'I guess.'

Mary suppressed her surprise. Had she won? Was it that easy? 'So you agree with me? You think I'm right?'

'I think you could be.'

'Are you sure? I mean, I'm usually not.'

Judy laughed. 'This time you are. You're growing up, right before my eyes. What do you want to do next, boss? It's your case.'

Mary thought a minute, suddenly giddy. 'Okay, you go back to the office and find precedent for the preliminary hearing. I was going to follow my lead.'

'Your "lead"?' Judy smiled. 'You're a lawyer, not a cop.'

'Don't question me, I'm the boss!' An empty Yellow cab whizzed by and Mary waved frantically. 'Yo, wait!

Stop!'

'Mare!' Judy called after her. 'Where are you going?' 'Catch me if you can!' she shouted, running after the

cab, and Judy shot off after her, laughing.

20

Brinkley stood beside the stainless steel table with Kovich and Dwight Davis as the autopsy began. Brinkley kept a lid on his testiness at Davis and his distaste at the procedure by listening to the piano music coming from the CD player on the shelf. Hamburg always played Chopin's Nocturnes, and though Brinkley didn't listen to classical music, he appreciated it. The sweet notes of the piano made incongruous background music for the coroner's dictation, into a black orb of a microphone that hung from a wire like a spider on a web.

This is the case of Honor Buxton Newlin, a forty-five-year-old female,' Hamburg began. He was wearing blue pressed scrubs under an immaculate white jacket.

The body of Honor Newlin lay naked on the steel table, her eyes closed and her chest sliced cruelly with the wounds that had killed her. Brinkley tried not to look, in some sense protecting her modesty, and Hamburg evinced a similar respect for the body. His tone was almost rabbinical as he recited her height, weight, sex, age, and eye and hair color into the microphone.

'On January twelfth, the subject was brought to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office…'

They were only at the beginning of the autopsy; Hamburg had just cut away the woman's clothes, the first step of the external examination. The inspection of her blouse had taken a while, since Hamburg had been so systematic, matching each stab wound to each tear in the white silk and squaring up the bloodstains. The D.A., the detectives, and the medical examiner had pored over the clothes and pink shoe with the torn strap, but Brinkley could draw no

new conclusions about the shoe and Davis thought it didn't mean anything.

'Head: The head is normal. There is no evidence of trauma to the head. The scalp hair is…'

Brinkley was bumped slightly by Davis, edging him into the green steel cabinets lining the morgue. The area reserved for autopsies was cramped, dominated by a lineup of steel tables with drains in the middle and a deep sink under the head. No other autopsies were being performed, which Brinkley counted as a godsend. He found himself looking away while Hamburg swabbed the dried blood from Honor Newlin's wounds, to the achingly beautiful strains of the solitary piano.

'Chest: The chest shows evidence of significant trauma. There are five wounds in the chest area. Left to right, the first wound is postmortem

Brinkley made himself look. The woman's skin was as pure and unmarked as porcelain, now that it had been drained of blood. He looked away again, confused. He had seen a zillion bodies, all nastier than this one. What was bothering him? Maybe because Honor Newlin made him think of better things. Or maybe because he wasn't sure they had her killer yet.

'Abdomen: The abdomen is flat. There is no evidence of trauma…'

Brinkley glanced at her waist, which was small. Her stomach looked toned and supple, her belly button a tiny, refined knob. How had this happened? Could her husband really do this to her? Could her kid? That kid, with the big blue eyes and the long hair? Brinkley needed answers fast. He knew the news stories about no deals were trial balloons, and the public was responding. The man-on-the-street interviews were all hang 'em high.

'Now, the back.' Hamburg motioned to an assistant and they turned the body over together, in one smooth, practiced motion. The woman's arms remained rigid at her sides, owing to rigor mortis. 'The back is normal in contour,' Hamburg continued. 'There is no evidence of trauma to the back. Upper extremities: The upper extremities show evidence of defensive wounds

Brinkley looked at the slashes to the woman's fingertips. The notion of somebody putting up their hands to protect against a knife always made him sad. The worst were defensive gunshot wounds. How many times had he seen Hamburg raise a body's hand to match where a bullet had passed through it? Brinkley knew it was reflex, but he couldn't help believing it was something else. Hope.

'Lower extremities: The lower extremities show evidence… hmmmm…'

Brinkley came out of his reverie. The body was lying on its back again, and Hamburg was bent over, his head down and his black yarmulke a punctuation mark. He squinted through his bifocals at the woman's feet and kneaded the large toe of her right foot. Without being asked, Brinkley turned and picked up the pink shoe with the torn strap, still bagged, and handed it to Hamburg, who reached up and turned off his microphone.

'I think our friend has a broken toe,' Hamburg said, preoccupied. Brinkley couldn't tell if he was thinking about the toe or listening to the music, which was particularly dramatic, the notes gaining speed as they descended the octaves. Hamburg took the shoe and held it against the foot. 'This is the right shoe, with the broken strap. Broken toe, broken shoe. Any theories, boys?'

Brinkley moved closer, intrigued. 'You think she broke her toe the same time she broke the strap?' he asked, and Kovich listened quietly.

Hamburg nodded. 'Seems reasonable.'

Davis, joining them, shook his head. 'Couldn't she have broken her toe another time? It's not like they treat broken toes. You just wait for it to heal.'

Hamburg nodded again. 'True, but there's a fair amount of swelling in the toe. I'd say it's a recent injury.'

'How recent?' Davis asked, hugging his pad to a pinstriped suit.

'Yesterday or the day before.'

'You don't put shoes like that on a hurt toe,' Brinkley said, but Davis snorted.

'You don't know that. You can't assume that. She seems like a vain woman to me.'

'How you get that from a body?' Brinkley asked, defensively. It seemed disrespectful.

'From the clothes. They're expensive. And she's thin, she stays in shape.'

Brinkley paused. Davis was smart but he was still an asshole. 'Look, it's a lot more likely that she kicked something hard enough to break her toe and her shoe. What do you say, Aaron?'

'Not my bailiwick, but it seems likely. You think she was kicking whoever was attacking her?'

'No.' Brinkley was puzzled. 'A defensive wound, to the foot? How often you see that?'

'From time to time,' Hamburg answered thoughtfully. 'In women, you see it. They do it out of desperation.'

'Sure,' Kovich agreed. 'We've seen it in the rape cases. Remember Ottavio, Mick?'

Brinkley remembered. 'But this isn't a rape case. In a rape case, the victim's on the ground and she kicks up. Tries to catch the guy in the groin or whatever. Here the lady is standing up, getting stabbed. If she kicks to defend herself, she destabilizes herself.' He demonstrated and almost toppled over. 'See?'

'She could have kicked up, being stabbed on the ground,' Kovich offered, but Hamburg looked dubious.

'I can't say no, but I can't say yes. With this wound pattern, I can't make an exact determination about which is the fatal wound. But remember, she had been drinking heavily. Her blood alcohol was high, so any fighting she did wasn't that vigorous. If she was kicking from the ground, she didn't hit much. Not enough to break a toe.'