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?”