“Won’t be back for two or three days.”

“What about that Amish doll, Doc? Do you know if it was put into his throat before or after his death?”

“Before. There were abrasions on the upper part of the pharynx, along with a minute amount of bleeding. It wouldn’t have been a comfortable ordeal for the victim.”

“I get the sense there was a lot of rage involved with this crime.”

“I agree.” He shrugs. “The level of brutality…”

I think about that a moment and then ask, “Do you have anything preliminary on Julia Rutledge?”

Doc Coblentz shakes his head. “I performed a cursory exam upon her arrival. As you’ve probably already deduced, she sustained several stab wounds, including a deep chest wound. I can’t give you a cause of death until I get her on the table.”

“What about the object in the wound?”

He turns to a stainless tray on the counter behind him and picks up a plastic evidence bag. “I knew you’d want to see it, so I extracted it first thing.”

It’s an Amish peg doll exactly like the one we found in Dale Michaels’s mouth. I know what’s inscribed into the base before I look: HOCHSTETLER. I pass the bag back to the doc.

“I’ll get it couriered to the lab ASAP,” he tells me.

I thank him and start toward the alcove. As I remove the biohazard gear and toss it into the receptacle, it strikes me that for the first time in the course of my career, the autopsy of a murder victim has raised more questions than it answered.

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

It had been a long time since Jerrold McCullough was afraid. He’d lived a long, full, and sometimes difficult life. He’d lost a two-year-old daughter when he was twenty-six years old. He’d spent some time overseas in Bosnia when he was in the military. At the age of forty-two, he survived a serious car accident in which he’d lost a limb—and nearly his life. He lost his wife of twenty-four years to cancer several years back. Yes, Jerrold McCullough had faced his fair share of adversity. Each time that bitch fate dealt him a blow, he’d conquered it and come back from it a smarter, stronger, if lonelier, man.

But as life had proved, there were some things you didn’t come back from. Sure, you went on with the business of living. You fell in love and got married. You had children and you brought them up right. But through it all, you knew your life was one big fat lie.