Responding to the prompts, I entered my mailbox and code numbers.

A journalist iromAl o Police.

A journalist from the Gazette.

A journalist from the CTV evening news.

Disappointed, I deleted the messages and hurried to the women's locker room. After changing into surgical scrubs, I took a side corridor to a single elevator tucked between the secretarial office and the library. Restricted to those with special clearance, this elevator featured buttons al owing only three stops. LSJML. Coroner. Morgue.

I pressed M and the doors slid shut.

Downstairs, through another secure door, a long, narrow corridor

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shoots the length of the building. To the left, an X-ray room and four autopsy suites, three with single tables, one with a pair. To the right, drying racks, computer stations, wheeled tubs and carts for transporting specimens to the histology, pathology, toxicology, DNA, and odontology-anthropology labs upstairs.

Through a smal glass window in each door, I could see that Ayers and Morin were beginning their externals in rooms one and two. Each was working with a police photographer and an autopsy technician.

Another tech was arranging instruments in room three. He would be assisting Santangelo.

And I was on my own.

And Claudel would be here in less than four hours.

Having begun the day down, my mood was descending by the moment.

I continued on to room four. My room. A room special y ventilated for decomps, floaters, mummified corpses, and other aromatics.

As do the others, room four has double doors leading to a morgue bay. The bay is lined with refrigerated compartments, each housing a double-decker gurney.

Tossing my clipboard onto the counter, I pul ed a plastic apron from one drawer, gloves and mask from another, donned them, snagged a smal metal cart from the corridor, and pushed backward through the double doors.

Bed count.

Six white cards. One red sticker.

Six in residence, one HIV positive.

I located those cards with my initials. LSJML-38426. LSJML

38427. LSJML-38428. Ossements. Inconnu. Bones. Unknown.

Normal y, I would have taken the cases sequential y, ful y analyzing one before beginning another. But Detective Delightful was due at one-thirty. Anticipating Claudel's impatience, I decided to abandon protocol, and do a quick age-sex assessment of each set of remains.

It was a mistake I would later regret.

Moving from one stainless steel door to a second, then a third, I selected the same bones I'd viewed in the pizza parlor basement, and wheeled them to room four.

After jotting the relevant information onto a case form, I began with 38426, the bones from Dr. Energy's crate.

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First the skul .

Gracile muscle attachments. Rounded occiput. Smal mastoids.

Smooth supraorbital ridges ending in sharp orbital borders.

I switched to a pelvic bone.

Broad, flaring hip blades. Elongated pubic portion with a tiny, elevated ridge coursing across the bel y side. Obtuse subpubic angle.

Wide sciatic notch.

I checked off these features on the "gender evaluation" page, and penned my conclusion.