"It's small, but it looks like it penetrated the wall," Latasha said.

"I think it has," Jack agreed. "And some of the abdominal nodes are enlarged. This is dramatic proof that hypochondriacs do get sick."

"Would that have been picked up by a bowel study?"

"Undoubtedly. If she'd had one. It's in Craig's records that she continually refused his recommendation to do it."

"So it would have killed her if she didn't have the heart attack."

"Eventually" Jack said. "How are you doing with the neck?"

"I'm about done. The hyoid is intact."

"Good! Why don't you get the brain out while I finish up with the abdomen? We're making excellent time." Jack glanced up at the wall clock. It was closing in on eight p.m., and his stomach was growling. "Are you going to take me up on the dinner offer?" he called to Latasha, who was on her way back to the table.

"Let's see what time it is when we finish," she called back over he shoulder.

Jack found a number of polyps throughout Patience's large intestine. When he was finished with the gut, he returned it to the abdominal cavity. "I do have to give Harold Langley credit. His job with Patience Stanhope would have made an ancient Egyptian embalmer proud."

"I don't have much experience with embalmed bodies, but the condition of this one is better than I expected," Latasha said as she plugged in the bone saw. It was a vibrating device designed to cut through hard bone but not soft tissue. She gave it a try. It produced a high-pitched whirring noise. She positioned herself at the head of the table and went to work on the cranium, which she had previously exposed by reflecting Patience's scalp down over her face.

Relatively immune to the racket, Jack palpated the liver, looking for metastases from the cancer in the colon. Not finding any, he made a series of slices through the organ, but it was seemingly clear. He knew that he might find some microscopically, but that would have to be at a later date.

Twenty minutes later, after the brain had been cleared of gross abnormality and a number of specimens from various organs were taken, the two pathologists turned their attention to the heart. Jack had cut away the lungs, so it was sitting in the pan by itself.

"It's like saving the best present for last," Jack said while gazing eagerly and intriguingly at the organ and wondering what secrets it was about to reveal. The size was about that of a large orange. The color of the muscle tissue was gray, but the greasy cap of adipose tissue was light tan.

"It's going to be like dessert," Latasha said with equal enthusiasm.

"Standing here looking at this heart reminds me of a case I did about half a year ago. It was a woman who collapsed in Bloomingdale's and whose heart couldn't be paced by an external pacemaker, just like Patience Stanhope."

"What did you find on that case?"

"A marked developmental narrowing of the posterior descending coronary artery. Apparently, a small thrombosis knocked out a good portion of the heart's conduction system in one fell swoop."

"Is that what you expect to find on this case?"

"It's high on my list," Jack said. "But I also think there is going to be some kind of septal defect causing a right-to-left shunt to account for the cyanosis." Then he added parenthetically, "What it's not going to tell us, I'm afraid, is why someone was so intent on us not finding out whatever it is we are about to learn."

"I think we're going to find widespread coronary disease and evidence of a number of previous small, asymptomatic heart attacks so that her conduction system was particularly at risk prior to the final event, but not compromised enough to show up on a standard ECG."

"That's an interesting thought," Jack said. He glanced across the table at Latasha, who continued to stare at the exposed heart. His respect for her kept growing. He just wished she didn't look nineteen. It made him feel over the hill.

"Remember, postmenopausal women have recently been shown to have different symptomatology than equivalent males when it comes to coronary heart disease! The case you just described is evidence of that."

"Stop making me feel ancient and uninformed," Jack complained.

Latasha made a gesture of dismissal with her gloved hand. "Yeah, sure!" she intoned with a chuckle.

"How about we make a little wager since neither one of us is in our home office, where such activity is frowned upon? I say it's going to be congenital and you say degenerative. I'm willing to put up five bucks in support of my idea."

"Whoa, big spender!" Latasha teased. "Five is a lot of cash, but I'll double you to ten."

"You're on," Jack said. After turning the heart over, he picked up a pair of fine forceps and scissors and went to work. Latasha supported the organ as Jack carefully traced and then opened the right coronary artery, concentrating on the posterior descending branch. When he'd traced it as far as the instruments would allow, he straightened up and stretched his back.

"No narrowing," he said with a combination of surprise and disappointment. Although he usually maintained an open mind diagnostically, for fear of being blinded by the positive finding, in this case he'd been quite certain of the pathology he'd encounter. It was the right coronary artery that supplied blood to most of the heart's conduction system, which had been knocked out by Patience Stanhope's heart attack.

"Don't despair yet," Latasha said. "The ten dollars is still in the balance. There's no narrowing, but I don't see any atheromatous deposits, either."

"You're right. It's perfectly clean," Jack agreed. He couldn't quite believe it. The entire vessel was grossly normal.

Jack turned his attention to the left coronary artery and its branches. But after a few minutes of dissection it was apparent the left was the same as the right. It was devoid of plaque and stricture. He was mystified and chagrined. After all he'd been through, it seemed a personal affront that there was no apparent coronary abnormality, either developmental or degenerative.

"The pathology has to be on the inside of the heart," Latasha said. "Maybe we'll see some vegetations on the mitral or aortic valve that could have thrown off a shower of thrombi that then cleared."

Jack nodded, but he was mulling over the probability of sudden cardiac death from a heart attack with no coronary artery disease. He thought it was extremely small, certainly less than ten percent, but obviously possible, as evidenced by the case in front of him. One thing about forensic pathology that he could always count on was seeing and learning something new.

Latasha handed Jack a long-bladed knife, waking him from a mini trance. "Come on! Let's see the interior."

Jack opened each of the heart's four chambers and made serial slices through the muscular walls. He and Latasha inspected the valves, the septa between the right and left sides of the heart, and the cut surfaces of the muscles. They worked silently, checking each structure individually and methodically. When they were finished, their eyes met across the table.

"The bright side is that neither of us is out ten dollars," Jack said, trying to salvage humor from the situation. "The dark side is that Patience Stanhope is keeping her secrets to herself. She was reputed to be less than cooperative in life, and she's staying in character in death."

"After hearing the history, I'm shocked that this heart appears so normal," Latasha said. "I've never seen this. I guess the answers are going to have to wait for the microscope. Maybe there was some kind of capillary disease process that involved only the smallest vessels of the coronary system."

"I've never heard of such a thing."

"Neither have I," Latasha admitted. "But she died of a heart attack that had to have been massive. We have to see pathology other than a small, asymptomatic colon cancer. Wait a second! What's that eponymous syndrome where the coronary arteries go into spasm?" She motioned to Jack as if she were playing charades, wanting him to come up with the name.