The morning was getting lighter and the sky was streaked violet and white in perfect horizontal bands. We drove through farmland and intermittent cliffs of pink granite corrugated with drill holes from the dynamite that had blasted in the roads. Mist rising from ponds reminded me of pots of simmering water, and when we passed tall smokestacks with steamy plumes, I thought of fire. In the distance, mountains were a shadow, and water towers dotted the horizon like bright balloons.

It took an hour to reach Lehigh Valley Hospital, a sprawling concrete complex still under construction, with a helicopter hangar and level one trauma center. I parked in a visitor’s lot, and Dr. Abraham Gerde met us inside the bright, new lobby.

“Kay,” he warmly said, shaking my hand. “Who would have ever thought you’d be visiting me here someday? And you must be Benton? We have a very good cafeteria here if you’d like coffee or something to eat first?”

Benton and I politely declined. Gerde was a young forensic pathologist with dark hair and startling blue eyes. He had rotated through my office three years earlier, and was still new enough at his profession to rarely have his status as an expert witness stipulated in court. But he was humble and meticulous, and those attributes were far more valuable to me than experience, especially in this instance. Unless Gerde had dramatically changed, it was unlikely he had touched the body after learning I was coming.

“Tell me where we are in this,” I said as we walked down a wide, polished gray hallway.

“I had her weighed, measured and was doing the external exam when the coroner called. As soon as he said ATF was involved and you were on the way, I stopped the presses.”

Lehigh County had an elected coroner who decided which cases would be autopsied and then determined the manner of death. Fortunately for Gerde, the coroner was a former police officer who did not interfere with the forensic pathologists and usually deferred to the decisions they made. But this was not true in other states or other counties in Pennsylvania, where autopsies were sometimes performed on embalming tables in funeral homes, and some coroners were consummate politicians who did not know an entrance from an exit wound, or care.

Our footsteps echoed in the stairwell, and at the bottom, Gerde pushed through double doors and we found ourselves in a warehouse stacked with collapsed cardboard boxes and busy with people in hard hats. We passed through to a different part of the building and followed another hallway to the morgue. It was small, with a pink tile floor and two stationary stainless steel tables. Gerde opened a cabinet and handed us sterile single-use surgical gowns, plastic aprons, and full coverage disposable boots. We pulled these over our clothes and shoes and then donned latex gloves and masks.