The air in the lab is sour with the smell of bile, and he goes to the trash can and peels the bag off the rim. He can’t help himself—he studies gross things for a living, after all—and chances a look. Something gray and viscous slimes and splatters the bag’s bottom.

4

The Seattle PD is located just off the 5 in downtown Seattle. The high-rise is mildew-rimed and the same slate color as an overcast sky. Squad cars crowd the lot, and mountain bikes dirty the hallways. It might be past midnight, but the office still hums with activity. Phones ring with complaints about a barking dog, a loud party, a suicide attempt, a hostage situation. A shipment of omnimetal headed for China has been stolen off the docks. Computer monitors glow. Printers churn out reports. Someone orders a pizza. Someone complains that the bathroom is out of toilet paper. Someone drags a handcuffed perp through the office for processing. Two flat-screens are mounted to the wall. One plays CNN on mute; the other displays dispatch information listing where officers are located and what beat they’re assigned.

Nora’s desk is the only one in the office that isn’t heaped with paperwork. She keeps it bare to the wood. This same compulsion drives her to respond to or archive or delete every e-mail, so at the end of the day her in-box registers a clean zero.

She can feel tiredness pulling at her, and if she’s going to sharpen up and last through the night, she needs a jolt of caffeine. She refuses to drink from the burned-bottomed carafe in the lounge. In one of her deeper drawers, she keeps a portable espresso maker along with pods and bottles of purified water. She makes a hot, black, sludgy cup and pulls back her mask to take quick sips of it.

Line one buzzes and she answers by saying, “Ready for me?”

“Got her in the chair.”

“On my way.” She picks up a pen and a yellow legal tablet and heads to the interrogation room.

At this hour, it’s difficult to wrangle anyone into helping, but she managed to catch a narcotics detective named Peter Jenkins working late. He’s waiting in the hallway for her. He has a white beard that can’t hide his double chin and always keeps a cigarette tucked behind his ear. “I don’t know how much you’re going to get out of this one, Abernathy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see,” he says and heads into the adjacent room, where he’ll sit on the other side of the one-way mirror and cue up the recording equipment.