He pushed through the doors into the autopsy suite. The overhead lights were brighter in here, which helped a little. And she remembered enough of the room’s layout to know that Dr. McIntyre’s exam table was the first of the four in the room.

Normally, she stood back from the table and approached only when the medical examiner wanted to show her something. Today, she moved up to the table until her gloved fingertips glided over metal and then the edges of the sheet covering the body.

The door opened, and Dr. McIntyre’s expensive perfume announced her arrival. “Detective Poe. I had heard you were working the case.”

The doc’s husband had no doubt spoken to Spencer. Law enforcement was a fairly small community. “I don’t know how long they’ll let me work the case, but I’ll stay until they kick me off.”

“I understand completely,” she said easily. “We all have those cases that get under our skin.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Detective Poe, why don’t you stand to my left,” Dr. McIntyre said. “I’ll talk you through the autopsy.”

“Sure.” She moved along the edge of the table, drawn by the crunch of plastic as the doc opened the instrument bag. The door opened again, and this time she guessed it was one of Dr. McIntyre’s lab assistants.

“Detective Poe, it’s Deb. We worked together on a case about a month ago.”

God bless the audio prompts. “Good to be working with you again, Deb.”

The sheet covering the body rustled, and a faint chill rose from the exposed flesh. For the first time, she did not regret her loss of sight. Witnessing how death savaged the human body always left an unpleasant lasting image. Those sleepless nights she had mentioned to Spencer generally came after an autopsy.

A camera lens clicked several times; then she heard the slap of a gloved hand against the naked flesh and knew Deb was working the victim’s limbs, likely still stiff with the remnants of rigor mortis. Breaking up the rigor in the muscles allowed the doctor to move and manipulate the body more easily during the autopsy. It had been more than twenty-four hours since Powers’s approximate time of death, so the body would be in full rigor mortis, and the victim’s youth and increased muscle density meant the rigor would be more pronounced.

Metal measuring tape slid from its case, and then Deb stated the victim had been five foot, two inches tall. The tape snapped back into its case.