No wonder poor Dolly lurched and clutched while I put her into park and turned off the engine. If it wasn’t Lilith trying to take my place in the mirror, it was Captain Malloy trying to move in on Ric.

“Watch here,” I told Quicksilver, rushing inside. Some people are just dying to get into the morgue and I was one of them right now.

The receptionist, Yolanda, sniffed as she handed over my ID card. “Mr. Montoya came inside with the police captain a half hour ago,” she informed me. “You may be too late.”

“Nobody’s left yet,” I pointed out, “unless the corpse we’re all here to see took a stroll.”

Her nose curled. “Ugh. I hear three techs fainted moving the remains into the autopsy room. Care for some Vicks?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, smiling in the name of getting along with the clerical staff.

Patting Vicks VapoRub on the nostrils is a cop trick for masking the stench of death. I have to admit I was nervous. I’d never before attended an autopsy for a revived dead body I’d been responsible for killing again.

“Murder” had become a very loose term in the post-Millennium Revelation world.

A wide-eyed tech assistant (just like I’d recently played next door) issued me the regulation latex gloves and Plexiglas visor at the autopsy room door. With an unnerving sense of déjà vu, I joined several similarly accoutered people gathered around a stainless steel table.

It was like walking in on my longtime nightmares, only I was one of the weird beings surrounding my supine self, not the body on the examination table.

Perspiration stippled my entire body like a rash. Why had I ever thought I could do this? Stroll up to something I’d tricked to jump out a window? Guilt was such an iffy element nowadays. Had my desperate act blasted all hope from Loretta’s previously presumed innocent heart or had I stopped a monster in its tracks? Did I have the right to dote on the sight of Ric standing alive and well near the fallen jigsaw remains of Loretta’s Polish prince?

“Autopsies are off-limits for civilians,” Captain Malloy noted from behind her glinting transparent mask.

I readily turned to go, but Ric stepped up to capture my elbow and stop me.

The clear plastic face guard blurred his mocha skin and coffee-dark hair and eyes, but I couldn’t fail to recognize the rolled-up ivory silk shirtsleeves and tailored buff-colored slacks. He was Mr. Suave even around an autopsy table.

“Miss Street may have seen the victim alive,” he said.

“She can ID this?” Malloy jeered. “I thought I’d spare a civilian embarrassing herself.” She stared at Ric’s fingers making comforting circles on my elbow.

I took a deep breath.

Yeah, lady, Irma taunted on my behalf, he’s pretty familiar with the lay of her land. Too bad, loser!

Irma made me smile inside. She was always in my corner.

I walked closer to the table to regard my victim, pushing aside both childish nightmares and adult guilt.

Had Captain Malloy been trying to do me a favor! The broken and tangled form was less human than a robot graveyard. I saw only twisted pseudo-flesh over raw muscle, not Loretta’s idealized and romantic undead lover. Nothing of him had been revived but the bones and patchwork covering, and the brain had been a mockery.

This repellent conglomeration of flesh and bone had been raised only to become mindlessly murderous, perhaps reviving its last mortal, defensive impulses. Not its fault, but also not a reason to spare a killing machine.

“What a puzzling mélange,” Grisly Bahr said, his fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows arching like inchworms. “Although I spot a lot of shiny nostrils in the room, Miss Street, the amateur among us, was right to abstain. The mentholated Vicks was unnecessary, folks.”

Besides giving me an “A is for Amateur” scarlet letter, making all the police pros present hate me, Dr. Bahr was also stating the oddly obvious. This blob of monstrous mortality smelled more of sunbaked asphalt than decaying flesh.

“I got a call from the meat wagon,” Captain Malloy noted. “What brought out the civilians?” she asked Bahr, eyeing me and Ric.

Oooh, she must be mucho mad about you being here, Irma whispered in my ear.

Ric wasn’t going to tolerate official snootiness goring his associate.

“Dr. Bahr had called me on another matter involving the bodies found in Sunset Park a few weeks back,” he said formally. “Miss Street had been present for that discovery, so I suggested she meet me here.”

“Not expecting a crowd, I’m sure.” Malloy sounded sour. “Or a bizarre new body. I wish losing gamblers would leap off the Hoover Dam instead of a Strip hotel for a change.”

She folded her arms over her dark blazer, reminding me of the faux uniform suit I’d worn to D.C. A trim blonde looked more icily official in navy blue than a buxom brunette, I observed.

“It’s not a despondent gambler,” I felt obliged to tell her. “It’s the male vic from the park. Any sign of those original dry bones?” I asked Grisly.

He shook his head. “Just fragments and powder here now. I’ll have to analyze every component. What was the height of the fall, three hundred feet? Any identifiable face?”

“You wouldn’t want to see,” said a new voice.

Malloy’s constant frown deepened as she turned to spot Sansouci entering, gloves and visor in hand. “Another party crasher. I suppose your presence confirms this individual died at the Gehenna.”

“Yup. My boss wanted to make sure the body got here… safely.”

“As if.” She didn’t need to say more. The body could hardly be more destroyed. “I’d think Cicereau had better errand boys at hand than a gigolo.”

Ouch! Irma gasped. I found the comment telling.

“Get out, Sansouci,” Captain Malloy ordered with contempt, “along with Montoya and Street.”

The resulting silence got intense. Sansouci looked ready to break out the fangs again and I was wishing for some.

Ric, Mr. ex-FBI Coolio again, took us both in hand, my alter ego and me. His hand on my elbow propelled me and Irma to the door.

“Time to visit the snack zone,” he said, “while the pros get their teeth into their new corpse.”

Sansouci followed.

THE SILENCE AS we three withdrew was mutual. None of us easily swallowed orders to retreat.

Once we’d hung up our visors and discarded the latex gloves, we passed through some heavy stainless steel doors. Sansouci and I followed Ric, down a hall exhaling the delicate odor of decay to the employee rest area, where soft drink and snack machines lined the walls. It was otherwise empty.

“You guys know each other?” I asked, surprised. Sansouci had seen Ric during the Karnak rescue but Ric had been dead to the world in a very real sense then.

Ric nodded slowly, measuring Sansouci’s breed and steel.

“The FBI keeps mug shots and files on all the Vegas principal players. I still have access.”

“‘Principal players’?” Sansouci mocked. “I’m just Cicereau’s lieutenant.”

“That how you know my girl?” Ric’s tone wasn’t searching for steel now, it was showing it.

“Yeah. I like her too.”

“Am I going to have to do something about that?” Ric asked.

The scent of testosterone in the innocuous break room overcame the potent ozone formula that quieted the reek of decay. Some said it was just Febreze. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut for once. Irma didn’t.

Dueling dudes! Over us! This is a first, girl, relax and enjoy.

Whoa, Irma! “Relax and enjoy?” That’s what sexist men in the bad old days advised women facing a rapist to do, I told her. I don’t need to be anybody’s prize.

Aw, guys gotta do this stuff. Don’t enjoy, then, but relax.

Sansouci pulled out a plastic chair and sat down at a flimsy matching table, crossing his arms over his impressive chest. “Nope. Not while you’re alive.”

Somehow that settled things, even though Sansouci and I knew that condition was ambiguous.