“What were you thinking about?” Lou asked. “You seemed a long way off.”

“The fact that the victim had been discovered by his girlfriend,” Laurie said as her eyes stumbled again onto Sara Wetherbee’s name. She wasn’t about to share her past with this lieutenant. To this day she had trouble talking about that tragic episode with friends, much less a stranger. “It must have been very hard for the poor woman.”

“Unfortunately, homicide victims are often found by those closest to them,” Lou said.

“Must have been a terrible shock,” Laurie said. Her heart went out to Sara Wetherbee. “I must say, this Duncan Andrews case is certainly not the usual overdose.”

Lou shrugged. “With cocaine, I’m not sure there is a usual case. When the drug went upscale in the seventies, deaths have been seen in all levels of society, from athletes and entertainers to executives to college kids to inner city hoodlums. It’s a pretty democratic blight. A great leveler, if you will.”

“Here at the medical examiner’s office, we mostly see the lower end of the abuser spectrum,” Laurie said. “But you’re right in general.” Laurie smiled. She was impressed by Lou. “What was your background before joining the police?”

“What do you mean?” Lou asked.

“Did you go to college?” Laurie asked.

“Of course I went to college!” Lou snapped. “What kind of question is that?”

“Sorry,” Laurie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“And I don’t mean to be testy,” Lou said. “Sometimes I’m a bit self-conscious about where I went to school. I only got to go to a community college on the Island, not some Ivy League ivory tower. Where’d you go?”

“ Wesleyan University, up in Connecticut,” Laurie said. “Ever heard of it?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it,” Lou said. “What do you think, all police officers are ignoramuses? Wesleyan University. I might have known. As Billy Joel says, you uptown girls live in an uptown world.”

“How did you know I was from New York?”

“Your accent, Doctor,” Lou said. “It’s as indelible as my Long Island Rego Park accent.”

“I see,” Laurie said. She didn’t like to think she was such an open book. She wondered what else this man could tell about her from his years as an investigator.

Laurie changed the subject. “Where you go to school matters less than what you do while you’re there,” she said. “You shouldn’t be sensitive about your college. Obviously you got a good education.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Lou. “But thanks for the compliment.”

Laurie looked down at the papers on her desk. Suddenly she felt a little guilty about her privileged background of a private secondary school, Wesleyan University, Columbia Medical School. She hoped she hadn’t sounded patronizing.

“Let me take a quick look at the third case,” Laurie said. She opened the third folder. “Louis Herrera, age twenty-eight, unemployed, found in a dumpster behind a grocery store.” Laurie looked up at Lou. “Probably died in a crack house and was literally dumped. That’s the usual overdose we see. Another sad, wasted life.”

“In some respects maybe more tragic than the rich guy,” Lou said. “I’d guess he had a lot fewer choices in life.”

Laurie nodded. Lou’s perspective was refreshing. She reached for the phone and dialed Cheryl Myers down in the medical investigator’s department. She asked Cheryl to get all the medical records she could on Duncan Andrews. She told her that she hoped to find some medical problem that she might be able to relate to his pathology.

Hanging up the phone, Laurie glanced over at Lou. “I can’t help it, but I feel like I’m cheating.” She stood up and gathered all the paperwork.

“You’re not cheating,” Lou assured her. “Besides, why not wait until you have all the information, including the autopsy? Then you can worry about it. Who knows, maybe everything will work out.”

“Good advice,” Laurie said. “Let’s get downstairs and get to work.”

Normally Laurie changed into her scrub clothes in her office, but with Lou there, she opted to use the locker room. When they got off the elevator on the basement level, Laurie directed Lou into the men’s side while she went into the women’s. Five minutes later they met up in the hall. Laurie had on a layer of normal scrub clothes, then another impermeable layer, then a large apron. On her head she wore a hood. A face mask dangled from around her neck. Lou had on a single layer of scrubs, a hood, and he carried his face mask.

“You look like one of the doctors,” Laurie said, eyeing Lou to make sure he’d put on the right clothing.

“I feel like I’m going into surgery instead of to see an autopsy,” Lou said. “I didn’t wear all this the last time. You sure I have to wear this mask?”

“Everyone in the autopsy room wears a mask,” Laurie said. “Because of AIDS and other infectious problems, rules have become much stricter. If you don’t wear it, Calvin will bodily throw you out.”

They walked down the main corridor of the morgue, passing the stainless steel door to the walk-in cooler and past the long bank of individual refrigerated compartments. The refrigerator compartments formed a large U in the middle of the morgue.

“This place is certainly grisly,” Lou commented.

“I suppose,” Laurie said. “It’s less so when you’re used to it.”

“It looks like a Hollywood set for a horror movie,” Lou said. “Whoever picked out these blue tiles for the walls? And what about the cement floor? Why isn’t there any covering? Look at all the stains.”

Laurie stopped and gazed at the floor. Although the surface was swept clean, the stains were unspeakable. “It was supposed to be tiled long ago,” she said. “Somehow it got fouled up in New York City bureaucratic red tape. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“And what are all those coffins doing here?” Lou asked. “That’s a nice touch.” He pointed to a stack of simple pine boxes piled almost to the ceiling. Others were standing on end.

“Those are Potter’s Field coffins,” Laurie said. “There are a lot of unidentified bodies in New York City. After their autopsies we keep them in the cooler for a number of weeks. If they go unclaimed, they are eventually buried at city’s expense.”

“Isn’t there someplace else they could store the coffins?” Lou asked. “It looks like a garage sale.”

“Not that I know of,” Laurie said. “I guess I’ve never thought about it. I’m so used to seeing them there.”

Laurie pushed into the autopsy room first, then held the door for Lou. In contrast to the previous morning, all eight tables were now occupied by corpses, each with a tag tied around its big toe. At five of the tables the posts were already under way.

“Well, well, Dr. Montgomery is starting before noon,” one of the gowned and hooded doctors quipped.

“Some of us are smart enough to test the water before we jump in the pool,” Laurie shot back.

“You’re on table six,” one of the mortuary techs called out from a sink where he was washing out a length of intestine.

Laurie looked back at Lou, who had paused just inside the door. She saw him swallow hard. Although he’d said he’d seen autopsies before, she had the feeling that he found this “assembly line” operation a bit overwhelming. With the gut being washed out, the smell wasn’t too good either.

“You can go outside anytime,” Laurie said to him.

Lou held up a hand. “I’m all right,” he said. “If you can take this, I can too.”

Laurie walked down to table six. Lou followed her. A gowned and hooded Vinnie Amendola appeared.

“It’s you and me today, Dr. Montgomery,” Vinnie said.

“Fine,” Laurie said. “Why don’t you get everything we’ll need and we’ll get started.”

Vinnie nodded, then went over to the supply cabinets.

Laurie put out her note papers where she could get to them, then looked at Duncan Andrews. “Handsome-looking man,” she said.

“I didn’t think doctors thought that way,” Lou said. “I thought you guys all switched into neutral or something.”