Dr. Claribel Ortiz was walking out of the unit with a tape recorder in her hand, and she nodded hello to the two detectives as they approached.

“Dr. Ortiz,” Claire said as she walked up. “I thought you were still out on maternity leave.”

“Second week back on the job,” she said. “Never a dull moment.”

“What happened here?”

“Victim’s up on the third floor,” she said. “That’s the primary site. No one has been up there except the responding officer and me. Her name is Beverly Brighton. She and her husband live in apartment 3. Time of death is about 2:00 a.m. Apparently, there was a dinner party going on down here, and Beverly and her husband attended. Not sure when it ended, but the host agreed to let us swab for prints in there too.” She paused and then nodded her head upstairs. “It’s not pretty.”

Claire turned to head up with Greg and the medical examiner following close behind her.

She saw the hand before she was halfway up the stairs.

“Wow,” she heard Greg mutter as they reached the top. The landing on the third floor of the building was a small, rectangular space that couldn’t have been more than eight feet across and five feet wide. Against the far wall was the door to the third-floor apartment, which was propped open. The only furniture in the space was a hip-height glass table next to the door.

The woman was sprawled on her side, one arm flung over the top of the staircase. She was in her mid- to late thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair, olive skin, and bright-green eyes that stared lifelessly in front of her. She wore a pair of red pajama bottoms and a black spaghetti-strap tank top, and her feet were bare. There was a large gash near her temple and a bloodstain beneath her head that feathered out from under her hair and seeped into the carpet. Next to her lay a large, shiny, black-and-white statue of a zebra.

The three people on the stairs stood there silently for a few moments, the unimaginable sadness of the scene not lost on them, even though they’d each seen many bodies before.

“Cause of death was two blows to the head,” Dr. Ortiz finally said softly. “One right in the center of the back of the skull, most likely from being struck, hard, by that statue. The second is near the left temple. That’s the one responsible for most of the blood, and it was made by impact with something very hard and equally sharp.”

“So, in other words…” Claire said.

“In other words, I think she was hit with the statue and then fell to the side and struck the corner of the table as she went down.”

Claire nodded, taking a step forward, moving carefully around the body. “Where’s the husband?” she asked, turning to Greg.