“Correct.” He pulls down the sheet. For a moment the only sound comes from the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the hard thump of my heart. Bonnie Plank is a plump woman with ample body fat and breasts that sag to the left and right of her ribcage. The Y-incision has been stitched, but she hasn’t yet been cleaned up. Her head is turned slightly to one side, and I see a blood smear on her neck. Several red droplets stain the sheet.

When I close my eyes, I can still see the image of her lying in the grass, clutching the baby. She’d been running away. They shot her in the back. Who were you running from?

“Any sign of sexual assault?” I ask.

“No.”

At least she hadn’t had to endure the final insult of a rape. “What about the baby, Doc?”

He grimaces. “The baby was killed by the same bullet that killed his mother. I won’t have COD on the child until I complete the autopsy.”

“Do you have anything preliminary on the adult male and two boys?”

“It appears all three suffered gunshot wounds to the head. They appear to be fatal wounds.” He replaces the sheet, covering Bonnie Plank’s body. “Dr. Rohrbacher and I are going to work through the night, Kate. We’ll finish late tonight. I should have a full report late tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

I’m ready to leave. The smell of death and the things I’ve seen and heard have torn down what little optimism I’ve been able to muster. But I have one more question that must be answered before I can go. “The killer made a halfhearted effort to make these killings look like a murder-suicide. Can you tell me definitively that Amos Plank’s gunshot was not self-inflicted?”

He crosses to another gurney and lowers the sheet. Amos Plank’s face is colorless. His lips are stretched taut over broken teeth. His tongue looks like a cut of meat that’s been dropped into a blender.

Coblentz indicates the mouth area with the swab, then defers to his counterpart. “Dr. Rohrbacher?”

The young doctor looks at the body the way a bright student might look at some fascinating science project. “The bullet entered the skull through the mouth.”

“That’s consistent with suicide, isn’t it?” I ask.

“That’s correct,” he concedes. “But the trajectory path of the bullet is not consistent with a self-inflicted wound.” As if handling a piece of fragile porcelain, the doctor places his hands on either side of the head and turns it slightly so that the back of Amos Plank’s head is visible. “The bullet exited here.”