The kennel door snapped shut. The van door rolled closed. No more sunlight. No more heat.

Tina slid down to the floor of the dog crate. Her legs came up. Her body curled up protectively around her belly. Then the drugs won this battle and swept her far away.

Quantico, Virginia

3:14 P . M .

Temperature: 98 degrees

THEY HADN’T GOTTEN VERY FAR WITH THE POSTMORTEM. Kimberly wasn’t surprised. Most autopsies were scheduled for days after the recovery of the body, not hours. Either things were slow at the moment, or an NCIS investigation carried some hefty weight.

Special Agent Kaplan introduced her to the medical examiner, Dr. Corben, and then to his assistant, Gina Nitsche.

“Your first post?” Nitsche asked, wheeling in the body with quick efficiency.

Kimberly nodded.

“If you’re gonna puke, don’t ask, just leave,” Nitsche said cheerfully. “I got enough to clean up after this.” She continued talking briskly, while unzipping the body bag and folding back the plastic. “I’m called a diener. Technically speaking, Dr. Corben is the prosector. He’ll handle all the protocol and I’ll do what I’m told. Usual procedure is that the body arrives a day or two earlier and is logged in, in a separate area. We inventory clothes and possessions, take the weight, give the body an official tag with an ID number. Given time constraints, however,” Nitsche shot Kaplan a look, “this time we’re doing it all as we go. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, there’s a box of gloves on the side table. The cupboard has extra caps and gowns. Help yourself.”

Kimberly glanced toward the cupboard uncertainly, and Nitsche, as if she were reading her mind, added, “You know, ’cause sometimes they splatter.”

Kimberly went to the cupboard and found herself a cap to cover her short feathery hair and a gown to cover her clothes. She noticed that Special Agent Kaplan followed her over and also snagged a set of protective gear. He’d brought his own pair of gloves. She borrowed her pair from the ME’s supply.

Nitsche had finished unwrapping the body now. First she’d pulled back the external layer of heavy-duty plastic. Next, she’d unfolded a plain white sheet. Finally, she unpeeled the internal layer of plastic, much like a dry cleaning bag, which was what came into contact with the corpse’s skin. Nitsche folded each layer down around the base of the gurney. Then she methodically inventoried the dead girl’s clothing and jewelry, while Dr. Corben prepped the autopsy table.

“I inventoried her purse before coming in,” Nitsche said conversationally. “Poor thing had brochures from a travel agency for Hawaii. I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii. Do you think she was going with a boyfriend? Because if she was going with a boyfriend, well then, he’s available again, and God knows I need someone to take me away from here. All right. We’re ready.”

She wheeled the gurney over to the cutting table. She and Dr. Corben had obviously done this many times before. He moved to the head. She moved to the feet. On the count of three, they slid the now naked corpse from the gurney onto the metal slab. Then Nitsche wheeled the gurney away.

“Testing, testing,” Dr. Corben said into his recording equipment. Satisfied that it was working, he got down to business.

First, the ME catalogued the victim’s naked body. He described her sex, age, height, weight, and hair and eye color. He commented that she appeared in good health (other than the fact that she was dead? Kimberly thought). He also listed the presence of a tattoo, shape of a rose, approximately one inch in size, on the deceased’s upper left breast.

Victim and deceased. Dr. Corben used those words a lot. Kimberly began to think this was the heart of her problem. She never thought in terms of victim or deceased. Instead, she thought in terms such as young, pretty, blond, girl. If she was supposed to be a dispassionate, world-weary death investigator, she hadn’t achieved it yet.

Dr. Corben had moved on to perceived injuries. He described the large bruise on the girl’s-the victim’s-upper left hip, his gloved hand poking and prodding at the waxy skin. “Victim has presence of large ecchymosis, approximately four inches in diameter, on the upper left thigh. Center area is red and swollen, approximately one and a half inches around puncture site. It’s an abnormal amount of bruising for an intramuscular injection. Perhaps the result of inexperience or a large-bore needle.”

Special Agent Kaplan frowned at that and made a gesture with his hand. Dr. Corben snapped off the minirecorder in his hand. “What do you mean, a large-bore needle?” Kaplan asked.

“Different needle gauges have different thicknesses. For example, in the medical community, when we give injections we use an eighteen-gauge needle, which slides very easily into a vein. Administered correctly, it can be done with relatively little bruising. Now, this injection site has a great deal of bruising. And not just of the muscle area. This center spot where it’s red and swollen-that’s where the needle punctured the skin. The size of the aggravation leads me to believe that either it was a needle wielded with a fair amount of force, really, truly stabbed into the thigh, or it was an abnormally large needle.”

Kaplan narrowed his eyes, considering the possibilities. “Why would someone use a bigger needle?”

“Different-sized needles are used for a variety of different procedures.” Dr. Corben’s brow furrowed. “Sometimes to inject large amounts of a substance at a faster rate, you need a larger-bore needle. Or when mixing substances, you would use a larger needle. Now, here’s something interesting. The second injection site, the arm. Note the relatively small amount of aggravation we see here. Just the slightest swollen spot. That’s more like what we would typically see-consistent with a standard eighteen-gauge needle. Granted, the limited amount of bruising is also due to the fact she died shortly thereafter. But either way, this injection is clearly more skillfully done. Either it’s two different needles, or it’s two very different approaches toward intramuscular injections.”

“So first she’s injected in the hip,” Kaplan mused slowly. “Forcefully and/or with a very large needle. Then, later, she’s injected in the arm. But more controlled, more carefully. How much time occurred between the two?”

Dr. Corben frowned. He resumed studying the first bruise with his fingers. “Given the large size, it had time to develop. But notice the coloring is all purple and dark blues? None of the green and yellow tinges that happen later. I’d say twelve to twenty-four hours between the hip puncture and the injection into the arm.”

“Ambush,” Kimberly murmured.

Special Agent Kaplan turned on her. He had the hard stare again. “Come again?”

“Ambush.” She forced herself to speak up louder. “The first bruise… If it could be caused by more force, then maybe it’s from an ambush. How he gains initial control. Later, when she’s already subdued, he can take more time for the final injection.”

She was thinking of what Mac had said about the Georgia murders. How the girls found first always had bruises on their hips, plus a fatal injection mark on their upper left arms. She’d never heard of such an MO before. What were the odds that two different killers were using it in two different states?

Dr. Corben had the recorder back on. He rolled the body onto its back, noted the absence of bruises and contusions, then finished his initial exam by narrating the condition of the mouth. Nitsche handed him some kind of standardized form, and he quickly and efficiently sketched each one of the external injuries he’d noted in the protocol.

They moved on to her hands. They had been bagged at the scene. Now Nitsche pulled off the paper bags and both prosecutor and diener leaned close. Dr. Corben scraped beneath each nail. Nitsche collected the samples. Next Dr. Corben swabbed around each nail bed with a Q-tip, testing for traces of blood. He looked up at Kaplan and shook his head. “No signs of defensive wounds,” he reported. “No skin, no blood.”