“No problem. I know what it’s like.”

He stared at the puddle of water near the dresser. “Sorry I woke you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I think better on five hours sleep.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“I’m not understanding, I’m just groggy. I still think you’re chasing ghosts. Get some sleep, Kincaid. You’ve got to go lezzie hunting tomorrow.”

“Right.” He hung up.

He started to gather up the files, then stopped, looking again at the autopsy report.

There’s something missing that should be there. Damn, what was he looking for?

Louis took the report back to the bed. Issy was curled up on the pillow, giving herself a bath. He started to move her aside, then stopped. He eased himself in next to her.

A bird had started up somewhere outside his window. The light was graying up. He put on his glasses and started reading again.

Chapter Nineteen

The tape player was going. It was the Doors, but it took Louis a moment to recognize the song “People Are Strange.” The autopsy room was empty. Not even a corpse on the table.

The smell of brewing coffee defused the room’s normal must. Louis’s eyes went to the Mr. Coffee on the counter, dripping out a mud-black stream. He was about to help himself to a cup when the door opened and Vince Carissimi came in, tying an apron over his green scrubs.

“Hey, Kincaid, long time no see,” he said, smiling. “What brings you down here so early?”

“I need help,” Louis said.

“Looks like you need coffee.” Vince pointed to the coffee pot. “If that doesn’t jumpstart the ticker, nothing will.”

Louis poured a cup and went to a desk, where Vince was looking at a clipboard.

“Okay,” Vince said. “I got some time before I have to start on Mrs. Piccoli. What you need?”

Louis held out Kitty Jagger’s autopsy report. “I need you to take a look at this for me.”

Vince took it, pursing his lips. “Kitty Jagger. Wow, moldy oldie. This have anything to do with the Cade case? I heard you’re working for his defense.”

There was a slight coolness to Vince’s voice. Or was Louis just hearing something that wasn’t there?

“It might,” Louis said.

Vince was looking at the wound chart, shaking his head. “Man, I haven’t seen one of these in years. This one looks a little like June Allyson.”

“Vince. .”

“Sorry, what did you say you needed?”

“The detective who worked the case told me there is something missing from this report that should be there. He told me to ‘talk to Kitty.’ ”

Vince gave him a weird look.

Louis took a sip of the coffee and tried not to grimace. “I was up all night looking at the thing but I can’t see it.”

Vince was already flipping the pages. Jim Morrison had moved on to “I Can’t See Your Face in My Mind.”

“Looks pretty standard, Louis,” he said. “No anguis in herba that I can see.”

“What?”

“Snake in the grass. Nothing weird lurking.”

Louis let out a tired sigh. “You sure?”

“I am always sure.” He hesitated. “Wait, here’s something interesting. Look at this.”

Louis moved closer.

Vince had flipped back to the first page. “Cause of death: cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt trauma. Not possible.”

“Why not?” Louis asked.

“Because according to this, she lost most the blood from her body. Dead people don’t bleed like that.”

“So the stab wounds killed her?”

Vince nodded. He was reading something else.

“Was she hit or stabbed first?” Louis asked.

“I’d guess hit and knocked out. She had a skull fracture. Then someone stabbed her. The pathologist got it backward. Humanum est errare.”

Louis shook his head. “The detective didn’t say something was wrong. He said something was missing. Missing.”

Vince ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and flipped back a page. He was silent for a moment. The Doors had moved on to “When the Music’s Over.”

“Whoa,” Vince said softly.

“What?”

“According to this, they took two semen samples, one from the panties, the other vaginal. Standard procedure,” Vince said. “See this? This is the lab report on the sample from the panties-blood type O positive.”

“Yeah, I know about that.”

Vince looked up.

“What?” Louis asked.

“There’s no lab report from the vaginal sample,” Vince said. “The lab would routinely type all samples to eliminate the possibility of multiple perpetrators or partners. You know, in case she was having sex with a boyfriend.”

“Her father says this girl didn’t have a boyfriend,” Louis said.

“Right. .”

“She was fifteen, Vince.”

Vince gave him a look.

“I don’t think Kitty was the type to fuck around,” Louis said.

Vince just stared at him. “Calm down, Louis, I’m not knocking your lady’s reputation. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, bud.”

“Is there any way to track this down?” Louis asked.

“The second sample or the report itself?” Vince handed him back the autopsy report. “Hard to say. State lab did the tests. Who knows if they still have the results or the sample.”

Louis looked at him. Vince sighed.

“You’re going to find a way to follow up on this whether I help you or not, aren’t you?” Vince said.

“Yeah, I am.”

Vince hesitated. “You know, when I heard you were working the other side, I didn’t believe it. I mean, Jack Cade-”

“Save it, Vince.”

Vince crossed his arms over his chest, then nodded.

“So can you get that report?”

Vince was quiet.

“Come on, Vince. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t a big deal.”

He shrugged. “I’ll make a call, but don’t get your hopes up. Twenty years is a long time.”

“Thanks.” Louis rubbed a hand over his face.

“You all right?” Vince asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Just didn’t sleep last night, that’s all.”

A haunting bass line was coming out of the tape player, echoing off the tile walls. Jim Morrison singing “You’re lost, little girl, you’re lost. .”

Louis grabbed a pen and scribbled a number on the desk blotter. “Here’s my beeper. Would you call me if you hear anything?”

“Yeah, sure.” Vince paused. “Look, you wanna go get some breakfast? Mrs. Piccoli isn’t going anywhere.”

“Haven’t got time.” Louis started toward the door.

“Louis?”

He turned back.

“I wasn’t getting on you, about Cade I mean,” Vince said. “In my line of work, you come to think everybody gets their due eventually. I forget sometimes you guys can’t wait for that. I’ll call as soon as I get that report.”

Louis nodded.

“Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,” Vince said. “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.”

Chapter Twenty

Louis pulled up to Susan’s house and cut the engine. He sat for a moment in the dark, thinking about his wasted day.

It had started out promising enough. After Vince had told him about the semen sample, he had spent the morning trying to track down Kitty’s friend Joyce. There was no one listed in the Immokalee phone book under Novack, but there was a Stan Novick. Louis got an answering machine with a woman’s voice but didn’t leave a message. He had been about to drive out to Immokalee when Susan beeped him.

“I ran the Toyota’s plate,” she said when he called her office. “It came back to Harold Lieberman of Dade County.”

He had stayed silent, thinking about losing the whole day driving to Miami.

“There’s six Liebermans in the directory. You need to call them,” Susan said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m in court all day. You got a pen?”

So Louis had called five Harold Liebermans in Dade County, looking for someone who fit the description of the woman he had seen on Candace’s patio. He hit on the sixth call. A woman answered and told him yes, she had a daughter named Hayley and Hayley had wrecked her own car and was using her father’s Toyota, and if he saw her, tell her to bring it back because Harry was going to be pissed off when he got out of Mt. Sinai and found out it was gone. The woman said she didn’t know where her daughter was living, and Louis had the feeling she didn’t want to.