“Do me a favor and get that urine sample up to toxicology,” the doctor said as he placed the brain onto a separate table and began slicing it in an attempt to find the bullet.

“We need the results back today.”

“Okay, doctor,” the second technician said, screwing a cap onto the sample and taking it upstairs.

“There’s a lot of swelling in here,” the doctor said as he cut through the tissue using a technique known as bread-loafing. “I’m guessing the bullet’s a .22. What do you think?”

Over the years, every doctor who’d passed through the ME’s office had posed similar questions to the old technician, and each doctor was keenly interested in his answers. This stately black man from working-class roots often noticed things the well-heeled doctors didn’t. Not just because he’d been performing autopsies longer than most of them. He simply knew more about the world outside the morgue.

“I think you’re probably right,” the technician said. “But if it is a .22, you might have a hard time finding it.”

The doctor chuckled as he made another incision. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it disappeared altogether, considering.”

The technician stepped back and looked at the doctor. “Considering what—this angel nonsense? Come on, Doc, you don’t believe in that, do you?”

“No,” the doctor said as he sliced through a third section of the brain. “I’m just wondering why this guy would kill all those people and then kill himself. Usually people who do murder-suicides do it all in one place. They don’t get away scot-free and then go across town and put a bullet in their brains.”

The technician shrugged. “If I were a gambling man, I’d say the drugs made him kill himself. But I don’t gamble, and if I did, I wouldn’t take that bet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a sucker’s bet,” the technician said. “Every drug addict I’ve ever seen come through here either died of an overdose or they were murdered. They almost never kill themselves.”

The doctor sliced into another section of the brain. The scalpel hit something hard. He reached in with a pair of tweezers, pulled out an intact slug, and dropped it into a pan.

“If they never kill themselves, how do you explain this bullet and the gun residue on his wrist?” the doctor asked.

The technician glanced down at the body as he considered the doctor’s question. He was about to shrug it off when he noticed something the doctor had missed.

“Look at his left hand, Doc,” the technician said, leaning in closer. “You see that little callous on the side of his middle finger?”

The doctor looked closer. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “He’s got some tiny yellow paint fragments there, too. They almost look like they came from a pencil.”