“I’ll take a look under the scope, then see what Ernie has to say,” I add, and I’m mindful of seconds slipping away, of time running out for the dead woman and me.

I might get in trouble, it could happen, and I label nail clippings and swabs for trace and DNA, and arrange syringes with different-gauge needles on a surgical cart as the minute hand on the wall clock ticks closer to two p.m. My pulse picks up, but I can’t stop, and inside a glass cabinet I collect ETDA blood tubes and FTA cards, although I know without a doubt that getting blood from her is going to be a challenge. It will have seeped out of vessel walls long ago, and I’ll be lucky if I get enough to blot a card.

“You scribe and keep taking pictures, and we’ll go at this really fast.” I check the flexibility of the neck, the arms, and try to separate the legs, but they’re stubborn. “Rigor’s indeterminate,” I dictate to Marino, and he writes it down as I remove the thermometer from the incision in her abdomen. “Temperature of her liver is forty-two degrees, and that’s interesting. Are we sure about the water temperature of the bay? Pamela Quick said it was fifty-one degrees.”

“The temp on the Coast Guard boat’s GPS was fifty-one degrees,” Marino confirms. “Of course, it would have been a little colder as the water got deeper.”

“Nine degrees colder at the depth where she was held in place by the ropes?” I doubt it. “And she didn’t get colder in water that is warmer than she was. What that means is she was colder than forty-two degrees when she first went in.”

“Maybe she was kept in a freezer somewhere.”

“There’s no damage to her from fish and other sea creatures, which she likely was going to get if she was submerged for even a day or two. I seriously doubt she was in the water long enough to thaw,” I decide. “Either she’d already begun to thaw when she went in or she was kept really, really cold somewhere but not frozen solid.”

I begin to undress her, the clothing soaking wet, soiled, and gritty, and she smells more strongly of decomposition. The foul acrid stench crawls up my sinuses and coats my teeth, and soon it will be bad enough to make my eyes sting.

“Shit,” Marino complains, and he swaps out his surgical mask for one with a filter.

I work silk-lined dark blue cashmere over her shoulders, pulling stubborn arms out of long, clingy sleeves, holding up her jacket to look at it front and back. I see no holes, no tears, no damage. But the three brownish metal buttons in front don’t match and look very old.