Tolliver was furious with Lyle Hatton, and I wasn't far behind him in that. But I was determined to complete my errand. We followed the doctor down the hall to a larger room, a cold room, full of bodies. It was not orderly; the gurneys were not lined up in neat rows. Here and there a hand or foot protruded. The smell was unique, a bouquet de la mort. The vibrations in this place were overwhelming. All the dead waited for my attention, from an old woman who'd been murdered in her own home to a baby who'd died of SIDS. But I was only here to call on one corpse, and this time Lyle Hatton led me to him. I was dizzy from being surrounded with all the newly dead, and it took me a long minute to focus on Clyde; then I saw it all again: the surprise, the blow, the fall into the grave. I nodded sharply to Dr. Hatton when I was through, and I staggered as I turned away from my final contact with Dr. Clyde Nunley.

"You can walk?" Tolliver asked, very low.

"Yes," I said.

"Wait," Lyle Hatton said. I looked at him inquiringly. The overhead light winked on his gold-rimmed glasses. "Since you're here, can I ask you to do one more thing? You were right about the blue threads. You knew when I showed you the wrong body. Maybe you can help me with one more thing."

Everyone wants a freebie.

"What do you need?" I asked. I wasn't in the mood for finesse.

"This body here… I can't determine a cause of death for this woman. She was living at home with her son and daughter-in-law, and she developed stomach symptoms. She might have had any number of things wrong with her, but I've met the couple, and I suspect there's something hinky about her death. What do you think?"

Though Hatton was a jackass, I like to help the dead when I can.

"Tox screen didn't show anything, autopsy turned up nada," Hatton said coaxingly. "She lost a lot of weight and had various stomach symptoms before death—diarrhea, nausea, and so on—but she hated going to the doctor and she didn't turn up at a hospital until it was too late."

"This one?" I asked. I could see a pale hand, though it was not the right color a hand ought to be. I closed my eyes and touched her hand with my finger, a bare contact Hatton made no attempt to block.

"Don't try this on me," I said, feeling exhausted. "This is a young woman who died of aplastic anemia."

Dr. Hatton stared at me as if I'd grown another head. He checked the toe-tag. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding sincere. "I really thought that was her. This is." He double-checked the tag on the body next to the poor young woman.