“Amanda knows he’s there,” I said. “But I feel like someone else needs to know he’s hanging around me in case, I don’t know…”

“In case he does away with you,” Val said.

“He’s been close a couple of times.”

“Well, I’ll make a note of it,” she said. I heard paper shifting against paper, the click of what must have been a pen. “I’m writing it in my logbook this very instant. Ted Conkaffey … murder … equals Dale … Bingley … I drew a little picture of a knife for good measure.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you in the car?”

“I am.”

“Turn it towards Cairns,” she said. “I was going to call you because that murdered boy’s girlfriend is on her way here. She asked to see the body.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Val said. “Struck me as odd. Thought you might like to watch.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

“Don’t freak out,” I said as I entered the medical examiner’s office, the small, frail-looking Val Gratteur turning from her cluttered workbench to greet me. Val had been an early supporter of mine, an unexpected friend in need when I’d turned up at her offices looking for some information about Amanda’s and my first case together. Back then I hadn’t been accustomed to being recognized in public, and she’d sat me down and told me without frills or fuss that she knew who I was and wasn’t convinced of my guilt. Since then she’d proved a good listener when I was afraid or stressed, a solid sounding board for my theories and, of course, an excellent goose babysitter when I went away.

“Oh, crap,” she sighed, noting what remained of my black eyes, the stitches. “You didn’t tell me you’d actually been in fisticuffs with the guy.”

I launched into the placations of a boy who had been in a scrap to a worrisome mother. She sat me down and tested my cracked ribs with her firm hands, looked in my eyes with a little torch. Val was, among all else, my only safe form of medical care since my accusation. She inspected the stitches Amanda had put in me with pouting, thoughtful lips.

“These aren’t half-bad, you know.” She stood back and appreciated my face. “I’d hire her as an assistant if I wasn’t so concerned with how much fun she’d have in here.”

“Are you going to take them out?” I felt the stitches.

“Couple’a days.”

“Will it scar?”

“Oh you’ll have a devastatingly rugged scar.” She smiled. “But the ‘chicks dig scars,’ so they say.”

She gave my shoulder a few hard pats like a mother proudly testing the solidity of her grown-up son.

“So what’s so odd about a young woman wanting to see her dead boyfriend off? Aren’t you supposed to view the body for closure?”