“Baldwin is working on it. He’s got a friend who can prove the tapes of the shooting have been faked. The rest is taking longer to sort out. Whoever owns that Judas Kiss

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Web site is well insulated. And I’m stuck out here in the cold, unable to do a damn thing.”

“So where have you been all morning?” Sam’s eyes sparkled, and Taylor couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay, I’ve been doing some digging. I can’t just sit on my ass and do nothing. I’ve tracked down the names of the girls on the videotape with Todd Wolff. Turns out they’re high-schoolers in a secret society, making amateur porn. Can you imagine?”

“Ambitious,” Sam deadpanned.

Taylor’s cell rang, Thalia Abbot’s number came up on the screen. “Sam, hold on a sec. Hello? Hi Thalia…Yes, illegal drugs…Okay. Thanks again for all your help.” She hung up, took out her notebook, and spoke aloud as she wrote.

“Ecstasy, cocaine and pot. Not necessarily only provided by Todd Wolff. Shocking.”

“Kids these days. I worry about the twins. What am I going to do when they reach that age? When they want to know about sex, and drinking, and drugs? I’m sure these girls’ parents taught them right from wrong. But look at them.”

“I can’t answer that. My mother gave me as much attention as a she-cat in the wild, and I turned out okay.”

“That’s debatable,” Sam said.

“Ha, ha.”

This time it was Sam’s phone that rang. She held up a finger and answered. She listened for a minute, then hung up. “You’re going to love this.”

“Let me guess. You’re being suspended for being friends with me.”

“Better. We’ve got confirmation that the semen that 320

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was present in Corinne Wolff’s vaginal vault was viable for DNA.”

“Really? So whose sperm was it?”

“Now she asks the smart questions. I had the samples sent off for DNA analysis.”

“That’s going to take months.” Taylor slumped back down in her chair.

Sam pushed her bangs off her forehead and gave Taylor an apologetic smile. “Well, maybe not.You know how they’ve got the lab proposal on the ballot again?

They needed some samples to work with to show the legislature how it’s all done. So I slipped Corinne’s slides in the stack. Not only was there discernible DNA, we should have the results back by late today. The whole point of the exercise was to show how much faster everything would work, how much quicker crimes could be solved if we were running our own labs. Todd Wolff’s DNA is in the system now, so if there’s a match between them, we’ll know. If there’s not a match, we’ll know that too.”

“Let’s hope for a match. If it doesn’t, that would confirm another suspect. Someone who was sleeping with the victim. Like we need it to be more complicated.” A thought nagged her, but she couldn’t access it.

“Look at it this way. The results might answer some questions. If the DNA isn’t Wolff’s, it could be the killer’s. Though I must admit, Wolff certainly looks good for all of this. Did you hear that we matched the blood on the tool chest to Corinne Wolff? There’s still no definitive test we can do to establish when it was left, which a decent defense attorney will pounce on, but it is her blood.”

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“No, I didn’t. Damn it. How can that bitch idiot Norris do this to me? I just want to work the case. All these tidbits are breaking and I don’t have the full picture. How am I supposed to solve a case if I’m not allowed to work it?”

“I know, sweetie. The Oompa is an old, shriveledup hag who is desperately jealous of your success. The beauty of it is you’re innocent, Baldwin is about to prove that, then they’ll have to let you back. So keep laying low and wait it out. I know that’s easier said than done, but you can’t run off half-cocked like you did this morning. What were you doing anyway?”

“I met with Corinne’s psychotherapist. After you found the benzodiazepine in her system, I went looking to see who’d prescribed it. Her obstetrician gave her the lorazepam but sent her to counseling too in the hopes she’d be able to conquer her issues that way.”

“What was the issue?”

“It seems Miss Corinne might have been dallying in someone else’s pool, if you know what I mean. Any chance you ran DNA on the fetus? She was having some sort of freak out about the baby. Was having fullblown panic attacks.”

“Of course. We’ll get all the results back at the same time. That’s interesting about Corinne’s pathology. I heard of a case like that in medical school. Woman was convinced she was carrying the anti-Christ, they had to keep her sedated because she kept trying to carve the fetus out of her stomach.”

“She was having an affair with the devil?”

“Not that I know of, unless the devil lives in New Jersey and is named Dave. They were a completely normal couple, she developed this pregnancy psychosis after it came to light that she’d been sleeping with 322

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her husband’s brother too and didn’t know who the father was. I think the case study concluded that she was just bonkers.”

“Nice, round catch-all medical term, that. Bonkers.”

“Well, I’m a pathologist, not a psychiatrist. Speak of the devil.”

Taylor turned. Baldwin was standing in the door, his tall frame filling the space completely. Arms crossed, he rested his right shoulder against the door frame. She smiled at him. He grinned back.

“You are a very bad girl. Hi, Sam.”

“Aw, how come I never get to be the bad girl?” Sam pouted and tossed a balled-up piece of paper at Baldwin, who caught it and expertly shot it into her trashcan in one sweeping motion.

“Show-off,” Taylor and Sam said in tandem, sending them both into gales of laughter.

Baldwin joined in, his good-natured laugh reverberating through the room. When they’d finished their giggles, he took a seat next to Taylor.

“Good news. Sherry has reengineered the tapes, found the splice that was put in. It was a rather sophisticated voice track, not something your everyday hump could do. Whoever did it is an expert with cameras and editing, for sure. The evidence was just couriered to your buddy Delores Norris, with copies sent to Price and the Chief of Police.”

He settled farther into his chair and crossed his legs. Taylor noticed his socks were mismatched—one had small clocks and the other minute diamonds. She bit back the laugh; he had been pretty shaken up when he got dressed. Maybe he’d make it through the rest of the day without noticing.

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She looked back up and saw he’d been watching her, a crooked half smile on his face. He knew about the socks. He made a gesture with his right hand she’d come to recognize as his nonverbal rendition of “not important.”

“A couple of copies might have slipped the Net, may show up on the local and national noon broadcasts.”

Taylor felt the relief bloom in her chest. “Thank God.”

“Don’t be thanking Him, thank me.”

“You know what I mean. Thank you, of course. Do you think they’ll reinstate me?”

“They don’t have a choice. If they don’t get in touch within the hour, I’ve scheduled Sherry for a live interview on Channel 5.”

Taylor squeezed his hand in gratitude. “So we just have to wait?”

“Yep. Whatcha talking about?”

“The Wolff case. Sam has pulled a fast one, slipped some DNA slides into the system. Corinne Wolff was having sex with someone, and hopefully we’ll find out who. The husband first said they hadn’t had sex for a week before her death, then remembered they did right before he left town. But looking at the timeline, if there was active enough sperm for a DNA run, she must have had sex with someone after he left on Friday morning. Think the timing works, Sam?”

“Well, if she died Saturday morning and we pulled motile but nondiscernible sperm at the post Tuesday morning…it’ll be hard to prove an exact time, but I’m guessing she had sex with someone superlate Friday night or right before she died on Saturday morning.”