Hell, I would have loved to have done his autopsy after he was executed.

Share some sensational cases you have worked.

I’ve been fortunate to have a number of them. For example, lightning strikes, where nobody else could figure out the cause of death, because you’ve got this body lying in a field, her clothes ripped off and scattered. First thought? Sexual assault. But no sign of injury at autopsy. Dead giveaways, excuse the pun? The branching pattern known as the Lichtenberg figures or electrical treeing. Or if the person was wearing anything ferrous, such as a steel belt buckle, it would have become magnetized, or the wristwatch might have stopped at the time of death—I always check for things like that. Most medical examiners don’t because they’re inexperienced or naive or just not very good at what they do.

You don’t sound as compassionate as I expected.

Let’s face it. Dead is dead. I can show all the empathy in the world and move any jury to tears. But do I really feel that my heart has been snatched out of my chest when the latest

tragedy’s rolled in? Do I really care when the cops make

comments that the public never hears?

Such as?

Typically, comments with sexual overtones. The size of the deceased’s penis—especially if it’s small or huge. The size of the deceased’s breasts—especially if they’re what I’d call centerfold material. I know plenty of medical examiners who take souvenirs.

Trophies. An artificial hip from someone famous. A tooth. A breast implant, and it’s always the men who want those. (Don’t ask me what they do with them, but they’re usually within easy reach.) A penile implant—those are amusing.

Have you ever kept a souvenir?

Only one. This was twenty years ago, a case early in my

career, serial murders in Richmond, where I was the brand-new chief. But the trophy wasn’t from a dead body. It was from Benton Wesley. The first time we met was in my conference

room. When he left, I kept his coffee cup. You know, one of these tall Styrofoam cups from a 7-Eleven? I was totally in lust with him the first minute I saw him.

What did you do with his coffee cup?

I took it home with me and ran my tongue along the rim of it, as if by tasting it, I was tasting him.

But you didn’t actually sleep with him until, what?

About five years later?

That’s what everybody thinks. But that’s not what really

happened. I called him after that first meeting and invited him over for a drink—allegedly so we could continue discussing the cases in private, and the instant my front door shut behind us, we were all over each other.

Who started it?

I seduced him. That made it less of a moral struggle for him.