Stone pushed the door open and, followed by Dino, entered a large room with a tile floor. Before them were six autopsy tables, two of them occupied by bodies covered with sheets. At the far end of the room, the body of a middle-aged woman lay naked on another table. A man stood with his back to her, facing a counter built along the wall. Memories of dissecting frogs in high school biology swept over Stone; the smell of formaldehyde was distinct.

“Marvin Van Fleet?” Stone said.

A sharp, metallic sound was followed by a hollow rattling noise. The man turned around, and Stone saw a soft drink can on the tabletop.

“Herbert Van Fleet,” the man said. “Please call me Doc. Everybody does.”

The man was not handsome, Stone thought, but his voice was—a rich baritone, expressive, without any discernible accent. A good bedside voice. The detectives walked briskly to the end of the room, their heels echoing off the tile floor. They stopped at the head of the autopsy table. Stone introduced himself and Dino.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Van Fleet said. He stepped over to the naked body on the table and picked up the forceps that rested beside the head.

“Oh? Why is that?” Stone replied.

“Well, of course I heard about Miss Nijinsky on television this morning. Given the nature of our relationship, I thought perhaps someone would come to see me.” He produced a curved suturing needle and clamped it in the jaws of the forceps.

“Did you and Sasha Nijinsky have a relationship?” Stone asked.

Van Fleet looked thoughtful for a moment. “Why, yes, we did. I was her correspondent, although she seemed to think of me as an antagonist, which I never intended myself to be. She was my…” He paused. “She was an object of interest to me, I suppose. I greatly admired her talents. Do you know how she’s doing?” he asked, concernedly. “She’s in the hospital, they said on television.”

“We don’t have any information on her condition,” Stone said. God knew that was true.

Van Fleet nodded sadly. He bent over the corpse, peeled back the lips with rubber-gloved fingers, and inserted the needle in the inside of the upper lip, passing it through the inside of the lower lip, then pulled it tight.

Stone stopped asking questions and watched with a horrible fascination. So did Dino. Van Fleet continued to skillfully manipulate the forceps and the needle, until the web of thread reached across the width of the mouth. Then he pulled the thread tight, and the mouth closed, concealing the stitching on the inside of the lips. Van Fleet made a quick surgical knot, snipped off the thread, and tucked the end out of sight at the corner of the mouth.

“Shit,” Dino said.

“Mr. Van Fleet, could you leave that until we’re finished, please?” Stone said.

“Of course.”