"Without a shred of doubt, this is Patience Stanhope," Harold said piously.

"She looks terrific," Jack said, "all decked out and ready for the prom."

Harold cast a disapproving glance in Jack's direction but kept his thin lips pressed together.

"Okay! Bill and Tyrone," Jack said enthusiastically, "slip her out of her party duds, and we'll get to work."

"I will leave you now," Harold said with a hint of reprimand as if talking to a naughty child. "I hope you find this exercise worthwhile."

"What about your fee?" Jack questioned. He suddenly realized he'd not made any arrangement.

"I have your business card, doctor. We will bill you."

"Perfect," Jack said. "Thanks for your help."

"Our pleasure," Harold said, tongue in cheek. His funeral-director sensibilities had been offended by Jack's disrespectful language.

Jack pulled over a stainless-steel table on casters and put out paper and a pen. He had no recording device, and he wanted to write down his findings as he went along. Then he helped Latasha arrange specimen bottles and the instruments. Although Harold had laid out some of the embalming tools, Latasha had brought the more typical pathology knife, scalpels, scissors, and bone clippers along with the bone saw.

"Your thoughtfulness in bringing all this equipment is going to make this a thousand times easier," Jack said as he attached a new scalpel blade to a scalpel handle. "I was planning on making do with whatever they had here, which in hindsight was not a good idea."

"It was no trouble," Latasha said, glancing around the room. "I didn't know what to expect. I've never seen an embalming room. Frankly, I'm impressed."

The facility was about the same size as her autopsy room at the medical examiner's office but had only a single, central, stainless steel table, giving the impression of wide-open space. The floor and walls were light green ceramic. There were no windows. Instead, there were areas of glass block that let in outside light.

Jack's eyes followed Latasha's around the room. "This is palatial," he said. "When I first conceived of doing this autopsy, I imagined myself using someone's kitchen table."

"Yuck!" Latasha responded. She glanced over at Bill and Tyrone, who were busily disrobing the corpse. "You told me the story about Patience Stanhope and your internist friend on Tuesday when you stopped by. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the details. Could you give me a quick synopsis?"

Jack did better than that. He told the whole story, which included his relationship to Craig as well as the threats he'd received and Craig's children had received about the autopsy issue. He even told her about the incident that morning on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Latasha was shocked, and her expression reflected it. "I suppose I should have told you this sooner," Jack said. "Maybe you wouldn't have agreed so readily to get involved. But my feeling is that if there was to be trouble at this point, it would have happened before Patience Stanhope came out of the ground."

"I agree with that," Latasha said, recovering to a degree. "Now trouble, if it's going to happen, might depend on what we find."

"You have a point," Jack agreed. "Maybe it would be best if you don't help. If anybody is going to be a target in any form or fashion, I want it to be me."

"What?" Latasha questioned with an exaggerated expression. "And let you boys have all the fun? No thanks! That's never been my style. Let's see what we find and then decide how best to proceed."

Jack smiled. He admired and liked this woman. She had smarts, pluck, and drive.

Bill and Tyrone lifted the corpse out of the casket, carried it over to the embalming table, and heaved it up onto the surface. With a bucket of water and a sponge, Bill gently rinsed away the mold. Like an autopsy table, the embalming table had lips around its periphery and a drain at the end to catch any wayward fluid.

Jack moved over to be on Patience's right while Latasha was on her left. Both had donned their protective face and head gear. Tyrone excused himself to do his nightly security check. Bill retreated to the sidelines to be available if needed.

"The body's in fantastic shape," Latasha commented.

"Harold might be a tad stuffy, but he apparently knows his trade."

Both Jack and Latasha did their own silent external exam. When Latasha was finished, she straightened up.

"I don't see anything I wouldn't have expected," she said. "I mean, she went through a resuscitation attempt and an embalming, and there's plenty of evidence of that."

"I agree," Jack said. He'd been looking at some minor lacerations inside her mouth, which were consistent with having been intubated during the resuscitation. "So far, there's no suggestion of strangulation or burking, but smothering without chest compression still has to be kept in mind."

"It would be way low on my list," Latasha said. "The history pretty much rules it out, you know what I'm saying?"

"I'm with you," Jack said. He handed Latasha a scalpel. "How about you do the honors."

Latasha made the typical Y incision from the points of the shoulders to the midline and then down to the pubis. The tissue was dry like an overcooked turkey with a grayish-tan color. There was no putrefaction, so the smell was fusty but not offensive.

Working quickly and in tandem, Jack and Latasha had the internal organs exposed. The intestines had been completely evacuated with the embalming cannula. Jack lifted the firm edge of the liver. Beneath and affixed to its underside was the gallbladder. He palpated it with his fingers.

"We have bile," he said happily. "That will help with the toxicology."

"We've got vitreous as well," Latasha said, palpating the eyes through the closed lids. I think we should also take a sample of that."

"Absolutely," Jack said. "And urine, too, if we can get it from either the bladder or kidneys."

Each took syringes and took the samples. Jack labeled his while Latasha did the same with hers.

"Let's see if there's an obvious right-to-left shunt," Jack said. "I keep thinking the cyanosis issue is going to prove important."

Carefully, Jack eased away the friable lungs to get a look at the great vessels. After a careful palpation, he shook his head. "Everything looks normal."

"The pathology is going to be in the heart," Latasha said with conviction.

"I think you are right," Jack agreed. He called Bill over and asked if there were any stainless pans or bowls they could use for the organs. Bill produced several from a cabinet below the embalming-room sink.

Proceeding as if they were accustomed to working together, Jack and Latasha removed the heart and lungs en bloc. While she held the pan, Jack lifted the specimen out of the chest and placed it inside. She put the pan down on the table beyond Patience's feet.

"Lungs look normal," Jack said. He rubbed his fingers over the lungs' surface.

"They feel normal, too," Latasha said as she gently prodded them in a few locations. "Too bad we don't have a scale."

Jack called Bill over and asked if a scale was available, but it wasn't.

"The weight feels normal to me," Jack said, hefting the block of tissue.

Latasha tried it but shook her head. "I'm not good at judging weights."

"I'm eager to get to the heart, but maybe we should first do the rest. What do you say?"

"Work first, play later: Is that your motto?"

"Something like that," Jack said. "Let's divide the job to speed things up. One of us could do the abdominal organs while the other does the neck dissection. For completeness' sake, I want to make sure the hyoid bone is intact, even though neither of us thinks strangulation was involved."

"If you are giving me a choice, I'll do the neck."

"You're on."

For the next half-hour they worked silently in their respective areas. Jack used the sink to wash out the intestines. It was in the large intestine that he found the first significant pathology. He called Latasha over and pointed. It was a cancer in the ascending colon.