“If she asks I don’t think we tell her.” Hyde has stayed on the subject of Amanda Gilbert’s anticipated arrival in Boston. “The air being turned off is a detail we want to keep away from her and for sure keep out of the media.”

“It’s the only thing weird about this. You know that gives me a bad feeling.”

It’s certainly not the only thing weird about this, I think but don’t verbalize.

“That’s right and it starts a shit storm of rumors and conspiracy theories that end up all over the Internet.”

“Except sometimes perps turn off the air-conditioning, turn on the heat, do whatever to make a place hot so they can speed up decomp. To disguise the correct time of death so they can create an alibi and screw up evidence, isn’t that true, Doc?” The state trooper with his Massachusetts accent addresses me directly, his r’s sounding like w’s when he’s not coughing.

“Heat escalates decomposition,” I reply without looking up. “Cold slows it down,” I add as I realize what it means that the dorm room walls in the video are eggshell white.

When Lucy first started staying at Washington Dorm the walls in her room were beige. Later they were repainted. I recalculate my timeline. The video was taken in 1996. Maybe 1997.

“Dunkin’s got pretty good breakfast sandwiches. Would you like something to eat, ma’am?” The trooper in his blue and gray is talking to me again, sixtyish with a belly and he doesn’t look well, his face wasted with dark circles under his eyes.

I have no idea what he’s doing at the scene, what useful purpose he might possibly serve. Besides that he sounds quite ill. But it wasn’t up to me who to invite, and I glance down at Chanel Gilbert’s battered dead face, at her bloody nude body with its greenish discoloration and bloating in the abdominal area from bacteria and gases proliferating in her gut due to putrefaction.

The housekeeper told the police she didn’t touch the body or even get close, and I don’t doubt that Chanel Gilbert is exactly as she was found, her black silk bathrobe open, her breasts and genitals exposed. I’ve long since lost the impulse to cover a dead person’s nudity unless the scene is in a public place. I won’t change anything about the position of the body until I’m certain everyone is done with photographs and it’s time to pouch it and transport it to the CFC. That will be soon enough. Very soon as a matter of fact.