8:32 a.m.

Grace took the last bite of her sausage biscuit just as Frank Irwin pulled back the drop sheet from the corpse.

The woman looked smaller now laid out on the stainless-steel table. With all the blood washed away Grace could see that the gunshot wound had sliced open her jaw. The gash started just under the chin and stretched almost to her ear.

"The bullet shattered all her teeth on that side," Frank said, opening the woman's mouth with his gloved fingers. "Entrance was here below the chin. Exit was here, taking out the left tonsil and the side of the neck."

"Pretty strange way to shoot someone, right, Frank?"

"Pakula already told me your theory, Grace."

"And?"

"It was seven years ago. I wasn't here back then, although I heard about it. I pulled the photos and X rays."

He walked over to the light box, flipped a switch and propped up two X-ray films side by side.

He didn't need to tell her. Grace knew the other X ray was of Rebecca Moore's shattered jaw. Rebecca's body had been found in a ditch, north of Dodge Park seven years ago. She had been raped, stabbed three times, shot in the mouth and her body stuffed in a huge, black garbage bag before being thrown into a ditch. Another high-school student, Danny Ramerez, thought he saw her get into a pickup outside of Central High School with Jared Barnett. Seven years later Danny Ramerez suddenly said he was mistaken.

"The injuries are similar," Frank said. "I wasn't able to determine the caliber. And it sounds like we don't know for sure what kind of weapon he used here, or do we?"

"We recovered a casing in the wall behind her," Pakula answered. "It's a.38, but that's all I know right now. It looks like there were two guns used. Ballistics report probably won't be back until tomorrow."

"What do we know about her?" Grace was anxious to find out why Jared Barnett may have singled out this young woman, this bank teller.

"Her name is Tina Cervante," Pakula began, not needing a file or notes. "She was twenty-three years old, single, lived with two girlfriends in West Omaha. She's from Texas. All her family's down there. She came up to go to college, dropped out and landed the bank job. I'm gonna talk to one of the roommates later today. But here's something interesting. About a year ago she got busted for DUI, her third offense. Pretty serious stuff. Guess who her fucking attorney was?"

Grace was more interested in the woman's hands. "Hold on a minute." She pulled the sheet back and checked out her toes. "She probably lived with two roommates because she wasn't making enough money to be out on her own. Maybe she even had some college loans to pay, especially if her parents were pissed off that she didn't stick with it. And yet she could afford to have her fingernails and toes professionally manicured? Maybe even on a routine basis."

"She's also had a nose job." Frank pointed to a hairline scar that Grace would never have noticed otherwise. "A very professional job. Not cheap. Probably within the last six to eight months."

"So she had screwed-up financial priorities. It's an epidemic with kids that age." Pakula sounded impatient, as if talking from experience, perhaps reminded of his own daughters. "She could have had someone else helping out or taking care of her. What I wanna know is how an attractive, clean-cut young woman like Tina Cervante ends up with a scum-sucking attorney like Max Kramer."

"Kramer was her attorney on the DUI?" Grace wondered if Pakula was simply fishing for something. Kramer handled all kinds of cases. A DUI wouldn't be anything unusual, especially since the client was an attractive young woman.

"It's not my job to pass judgment," Frank interrupted. "But I'm not sure how clean-cut a young woman with three DUIs could be. Also…" He brought over a stainless-steel basin from the equipment tray and lifted the towel off to show them. "She was about two months pregnant."