Washington, D.C.

It was on mornings like this that Maggie O’Dell wondered if perhaps something was wrong with her. Here it was another beautiful day, after rains had washed everything clean, the beginning of a holiday weekend and she had nothing to cancel. No plans to change. No friends or family or lover to let down. Even Harvey, who watched her leave with his head still planted on her bed pillow, let her off the hook too easily, it seemed, by allowing her to postpone their gardening and lounging in the backyard. What was worse, she actually looked forward to this autopsy. Not exactly looked forward to it in the same way someone would relish a good time. But rather, her mind had already begun plucking at the puzzle pieces, trying to place them in some order and needing more details, more pieces. So much so that she had awakened at two in the morning and pulled out the copies of the case files.

Dismemberment cases bothered even the most seasoned of veterans, and Maggie certainly wasn’t immune. Dismemberment cases and ones involving dead kids usually had a way of staying with her long after the killers were arrested, tried and convicted. Sometimes she still had nightmares that included body organs stuffed in take-out containers courtesy of Albert Stucky. And then there were those with dead little boys, naked and blue-skinned, left in the mud and tall grass along the Platte River. Albert Stucky was dead and buried. She had seen to it personally. However, Father Michael Keller had gotten away scot-free, escaping to South America, and even the Catholic Church didn’t seem to know where he was.

Maggie paused at the door to the autopsy suite to clear her mind and to finish her Diet Pepsi. Stan Wenhoff was known to expel anyone for as little as unwrapping a candy bar during one of his autopsies. Not a bad rule, though perhaps Stan’s claim that it was out of respect for the dead might be a bit disingenuous. After all, this was the same guy who yelled things like, “Just scoop it up.”

It felt like walking into a refrigerator. Maggie grabbed two gowns off the pile and said hello to Stan who only grunted. Julia Racine wasn’t in a much better mood. She looked to be in her usual futile hunt, searching through the pile for a size smaller than the X-large that Stan stocked for his visitors.

“Why is it so fucking cold in here?” Racine complained.

“We have a choice, Detective. We either deal with the cold or we deal with the maggots crawling all over us.”

Maggie couldn’t remember Stan ever using the air-conditioning before this. The basement autopsy suites had recently been renovated, but the old steel ducts had not. Turning on the heat or the A/C during an autopsy could compromise evidence by adding debris. So Stan usually had it turned off for the hour or two during the autopsy. Evidently he would rather deal with the debris and the cold than with the maggots.

Racine didn’t answer. Instead, she glanced at Maggie, who was putting on the second gown on top of the first. Racine followed her lead and took another off the pile. Racine needed to wrap both gowns several times around her tall, thin body almost like a mummy. Only then did Maggie notice that the usually athletic and fit detective looked as if she had lost weight since Maggie had seen her last. She had heard that Racine had been making frequent trips between the District and Connecticut to visit her deteriorating father even before Racine’s late-night invitation. Maggie had met and grown attached to Luc Racine while working a case practically in his backyard. Despite Luc’s early onset of Alzheimer’s, he and Maggie had exchanged favors, sort of coming to each other’s rescue. Her fondness and concern for the older Racine had created a connection with the younger Racine, one Maggie didn’t necessarily want. Sometimes she wondered if she and Julia Racine had met and gotten to know each other under different circumstances, circumstances that didn’t include an almost botched case and an unwanted sexual advance, that maybe they would have become friends.

She watched Racine check out the reflection of her spiky blond hair in a dissection tray. Behind all the cockiness and bravado, Maggie knew there had to be a vulnerable and insecure woman, walking a fine line, trying not to screw up, hiding any hint of fear or doubt. She had seen glimpses and in those few and brief fleeting moments Maggie realized that she and Julia Racine had that in common. They were both very good at hiding who they really were.

Maggie handed Racine a pair of latex gloves and Racine raised an eyebrow at their purple color.

“I have to hand it to you, Stan,” Racine said as she pulled on the exotic-colored gloves. “You always have the newest and coolest toys.”

He scowled at her over his shoulder as he slid the bagged head out of the wall refrigerator and onto a tray. Maggie realized Stan had taken Racine’s attempt at making light of the situation as an insinuation that he spent department funds in a frivolous manner. Hadn’t he realized by now that Racine’s inappropriate behavior and remarks were simply her way of masking her discomfort at autopsies? Perhaps he was too used to working with the dead to notice, or to have patience with something as simple as human emotion or inane idiosyncrasies.

“Do you need any help?” Maggie offered, rolling up the double-gown sleeves and hoping to relieve the tension in the suite. But a second scowl from Stan, this one leveled in her direction, immediately telegraphed her mistake. Silly of her—she knew better. She stepped back, out of his way. Poor Stan. Maggie often wondered if he wished he could post a No Visitors sign on the door.

“Last time I had to rig up a device.” He ignored her offer, and instead, pointed to a contraption on the autopsy table that looked like a clamping device made of PVC pipe and aluminum. “I didn’t think I’d be using it again this soon,” he said and he didn’t sound happy about it.

He fumbled with the plastic bag, a miniature version of a body bag. Maggie stopped herself from reaching over to help. It would be so easy to start the zipper that was closer to her side. Her medical background allowed her to assist with autopsies, but common sense usually told her which M.E.’s or coroners would welcome her help and which would be insulted. She already knew Stan was in the latter category even before his earlier scowl, yet his fumbling and slow-motion pace constantly challenged her patience.

She glanced at Racine, expecting her to be just as impatient with Stan. Instead, Racine looked distracted, her eyes examining the shelves of specimen jars and containers. Maggie watched the young detective tighten her gown’s belt and check out her shoe covers, then go back to the room’s contents. Her focus seemed to be anywhere and everywhere except on the head Stan finally had unwrapped and was now propping up with his makeshift device.

The maggots had retreated deep inside, huddling to keep warm. As a result, the woman’s eyes were now clear, staring straight ahead, her tangled hair plastered to one side of her head. Suddenly, a cloud of steam escaped from her opened mouth. And despite it being packed with the slow-churning worms, it looked almost as if the poor woman were taking one last breath.

“Jesus.” Racine had noticed, despite her attempt not to look. “What the hell was that?”

“The little bastards’ metabolism can keep them about ten to fifteen degrees higher than their surroundings,” Stan explained. “It’s similar to walking outside on a subzero day and seeing your own breath, the clash of warm with cold.”

“Pretty freaky,” Racine said.

Maggie noticed that this time Racine’s eyes didn’t leave the woman’s face, as if she didn’t dare look away for fear of missing the next “freaky” revelation. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before Racine would be checking her shoe covers again. Would it be the removal of the eyeballs or that sucking sound when the brain is pulled out after the top of the skull is sawed off? She actually found herself feeling bad for Racine. She wanted to tell her to think about ocean waves and listen for the sound they make lapping against a white sandy shore. Something, anything tranquil that would calm her nerves and settle her stomach. It had worked for Maggie during her first autopsy, a gunshot blast that ripped away the victim’s face, leaving behind what seemed like a cavernous hole of bloody cartilage and shredded tissue. The waves had been crashing in her head by the time the M.E. had finished.

“Let’s get started,” Stan said, grabbing a pair of forceps and a scalpel from his tray, “before these bastards start climbing up our arms and legs.”

Maggie saw Julia Racine’s face go white. That’s when she realized what Racine’s real problem was. So it seemed they had something else in common, because it wasn’t the autopsy Racine was dreading. It was the maggots.