With the passports and photos tucked into her shoulder bag along with her mobile phone, Laurie stepped back out of her office and headed for the elevators. When she heard the elevator door open ahead, she quickened her step to catch it and bumped head-on into her officemate, Dr. Riva Mehta, exiting. Each apologized. Laurie actually laughed.

“My, you are in a good mood,” Riva commented.

“I guess I am,” Laurie responded cheerily.

“Don’t tell me you are pregnant,” Riva said. Not only were Riva and Laurie officemates, they were also confidantes. Riva was the only person other than Shirley with whom she had shared all the stresses of the infertility treatment.

“I wish,” Laurie said. “No, Jack and I are making an emergency trip to India.” Laurie struggled with the elevator door that desperately wanted to close.

“That’s terrific,” Riva said. “Where in India?” Riva and her parents had emigrated to the United States when she was eleven.

“New Delhi,” Laurie said. “Actually, I’m on my way over to get our Indian visas. I’ll be back in a half-hour or so. I’d love to talk to you about it and maybe get some tips.”

“By all means,” Riva said with a wave.

Laurie ducked into the elevator car and let the insistent door close. As she descended, she thought about Riva’s comment regarding her mood and realized that she was truly on a high, magnified by the low she’d been on over the last two to three months. Vaguely, she hoped that the strain of infertility wasn’t making her bipolar.

Getting off at the basement level, Laurie hurried down to the autopsy room. Knowing she was going to be in there for only a few moments, she grabbed just a gown and a hat, and pushed in through the main double doors. Although it was almost eight-forty-five, Jack and Vinnie were the sole team working. Several other mortuary techs were preparing cases and putting out bodies, but the associated docs had yet to appear. Jack and Vinnie were well along. The body they were working on already had the large Y incision over the chest and abdomen sutured. At the moment, the individual’s skull cap was off and they were working on the brain.

“How’s it going?” Laurie asked, coming up alongside Jack.

“We’re having a ball as usual,” Jack responded, straightening up and stretching.

“A typical gunshot suicide?” Laurie asked.

Jack let out a short laugh. “Hardly. At this point, it’s pretty clear it was homicide.”

“Really?” Laurie questioned. “How so?”

Jack reached over to the corpse and grabbed the reflected and inverted scalp and pulled it from covering the face back into its original position. High on the side of the head and in the center of a shaved area was a sharply defined circular deep-red entrance wound surrounded by a number of two-to-three-inch black speckles.