"I didn't see anything of note externally," Marvin said when he returned with a handful of sterile syringes and specimen jars, some containing preservatives and some without. He placed them all on the edge of the table to have them immediately available.

"So far, I'd have to agree," Laurie responded. There was a lot of give-and-take between the techs and the doctors, although it varied, depending on the personalities. Laurie always encouraged comments and suggestions, especially from Marvin. As far as she was concerned, the techs were a rich source of experience.

Marvin went over to the glass-fronted cabinets to get the required instruments. Despite the hum of her ventilation fan, Laurie could hear whistling. He was always cheerful, which was another thing she liked about him.

After checking for signs of intravenous drug use and not finding any, Laurie used a nasal speculum to look inside Sean's nose. There was no suggestion of cocaine use. With a mysterious death, drugs had to be considered, despite what his parents had said to the contrary. Next, she opened the eyelids to examine the eyes. They appeared normal, with no hemorrhages on the sclera. Opening the mouth, she made sure the endotracheal tube was in the trachea and not the esophagus. Laurie had seen that on a few occasions with the predictable disastrous results.

With all his preparations complete, Marvin came back to the side of the table opposite Laurie and stood expectantly, waiting for the internal part of the autopsy to begin.

"All right! Let's do it!" Laurie said, reaching out with her hand as Marvin handed her a scalpel.

Although Laurie had done thousands of postmortems, each time she started another, it gave her a tingle of excitement. Starting the actual autopsy was akin to opening a sacred book, the mysteries of which she was about to discover. With her index finger pressing down on the top of the scalpel, Laurie expertly made the usual Y-shaped incision, starting from the points of the shoulders, meeting mid-sternum, and then continuing down to the pubis. With Marvin's help, she quickly reflected skin and muscle before removing the breastbone with bone cutters.

"Looks like a broken rib," Marvin commented, pointing to a defect on the right side of the chest.

"No hemorrhage, so it was postmortem, probably from the resuscitation attempt. Some people go overboard with the chest compressions."

"Ouch!" Marvin said sympathetically.

Expecting blood clots or other emboli, Laurie was eager to examine the great veins leading to the heart, the heart itself, and the pulmonary arteries, where fatal clots would usually be found. But she resisted the temptation. She knew that it was best to follow a normal protocol, lest something be forgotten. Carefully, she examined all the internal organs in situ, then used the syringes Marvin had laid out to take fluid samples for toxicological testing. A fatal reaction to a drug, toxin, or even an anesthetic agent had to be considered. Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the deceased had undergone anesthesia.

Laurie and Marvin worked together in silence, making certain that each sample was put into the correctly labeled specimen container. Once the fluid samples had been obtained, she began to remove the internal organs. Diligently, she maintained the normal sequence, and it wasn't until a bit later that she finally turned her attention to the heart.

"Here comes the money!" Marvin quipped.

Laurie smiled. The heart was indeed where she expected to find the pathology. With a few deft strokes, the heart came out. She peered into the cut end of the vena cava, but there was no clot. She was disappointed, since she had already noted that the pulmonary arteries had been clear when she'd removed the lungs.

Laurie weighed the heart, then with a long bladed knife, began an internal examination. To her chagrin, there was nothing amiss. There was no clot, and even the coronary arteries appeared entirely normal.

Laurie and Marvin's eyes met across the opened corpse.

"Damn!" Marvin exhaled.

"I'm surprised," Laurie said. She took a deep breath. "Well, you see to the gut and I'll take my micro samples, then we'll check the brain."

"You got it," Marvin said. He took the stomach and the intestines over to the sink to wash them out.

Laurie took multiple tissue samples for microscopic study, particularly from the heart and the lungs.

Marvin returned the cleaned gut to Laurie, who went through it carefully, taking samples as she proceeded. Meanwhile, Marvin started on the head by reflecting the scalp. By the time Laurie was finished with the stomach and intestines, Marvin was ready for her to inspect the skull. She gave him a thumbs-up when she was through, and he hefted the power-vibrating saw to cut through the bone just above the ears.

While Marvin was busy with the skull, Laurie took a scissors and opened the sutured wound on the lower leg. All looked fine within the surgical site. She then opened the long veins of the legs, tracing them from the ankles all the way up into the abdomen. There were no clots.

"The brain looks normal to me," Marvin commented.

Laurie nodded. There was no swelling and no hemorrhage, and the color was normal. She felt it with her practiced finger. It felt normal as well.

A few minutes later, Laurie had the brain out, and she dropped it into a pan that Marvin held. She checked the cut ends of the carotid arteries. Like everything else, they were normal. She weighed the brain. Its weight was within the normal limits.

"We're not finding anything," she said.

"I'm sorry," Marvin said.

Laurie smiled. On top of his other good qualities, he was empathetic. "You don't need to apologize. It's not your fault."

"It would have been nice to find something. What are you thinking now? It doesn't look like he should have died."

"I haven't the slightest idea. I'll hope the microscopic can shed some light, but I'm not optimistic. Everything looks and feels so normal. Why don't you start winding things up while I section the brain. I can't think of anything else to do."

"You got it," Marvin said cheerfully.

As Laurie anticipated, the interior of the brain looked like its exterior. She took the appropriate samples, then joined Marvin to suture up the body. With both of them working, it took only a few minutes.

"I'd like to get my next case up as soon as possible," Laurie said. "I hope you don't mind." She was afraid that once she sat down, her fatigue would return with a vengeance. At the moment, she was feeling better than expected.

"Not at all," Marvin said. He was already straightening up.

Laurie looked around the pit. She'd been so engrossed that she hadn't seen all the activity. At that point, all eight tables were in use, with at least two and sometimes more people clustered about each. She glanced toward Jack's table. He was bent over the head of another woman's body. Apparently, he'd finished with Sara Cromwell, and Lou had left. Beyond Jack's table, Calvin was still at work with Fontworth on the same body they were working on before. Bingham had apparently left to give his news conference.

"How long will the turnaround take?" Laurie asked Marvin as he carried the specimen bottles away.

"Not long at all."

Laurie wandered toward Jack with mixed feelings. She was not prepared for more of his levity, but after the earlier tease about Cromwell, she was curious about what he'd discovered. Laurie stopped at the foot of the table. Jack was concentrating intently on making a mold of a lesion on the woman's forehead, just within the hairline. Laurie stood for a moment, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. Vinnie had looked up immediately and had at least given a restrained wave.

"What did you find on your first case?" Laurie asked finally. It seemed unlikely that he hadn't seen her, but it had to have been the case. She didn't want to think otherwise.