“Thanks.” Gerry dabbed the mentholated goo on her upper lip. “It reminds of me of when I was a child and my mother would rub it on my chest just before bed when I had a cold.”

“Exactly,” said Annie, applying a dab to herself. “Dr. Glendenning will tease you about it if he smells it. He can be a bit of a jerk—he’s old school—so just ignore him. OK? Ready?”

Gerry nodded and they opened the swing doors and entered the room where Dr. Glendenning and his chief anatomical pathology technologist, Karen Galsworthy, already had the body waiting on the slab. Dr. Glendenning glanced over at them. “Nice of you to join us, ladies. Why don’t you get yourselves kitted up.” Then he sniffed theatrically. “Someone got a chest cold, have they?”

Annie gave him a dirty look.

They were two minutes early, but Annie was well aware that Dr. Glendenning treated everyone who entered his domain as a latecomer. Of course, as he occasionally joked when challenged, most visitors were late. They put on their disposable overalls, hairnets, adding plastic goggles and mouth masks. There was always a chance that the body was infected with some communicable disease, or that bits of bone and flesh would spray up when Dr. Glendenning or Karen Galsworthy used the electric saw. You didn’t want a bone fragment in your eye. She hadn’t told Gerry that, of course.

The walls were covered with dazzling white tiles, which made the dirty body on the stainless-steel table seem all the more out of place. Rigor mortis had passed completely now, and the girl lay on her back, arms at her sides. Now that she could see the girl’s face, Annie noticed that she had been very pretty even with the bruising, as well as young.

A bulky microphone dangled above the table, and cameras fixed on the walls filmed the procedure from a variety of angles. The surface of the body had already been examined microscopically for any trace evidence, samples taken, and Karen Galsworthy was busy washing it down when they went in. She seemed to be working gently, Annie thought, sadly and respectfully, as a funeral home worker might prepare a body for burial.

The odontologist had been in and taken dental impressions, which might help them identify the girl. All he had said, according to Dr. Glendenning, was that there was nothing unusual about the dental work. It looked very much, the doctor went on, as if the fist blows came first, knocking her to the ground and stunning her, then a flurry of hard kicks to the head, back, buttocks and chest while she was lying curled in the fetal position. And he was adamant that it had not been a hit and run.