On Friday, I lingered in the back of the edit bay watching the postproduction team lay in the last couple of scenes we’d shot just days ago. Relieved and tired, I left the guys to their work and made my way back to my office. It all ended up coming together and I could tell the show was going to be great.

After lunch I lay low and went through a couple of new books that research had ordered for me. I loved poring over the forensic books. Most people thought it was gross, but I loved all the gruesome details.

I collected my things and left early for an appointment downtown with one of the consulting coroners on Flesh and Bone. Bobby Kucerak was a senior coroner for LA County. Having Bobby on call was great for us, because we could run anything by him and he’d let us know if it was plausible or just TV mumbo jumbo. Bobby and I shared an interest in all this stuff, and he loved explaining the science to me, as if I were one of the dumb investigators Maggie always had to explain things to, so that the viewers would understand the technical info.

The examination room downtown was adjacent to the LA County Morgue. This was where they brought Marilyn the day she died. Dr. Thomas Noguchi had performed her autopsy. Back in the day, Dr. Noguchi had been the “coroner to the stars.” His memoir in the ’70s had inspired the show Quincy. If it hadn’t been for Marilyn and Dr. Noguchi, I probably wouldn’t have had a job.

The building was a typically antiseptic but serviceable beige-and-gray government space. I pushed the elevator button and waited. My eyes drifted across the hallway to a small storefront, where a sign read, “This is not an urban legend.” This was the LA County Morgue’s very own gift shop. Skeletons in the Closet sold all kinds of trinkets: garment bags shaped like body bags, coffee mugs, sweat-shirts, and even boxer shorts called Undertakers. Whenever I came down here, I wondered how grieving families, summoned here to identify a loved one, reacted to all this commercialization of death. Over a decade ago, the coroner’s office had created its own coffee mugs and T-shirts for the staff to take to conventions. Demand became so great that the gift shop was opened.

Exiting the elevator, I was met by a long, linoleum-lined hallway that dead-ended at a wooden door plainly labeled “Los Angeles County Morgue.” The morgue took in around two dozen bodies a day and had to determine a cause of death for each. There were classifications like “natural causes,” “murder,” and “LA natural,” which was their slang for death by gunshot.