Laurie was surprised first by the time of the message and then by the sound of Roger's voice. She was impressed that he had taken her suggestion so seriously that he'd been working nonstop until two o'clock in the morning. She was even more impressed that he had managed to come up with what he considered a list of suspects, including an anesthesiologist by the name of Najah who'd recently transferred from St. Francis to the Manhattan General. As she continued to listen to the message, she felt a definite sense of satisfaction and an eagerness to hear the details, although when was another matter. As she headed back toward the elevators to the basement, she wondered if and when Jack might call. You never knew with Jack.

As Laurie had anticipated, the post on Patricia Pruit was strikingly similar to the others in the series, with absolutely no pathology to account for her sudden demise. True to form, the operative site was without any excessive bleeding, without signs of infection, and there were no clots in the major vessels of the legs, abdomen, or chest. The heart, lungs, and brain were all entirely normal.

At the end of the procedure, Laurie helped Marvin move the corpse back onto a gurney.

"Which one of the kids do you want to do first?" Marvin asked as he unlocked the gurney's wheels.

"It doesn't matter," Laurie said. She had opened the two folders on a neighboring autopsy table and was searching for the forensic investigator's reports. Then, getting a second thoughts, she said, "In fact, why not put them both up at the same time."

"Fine with me," Marvin said agreeably. He pushed the gurney with Pruit's corpse out through the main door.

A few years ago, Laurie would have taken the folders up to the lunchroom between cases, but now that she had on her moon suit, it was too much trouble, so she read the investigative reports standing up, with her ventilation fan as a backdrop. She could immediately see why some journalists would be interested. The tragic episode had the kind of lurid appeal that the tabloids loved. The accident had happened at three o'clock in the morning at the 59th Street station. The uptown train had thundered in and run over the two kids.

Conflicting stories were the problem. The engineer claimed that the kids had waited until the last minute to jump, so there was nothing he could do. Such a scenario suggested a double suicide, but the engineer failed a Breathalyzer test, casting severe doubt on his reliability. The other story came from the conductor, who claimed he was between car one and car two, looking out at the station, as the train came in. He said he didn't see any kids on the platform, and he passed the Breathalyzer test. The third story was from the agent in the token booth, who claimed that a suspicious man had gone through the turnstile right after the kids but disappeared.

The door to the hall burst open and Marvin pushed in another gurney. "This is not pretty," he said.

"I can imagine," Laurie said. She continued reading the investigative reports. No suicide notes were found, either on the platform or on the victims. Conversations with both sets of parents did not confirm any episodes of depression. In the words of one of the parents, the kids were "wild and full of the devil but would never kill themselves."

"I'm going to get the other one," Marvin called out.

Laurie waved over her shoulder as she continued to read. Once again, she was impressed with Janice's work. How Janice could pack as much as she did into a single night, Laurie had no idea.

When Laurie was finished with her reading, she took out the sheets for the autopsy notes from the two folders and turned around to face the first of the two corpses. As she did so, Marvin came back in with the second one.

"Good Lord," Laurie murmured as she looked down at the first boy's remains. Teenagers weren't as difficult emotionally for Laurie as younger children, but they were still tough.

Being run over by a train was at the upper end of traumatic experiences. The boy's arm had been severed at the shoulder and it lay alongside the torso. The head and the face had been reduced to a pulp. There was no way things could have been cleaned up for the parents' benefit.

Laurie began the external examination by detailing the all-too-visual trauma. It was obvious that the body had tumbled along beneath the train until it had been brought to a stop.

"There's the second one," Marvin said as he wheeled the empty gurney over to the side of the room.

Laurie waved over her shoulder without turning around. She found something unexpected on the boy's penis, which made her move down and look at the soles of his feet. Marvin joined her on the opposite side of the table.

"I noticed that," Marvin said, following Laurie's line of sight. "What do you make of it?" In addition to the abrasions, there was a bit of charring.

"Where are the shoes?" Laurie asked.

"In a plastic bag in the walk-in."

"Bring them in," Laurie said. She was preoccupied and immediately stepped over to the second child.

By the time Marvin was back with the clothing from both cases, Laurie felt she had solved the mystery by the external exam alone. Marvin brought over the sneakers that the kids had been wearing. Like the bodies themselves, they were a sorry sight. Laurie picked them up and looked at the soles. "Seems pretty clear to me what happened."

"Oh?" Marvin questioned. "Fill me in."

At that moment, the door to the hall banged open, surprising both Laurie and Marvin. It was Sal D'Ambrosio, one of the other mortuary techs. He was more animated than his usual indifferent self. "We got a headless, handless male corpse that just arrived, along with some cops. What should I do?"

"Did you x-ray it, weigh it, and photograph it like you're supposed to do?" Laurie questioned. In sharp contrast with Marvin, who needed little direction, Sal's apathy often grated on Laurie's nerves. There was a protocol to be followed with every body arriving at the OCME.

"All right already," Sal said, sensing Laurie's impatience. "I thought with the cops here, it might be a different story." He ducked back out and the door closed.

Laurie paused for a minute. Hearing that a headless, handless body had arrived created a sense of déjà vu that took her back seven years, when a similar corpse had been brought in after floating around in the East River. With some effort, identification had been made. The man's name turned out to have been Franconi, and Mr. Franconi posthumously had taken her and Jack on a wild adventure to Equatorial Guinea in West Africa.

"Hey!" Marvin interrupted Laurie's brief reverie. "Come on! You got me curious here. What's with these two kids?"

Laurie again started to explain, but the door to the hall reopened. A gowned, hooded, and masked figure walked in, much to Laurie and Marvin's surprise.

"I'm sorry, but no one is allowed in here," Laurie called out, holding up her hand like a traffic cop. For a moment, she thought the intruder might have been a particularly adventuresome journalist who'd somehow managed to infiltrate OCME security. "It's dangerous, and full protective gear is mandatory."

"Oh, come on, Laur!" the man said while stopping in his tracks. "Jack told me on the weekends things weren't so hard-nosed around here and that this is the way he dresses unless it's an infectious case."

"Lou?" Laurie questioned.

"Yeah, it's me. You're not going to make me get into one of those suits, are you? They drive me crazy."

"If Calvin comes in, you'll be banned for life."

"Realistically, what are the chances of him coming in?"

"Nil, I suppose."

"Well, there you go," Lou said. He walked over to Laurie and glanced down at the two boys, then quickly looked back up at Laurie. "Yuck! What a sight! How you do this for a living?"