Twat was the crude word Marino used while we were driving to the Coast Guard base, and whatever foolishness he got involved in, it’s simply not possible he recently was tweeting Pretty Please, or whatever name Peggy Lynn Stanton went by on the Internet. Marino may have been tweeting someone with that handle days and weeks ago, but it wasn’t this lady on the autopsy table. She was dead long before he began tweeting whoever he assumed she was, dead before he even got his Twitter account, possibly dead and in cold storage since the spring, and my mind sorts through information nonstop, my blood pounding.

My thoughts race to connections and possibilities, my pulse rushing hard. I try to distract myself from what I’m feeling as Luke touches me, as he brushes against me and I don’t stop it.

“I really didn’t mean to step over you,” he says, now that Ned is gone. “I sincerely apologize. I thought I was helping.”

I incise the brownish marks on the upper right arm to see if they are well defined beneath the epidermis. I look for staining left by hemorrhage that extends into the dermis or the deeper layer of the skin, and it does.

“The question, of course, is when she might have gotten these bruises.” I grab the lamp by its handle, shining it down her arms to the shriveled tips of her fingers, with their chipped polished nails that are clipped to the quick.

I check the undersides of her wrists and the tops of her hands.

“It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to age these contusions, because of her condition,” I add.

The light paints over the leathery upper chest, the wasted breasts, illuminating the wrinkled abdomen.

“But depending on the degree of force used by the person gripping her, she could have been bruised through layers of clothing,” I answer Luke’s question.

“Important to know if she was clothed or not, it seems to me,” he says. “I realize this is more Benton’s department. I’m not a profiler.”

“The FBI can be very persuasive.” I illuminate her hips, her upper thighs. “And I’m sure they were all the more convincing to you because Benton showed up with them. But we don’t work for law enforcement, Luke.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s our duty to objectively answer questions raised by the evidence.” I direct the light at her knees. “And we must vigorously adhere to chain of custody, meaning we don’t open up our evidence room for the FBI or allow them to whip us into a frenzy of activity, no matter their reason or sense of urgency.”

“He’s your husband, so I assumed—”

“Assumed that our being married changes how he does his job or how I do mine?”

“I apologize,” Luke says again. “But after his annoyance when we were in Vienna . . .”