it as an ALS, an alternate light source. “Kill the lights, please, Kara.”

I obligingly flicked the lights off, then put the yellow-tinted glasses on as Doc began to shine the ALS carefully over Carol’s body.

“Look at that,” Doc said, as the bruising on her neck stood out in stark contrast to the rest of her skin. “There may not have been much showing, but here you can see where the scarf dug in.” He scanned it over her torso and thighs next. “And there ya go.” Several bite marks stood out clearly. “Just a few love nips. Nothing too hard or too deep.”

I bent closer, frowning at the marks. “Wait,” I said, and pointed to a mark on her right breast. “Shine the light on this one.”

Doc complied. “See something?”

A flutter of excitement wound through my belly. “Would you say that the teeth that left those marks are in good shape? All of them there?”

He shrugged. “I’m no dentist, but it looks like there are impressions from all the front teeth, at least.”

I straightened. “Brian was missing a tooth in the front. Got it knocked out during a pickup basketball game last week and hadn’t had it fixed yet.”

Carl let out a low whistle. “And if Brian didn’t kill her, why would he kill himself?”

“Exactly. If he didn’t kill her, then I rather doubt he pulled the trigger.” The thought of a fellow officer being murdered was hideous, but it was a damn sight more bearable than the thought that he’d been a murderer. I peered again at the bites as Doc bent his head for a closer look. Unfortunately, the marks weren’t nice and clear, and I couldn’t tell for certain if there was a gap in the bruising or not.

After a few seconds Doc sighed, shaking his head. “I can’t tell. They’re not hard bites. We’d have to consult a forensic odontologist. Or we can find out for sure another way. Kara, can you get me a swab, please?”

I handed him the swabs and the vial of sterile water. Doc dampened the swab with the sterile water and then carefully wiped across the bite marks. “Whoever bit her left saliva behind,” he explained. He repeated the process in several more locations on her body, then finally switched off the ALS and pulled off his goggles while I turned the room lights on.

Doc packaged the swabs up in an evidence envelope. “Fortunately, it doesn’t matter if whoever it was wore a condom. Saliva’s just as good.” He put the envelope aside, then picked up a syringe with a wickedly long needle and jabbed it into her groin area, working it around until he was able to get into the femoral artery to draw blood. Then another syringe went into the area just above her pubic bone, drawing out urine. “I’m running a full tox screen on her,” he said, glancing at me as he filled various vials. “It still looks like an accidental asphyx, but we want to be sure she wasn’t drugged.”

I started to run my fingers through my hair, then stopped when I remembered that I was wearing gloves that had dead person on them. I sighed as my nose suddenly started itching fiercely. Never failed: As soon as I knew I couldn’t touch my face, I was overwhelmed with the need to.

If it’s not Brian’s DNA, then he probably wasn’t the one who killed her, and his murder was merely staged to look like a suicide. Which led to the question: If that’s the case, were Brian and Carol killed by the same person?

I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. First I needed to find out if it was Brian’s DNA. “This will tell us for sure if it’s Brian, right?”

“I’ll call down to the lab in Slidell to tell them I need a rush on a comparison,” Doc said. “I’ll casually drop that this is the son of a judge, but it’ll still be at least a week or two. Convenient that we have access to Brian’s DNA.” He nodded his head toward the cooler.

I watched as Doc completed the rest of the rape kit, including the vaginal, rectal, and oral swabs, the nail scrapings and clippings, blood and hair samples.

The rest of the autopsy went quickly. Carl took the completed rape kit and disappeared into the office to get it sealed and ready to take to the lab. Doc worked quietly and efficiently, opening her up and removing the organs, weighing and slicing samples, then peeling back the skin and muscles of the throat. “The hyoid bone isn’t broken, so it wasn’t a forcible strangulation—not like your Symbol Man cases.” He straightened from his close examination. “Asphyxiation held just a bit too long.” He shrugged. “Y’know, Carol had a rep for being pretty indiscriminate about who she fooled around with. I think most of the PD and half the DA’s office had slept with her.”

“I can’t believe I’m so out of the gossip loop,” I said with a laugh.

“It’s better that way, trust me. Besides, you’ve been a little preoccupied lately.” He glanced at me. “How’s your aunt doing?”

My throat tightened. “No change.”

He gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s been only, what, six, seven weeks? There’s no trauma, so she has every chance of coming out of this.”

I sighed, and once again had to resist the urge to run my fingers through my hair. “Yeah. Sure.” I wished it was as easy as that.

“Doc’s right,” Carl said from behind me, thoroughly startling me. “She’ll come out of this. But you’re too stressed out. You need to eat more. You look better with some meat on your bones.” He extended a saw to me. “Wanna cut a head open?”

I groaned. “No. And thank you for going straight from eating to cutting heads.”

He shrugged and plugged the saw in as I escaped to the viewing room.

I ALMOST DIDN’T come back out for Brian’s autopsy. Even on the other side of the wall, I could feel that there was something wrong about the body. I’d maintained a fleeting hope that I was wrong on the scene, both with Brian Roth and Davis Sharp, but the gaping void and tattered remains were still there.

I forced myself to return to the cutting room once Brian’s body was on the table. His body was a lot messier, mostly because of all the blood that had seeped out into the bag from the big holes in his head. His head had been wrapped in a sheet to try to control some of the blood, but it was still a nasty mess when Carl opened up the bag.