He flipped through the file, pulling out more photos. “And look here,” he said, pointing to an image of the dead body stretched out on a bed. “Look where his arms are positioned. If he had shot himself, his right arm would be down by his side, not in front of his stomach.”

I thought of Marilyn and her soldier’s position, no arms clawing at the air the way they should have been. None of this stuff bothered me. I’d been watching shows on TV that dealt with this kind of stuff since I was a little girl. I had sat in on an actual autopsy before, although that had been a bit much even for me.

I was leaning toward Bobby as he continued his analysis, and all of a sudden I realized how close we were. I was very aware of him as a man. I glanced up at his face and caught him studying me intently. Now I wondered if he had drawn this whole procedure out, to spend a bit more time with me. Bobby was attractive enough. I’d always wondered why someone like him would want to do this, work with dead people. But I’d never asked him; I hadn’t wanted to get too personal. No matter how sick I might be, all that talk of skulls and autopsy photos wasn’t my idea of foreplay. If Bobby had come in for a kiss right then, that would have been just way too creepy. Creepier than handling skulls. I hoped he wouldn’t make a pass at me. I didn’t want to have to rebuff him.

Moving away from him, I scanned the disinfected tools lying neatly on the stainless tray. “Bobby, I’ve never asked you what you thought of the Marilyn rumors—not about the necrophilia stuff, but if you thought she committed suicide or was murdered.”

Bobby closed the file and turned to tidy his tray of examination tools. “Dr. Noguchi performed the autopsy and ruled Marilyn’s cause of death a suicide.”

“I know what Dr. Noguchi said in his report, but what do you think?”

Bobby brought the skull back to the examination table and carefully placed it back into position. “Marilyn died because of an overdose of sleeping pills in her system.”

“Yeah, I’ve read the report. So?”

“There were no pills found in her stomach, and Noguchi did a thorough exam of her body looking for needle marks and found none, but he did note that there was an unusual purplish substance found in Marilyn’s colon, suggesting that Marilyn may have received the lethal dose of narcotics that way.”

“That way?” I asked.

Bobby smiled. “Yes, that way. So think about it. If you were going to kill yourself, you could think of easier and more efficient ways to do it than with a barbiturate enema.”