Joe’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He removed it to see that Beverly had arrived. He nodded to Willy and stood up.

“Mr. Shaw, consider yourself under a microscope. As you’re discovering, it’s an increasingly less private world we live in, and right now, we’ve barely begun opening the book on you. I recommend you get ahead of this and start being honest with us.”

Shaw sneered at them both. “That would do me a lot of good, wouldn’t it, considering how you’ve railroaded me so far?”

“Interesting answer,” Willy reflected. “It implies you haven’t been honest.”

Beverly met them behind the secure doors of the pathology lab, already dressed in a pair of scrubs.

“How long you been here?” Joe asked, surprised, stroking her shoulder in greeting.

“You know me,” she replied. “Quick-change artist.”

“Kids, kids,” Willy protested. “Overshare.”

Beverly’s expression became severer. “Agent Kunkle. Nice to see you, too.”

He laughed. “I doubt that, but thanks.”

Joe hadn’t met Lucy Shaw in life and had therefore missed the white-and-gold-adorned Zsa Zsa Gabor imitation that Sam and Les had encountered. What he got to see now were her naked, pale, overfed remains on the steel autopsy table, blotchy, sagging, and inert, her violently bright finger- and toenails gleaming under the bright lights as if fed by some inner electrical force.

Trained by years of experience, Joe and Willy knew to find an out-of-the-way spot in the room and remain silent and observant. Beverly had her routine, based on algorithms and well-honed habits, designed to keep her focused, methodical, and accurate. She spoke to those assisting her, sometimes commented into a recorder, other times made a notation or a quick sketch. Each time, the progression was almost precisely the same: an inventory, a survey, an external accounting, and then the actual examination, beginning with the classic Y-shaped incision of the torso, and proceeding, step by step, through the organs and major structures until reaching the skull and brain. Throughout, there were collections made of fluids, samples, scrapings, and slices for later histological scrutiny, along with a steady barrage of photographs. It took a long time, especially in a case like this, where the cause of death was presumed but possibly inaccurate and elusive.

Throughout, consistent with his contradictory nature, the often hyperactive Willy Kunkle remained as still as an icon, watching, waiting, and taking everything in.

At the end, as Beverly stepped away from the table, removed her outermost gloves, and realigned her spine with a quick rotation of her shoulders. Joe, who by contrast had been wandering the outer perimeter of the room, leaning against the wall, sitting on the edge of a counter, or even squatting a couple of times to mix things up, broke the quiet and asked, “So, what’s the verdict?”

Beverly lowered her mask as all three of them moved to a far corner, allowing the lab assistants to sew the body back together. “You’re not going to like it,” she warned them. “I don’t like it.”