An hour before her shift started, an hour before she was even supposed to be there, they rolled the first corpse through the door.

Up until that moment, M. J. Novak's day had been going better than usual. Her car had started on the first turn of the key. Traffic had been sparse on Telegraph, and she'd hit all the green lights. She'd managed to slip into her office at five to seven, and for the next hour she could lounge guiltlessly at her desk with a jelly doughnut and the latest edition of the Star, whose cover was graced by her favorite royal couple, Andy and Fergie. Yes, the day was getting off to a pretty good start.

Until the gurney with the black body bag rolled past her doorway. Oh Lord, she thought. In about thirty seconds, Ratchet was going to knock at her door, asking for favors. With a sense of dread, M. J. listened to the gurney wheels grind down the hall. She heard theautopsy room doors whisk open and shut, heard the distant rumble of male voices. She counted ten seconds, fifteen. And there it was, just as she'd anticipated: the sound of Ratchet's Reeboks squeaking across the linoleum floor.

He appeared in her doorway. "Morning, M. J.," he said.

She sighed. "Good morning, Ratchet."

"Can you believe it? They just wheeled one in."

"Yeah, the nerve of them."

"It's already seven ten," he said. A note of pleading crept into his voice. "If you could just do me this favor…"

"But I'm not here." She licked a dollop of raspberry jelly from her fingers. "Until eight o'clock, I'm nothing more than a figment of your imagination."

"I don't have time to process this one. Beth's got the kids packed and ready to take off, and here I am, stuck with another Jane Doe. Have a heart."

"This is the third time this month."

"But I've got a family. They expect me to spend time with them. You're a free agent."

"Right. I get a divorce and suddenly I'm everyone's Kelly Girl."

Ratchet shuffled into her office and leaned his ample behind against her desk. "Just this once. Beth and I, we're having problems, you know, and I want this vacation to start off right. I'll return the favor sometime. I promise."

Sighing, M. J. folded up the Star. The travails of Andy and Fergie would have to wait. "Okay," she said, more to get Ratchet's fanny off her medical charts than to do him any favors. "What've you got?"

Ratchet was already pulling off his white coat, visibly shifting to vacation mode. "Jane Doe. No obvious trauma. Another body-fluid special. Beamis and Shradick are in there with her."

"They bring her in?"

"Yeah. So you'll have a decent police report to work with."

M. J. rose to her feet and brushed powdered sugar off her scrub pants. "You owe me," she said, as they headed into the hall.

"I know, I know." He stopped at his office and grabbed his jacket-a fly-fisherman's version, complete with a zillion pockets with little feathers poking out.

"Leave a few trout for the rest of us."

He grinned and gave her a salute. "Into the wilds of Maine I go," he said, heading for the elevator. "See you next week."

Feeling resigned, M. J. pushed open the door to the autopsy room and went in.

The body, still sealed in its black bag, lay on the slab. Lieutenant Lou Beamis and Sergeant Vince Shradick, veterans of the local knife and gun club, were waiting for her. Beamis looked dapper as usual in a suit and tie-a black homicide detective who always insisted on mixing corpses with Pierre Cardin. His partner, Vince Shradick, was, in contrast, a perpetual candidate for Slim-Fast. Shradick was peering in fascination at a specimen jar on the shelf.

"What the hell is that?" he asked, pointing to the jar. Good old Vince; he was never afraid to sound stupid.

"That's the right middle lobe of a lung," M. J. said.

"I woulda guessed it was a brain."

Beamis laughed. "That's why she's the doc and you're just a dumb cop." He straightened his tie and looked at her. "Isn't Ratchet doing this one?"

M. J. snapped on a pair of gloves. "Afraid I am."

"Thought your shift started at eight."

"Tell me about it." She went to the slab and gazed down at the bag, feeling her usual reluctance to open the zipper, to reveal what lay beneath the black plastic. How many of these bags have I opened? she wondered. A hundred, two hundred? Each one contained its own private horror story. This was the hardest part, sliding down the zipper, unveiling the contents. Once a body was revealed, once she'd weathered the initial shock of its appearance, she could set to work with a scientist's dispassion. But the first glimpse, the first reaction – that was always pure emotion, something over which she had no control.

"So, guys," she said. "What's the story here?"

Shradick came forward and flipped open his notebook. It was like an extension of his arm, that notebook; she'd never seen him without it. "Caucasian female, no ID, age twenty to thirty. Body found four A.M. this morning, off South Lexington. No apparent trauma, no witnesses, no nothin'."

"South Lexington," said M. J., and images of that neighborhood flashed through her mind. She knew the area too well-the streets, the back alleys, the playgrounds rimmed with barbed wire. And, looming above it all, the seven buildings, as grim as twenty-story concrete headstones. "The Projects?" she asked.

"Where else?"

"Who found her?"

"City trash pickup," said Beamis. "She was in an alley between two of the Project buildings, sort of wedged against a Dumpster."

"As if she was placed there? Or died there?"

Beamis glanced at Shradick. "You were at the scene first. What do you say, Vince?"

"Looked to me like she died there. Just lay down, sort of curled up against the Dumpster, and called it quits."

It was time. Steeling herself for that first glimpse, M. J. reached for the zipper and opened the bag. Beamis and Shradick both took a step backward, an instinctive reaction she herself had to quell. The zipper parted and the plastic fell away to reveal the corpse.

It wasn't bad; at least it appeared intact. Compared to some of the corpses she'd seen, this one was actually in excellent shape. The woman was a bleached blond, about thirty, perhaps younger. Her face looked like marble, pale and cold. She was dressed in a long-sleeved purple pullover, some sort of polyester blend, a short black skirt with a patent leather belt, black tights, and brand-new Nikes. Her only jewelry was a dime-store friendship ring and a Timex watch-still ticking. Rigor mortis had frozen her limbs into a vague semblance of a fetal position. Both fists were clenched tight, as though, in her last moment of life, they'd been caught in spasm.

M. J. took a few photos, then picked up a cassette recorder and began to dictate. "Subject is a white female, blond, found in alley off South Lexington around oh four hundred…" Beamis and Shradick,already knowing what would follow, took off their jackets and reached into a linen cart for some gowns- medium for Beamis, extra large for Shradick. The gloves came next. They both knew the drill; they'd been cops for years, and partners for four months. It was an odd pairing, M. J. thought, like Abbott and Costello. So far, though, it seemed to work.

She put down the cassette recorder. "Okay, guys," she said. "On to the next step."

The undressing. The three of them worked together to strip the corpse. Rigor mortis made it difficult; M. J. had to cut away the skirt. The outer clothing was set aside. The tights and underwear were to be examined later for evidence of recent sexual contact. When at last the corpse lay naked, M. J. once again reached for the camera and clicked off a few more photos for the evidence file.