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back of Taylor’s throat. Autopsies with fetuses past the twenty-week gestation period always threw her. Oh, who was she kidding? She didn’t ever like to see dead women who were pregnant.

“Stuart Charisse will be attending me this morning.”

Sam had turned on her headset and was beginning her assessment. On cue, a lanky young man with wildly curly hair appeared at her side. He smiled politely at Taylor, started his duties with professional dispassion. Sam spoke into the headset as she began the external examination.

“Autopsy number T-08-8768, case number T-20085389. The decedent is Corinne Elizabeth Wolff, a female Caucasian twenty-six years old, in good physical condition, presenting with multiple injuries. The body is intact, sixty-five inches with a weight of one hundred thirty-four pounds. Body heat is cold, rigor is not detectable, livor is dark, limited to anterior legs, stomach and chest. Hair is dark brown, shoulderlength, eyes are brown, teeth are natural. There is no facial hair. The decedent is clothed in a sports bra and panties. Paper bags are present on the hands. The head, neck and bra are bloody.

“The jawbone is crushed and shows evidence of severe trauma. Accompanying the body there is a small envelope labeled ‘teeth found near victim’s body.’ It contains two bloody molars that belong to the victim as is evidenced by systematic placements in the corresponding sockets. There are fragments that appear to match the additional empty sockets. The teeth are photographed.”

Stuart took pictures of the teeth and labeled the jar that held them. The teeth would be released with Corinne’s body for burial.

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“The bags are removed from the decedent’s hands. Examination of hands shows a large plastic Band-Aid partially attached to the anterior of the right wrist. The fingernails are clipped and preserved as evidence.”

Stuart and Sam worked well together. Once the nails were clipped and bagged, they began the laborious progression of stripping the body and washing it. Twenty minutes later, Sam was ready to proceed. Corinne now lay naked, even more vulnerable in appearance than before. Taylor felt sorry for the girl. Who did she piss off? Sam’s voice dragged her back.

“The body is that of an adequately nourished Caucasian female who appears to be her recorded age.”

Sam moved on to a detailed examination of the wound pattern across Corinne’s skull and upper body. Blunt force injury number one. Blunt force injury number two. Blunt force injury number three. Avulsed teeth, abrasions, lacerations, bruises, mandible fractures. Because the wounds were so plentiful, Sam began grouping the smaller gashes together. At number eight, Taylor tuned out the recitation.

Rage. Pure, unadulterated rage. Whoever was responsible for murdering Corinne Wolff had been viciously upset with her. Todd Wolff’s face rose unbidden, his eyes red and brimming with soon-to-beshed tears. He had made awfully good time back from Savannah. The trip should have taken at least eight hours; he’d made it in six. Perhaps he was lying after all. But could he have been callous enough to leave his daughter hungry and dirty, crawling through her mother’s blood? To murder his unborn son? He’d have to be a pretty cold bastard to do that.

Sam was efficient. While Taylor daydreamed about 104

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suspects and motives, she’d moved on to the internal examination, had weighed and categorized all of the internal organs, removed the fetus, and had taken the saw to Corinne’s skull. The high-pitched whine made a shiver flow through Taylor’s spinal cord, akin to the feeling she got when someone scratched fingernails on a blackboard, or tinfoil made contact with a filling. And then it was over, and Sam was calmly saying, “The skull is open to reveal extensive subarachnoid hemorrhage of the brain, bilateral and most prominent at the base of the brain. The brain—” A pause here, a squelching noise, then she continued. “The brain is removed to reveal a linear skull fracture occupying most of the posterior aspect….”

Well, Corinne’s skull had been cracked, no doubt about that. Taylor’s cell phone rang, and she happily excused herself from the rest of the proceedings. She didn’t particularly want to dwell on the fetus in situ anyway.

As she turned away, she heard Sam say, “Oh, hoy.”

Clicking the button that would send the call directly to her voice mail, she came back to the table.

“What is it?”

“She was strangled.”

“Are you telling me the skull fracture wasn’t the cause of death?”

Sam caught Taylor’s eye. “No, I’m pretty comfortable that the beating was the ultimate finisher. But there is some very subtle bruising around the neck. If I had to guess, I’d say that the killer tried strangling her first and it wasn’t working quickly enough. It’s harder to strangle someone to death with your bare hands than you might think. If Corinne struggled or fought back, Judas Kiss

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which it certainly seems she did, it would be easy to lose your grip. She was in good shape, pregnancy aside. She put up a fight.”

“So the killer loses control of the situation and resorts to beating?”

“Sure. Grabs the most convenient item and starts whaling away. The tennis racquet made a distinctive bruising pattern where the knots of the strings are tied on the outside of the racquet head. The edges could easily create those open gashes. Think about the killer standing over the body, thrusting downward, over and over.” Sam was wrapping things up now, tidying as she went, snapping lids on containers, folding closed the flaps of envelopes, handing dissected slivers of organs to Stuart for analysis. “We’ll send off the scrapings from under her nails and all the blood work, get you a tox screen as soon as possible. But it’s evident what happened.”

“There’s nothing sexual about this?”

Sam shook her head. “No sign of bruising or tearing, no lubricants. I swabbed for semen just in case, though there was none visible in the vagina or anus, and certainly nothing to indicate sexual assault. This was just a murder, plain and simple.”

Plain and simple.

“Were there prints on the tennis racquet, or the body?”

“The racquet was wiped. There were some

smudges, but nothing usable. We’ll look for some around her neck, but you know how hard it is to lift good prints from skin.”

Taylor squeezed her best friend’s arm. “Now I just have to figure out who, and we’ll be all set.”

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She left Sam in the autopsy suite, ditched the protective gear in a biological waste receptacle and made her way back to the lobby. The lavender scent still lingered, now joined with the sweet overlay of a familiar, pungent perfume. Michelle Harris stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by her family. Todd Wolff was noticeably absent.

They were talking quietly among themselves, pain radiating from each person, palpable as an aura to a psychic. It didn’t take any special powers to know they were hurting; the slumped shoulders, dark circles and red noses spoke volumes.

What were they doing here? Taylor counted five of them: the parents, Michelle and her sister Nicole, and the son, Derek. They were huddled together as if seeking warmth from each other’s bodies. Taylor had seen this before. Some families were forced apart by a tragedy; others drew together, working as one to help heal. The Harrises definitely looked to be the latter.

Taylor fidgeted and stalled, pulling at her bun until her hair tumbled down in waves. Annoyed, she whipped it back up into a ponytail. Large families filled her with a sense of dislocation, of longing. She’d never known what it was like to have a support system of siblings. Sam was like a sister to her, but it was different. They didn’t share blood, despite their aborted attempt to transfuse each other when they were ten years old. Silly, meaningful, yet neither had the courage to cut deep enough to really get the blood flowing into each other’s hands. Being blood sisters wasn’t the real thing.