I lower my pumps to the dirt path, standing up, and the heat slams into me like a wall. It’s not as bad as it was when I walked out of the Faculty Club but that doesn’t mean it’s much better than tolerable. It doesn’t mean it’s safe for long exposures without risking hyperthermia, and I’m assuming we’ll be working the scene for hours.

When the truck is here it can serve as a staging area where we can duck into the air-conditioning at intervals. We’ll have plenty of water, snacks, and urine-collection devices, UCDs—more popularly known as piddle packs.

“We’ve got to figure out exactly how we’re going to do this,” Marino says, and we shut our doors.

The quiet heat is broken by the rumble of traffic on the street behind us and on the bridge. I hear little else. Maybe a plane passing overhead. Nothing is stirring, the heated air inescapable.

“A high recon,” I reply simply as I shoulder my messenger bag. “Then a low one where we move in and collect evidence.”

“You going to leave the body out here even longer than it’s already been?”

“Longer than what? We don’t know how long it’s been. We know when the police got the call, which I’d estimate was what? Thirty or forty minutes ago? I’ll factor all of this in, and the numbers and data will be as exact as anything can be. It’s business as usual in other words, and will be fine.”

“So we just leave her as is.” He pushes a button on his key fob and pops the tailgate.

“Why are you worrying so much?”

“Because I wish we could get the body out of here. That would solve most of our problems, Doc.”

“And at the same time create bigger ones. I don’t want to wait any longer than necessary but I don’t have much choice if I want to see what I’m doing.”

“It’s just too bad this had to happen with Dorothy flying in,” he says, and that may be the very last thing I want to talk about right now.

“Plus I have nothing with me, no protective clothing, nothing,” I pick up on what I was saying before he rudely brought up my sister. “I came straight from a dinner where I didn’t have my car or anything else. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have left for the scene yet.”

We’ve walked around to the back of the SUV, and I don’t rub it in that Marino continues to enjoy a special status and special treatment. Had he taken the required steps that other detectives don’t typically deviate from, he would have called the CFC investigative unit he used to head.