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D’Amata and Slayberg stood in the doorway of Cheryl Williamson’s bedroom and looked around-without entering-for about sixty seconds. Then they stepped away from the bedroom door and started looking around the living room. Captain Smith went to the bedroom door.

“Jesus,” he said, softly.

Matt saw that D’Amata and Slayberg had rubber gloves on their hands, wondered why he hadn’t seen them put them on, and pulled a pair of his own from his pocket.

He was about to walk to the door when the apartment door opened again and two men entered. Payne knew one of them, a balding, rumpled man in a well-worn suit, Dr. Howard Mitchell of the medical examiner’s office. He had with him a photographer, a young man Matt could not remember ever having seen before.

Matt found it interesting that Dr. Mitchell had come to the scene personally. Usually technicians from the M.E.’s office worked a death scene, and the M.E. did not; he either supervised the autopsy or did it himself.

Probably, Matt decided, Mitchell’s appearance had something to do with a Special Operations job he’d heard about, one that had almost been assigned to him, although in the end it had been assigned to Detectives Jesus Martinez and Charles T. McFadden.

It had begun when a highly indignant citizen, the nephew of a woman who’d fallen down her cellar stairs and broken her neck, had gone to his district and told the desk sergeant to report that he’d just gotten Aunt Myrtle’s last Visa bill. Aunt Myrtle didn’t drink, couldn’t drive, and there was no way she could have charged $355 worth of booze at Micke

y’s Liquor Store in Camden, New Jersey, on the day of her death.

The report had worked its way through the bureaucracy to the Roundhouse, where it had been discussed by Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Chief Inspector of Detectives Lowenstein.

They agreed there was something about it that made it seem more than a simple case of credit-card fraud. And since it crossed state lines, it became a federal offense, which meant it was in the province of the FBI. Although both Coughlin and Lowenstein held the FBI in the highest possible respect, they also suspected that a credit card fraud involving only $355 would not get the FBI’s full attention.

“Give it to Peter Wohl,” Lowenstein said. “Not this job. Get him to see if there have been other reports of other things missing from other recently deceased citizens.”

Coughlin had-unnecessarily-told Peter Wohl that if somebody at funeral homes, cops at the scene, or maybe even from the M.E.’s office were taking things they shouldn’t, he would rather learn this from Special Operations than from the FBI.

Charley McFadden and Hay-zus Martinez had been given the job because they had less on their plates when the job came in than Matt did. It hadn’t taken McFadden and Martinez long to discover-Matt couldn’t remember ever before having seen Charley so personally indignant-that a lot of stuff had disappeared over the past six months, and that it was pretty clear it had disappeared into the pockets of some of the M.E.’s technicians. They had apparently decided that since the deceased had no further need for rings, watches, other jewelry and cash, they might as well put the same to good use-their own.

Four of them had been arrested, tried, and convicted.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Captain Smith said from the bedroom door.

“Hey, Smitty,” Dr. Mitchell said, and then spotted Matt. “Hey, Payne. I saw your picture in the paper.”

“Good morning, Doctor,” Matt said. “The search warrant’s en route.”

Dr. Mitchell winked at D’Amata and Slayberg, then walked to the bedroom door, pulling on rubber gloves as he did so. The photographer followed him. Mitchell gestured with his hand for the photographer to stop at the door, then went inside.

The medical examiner needed no one’s permission to enter the crime scene. It belonged to him until he released it to Homicide.

Matt walked to the bedroom door.

Dr. Mitchell bent over Cheryl Williamson’s body, took a quick look, put his fingers on her carotid artery, looked at his watch, and announced, “I pronounce her dead as of ten fifty-five. ”

He looked over his shoulder at Matt.

“Unofficially, it looks like her neck is broken, and to judge from the lividity of the body, I’d guess she’s been dead eight, nine hours or so.”

He signaled to the photographer that it was all right for him to enter the room, and started for the bedroom door.

Matt got his first look at the victim.

She was naked, with her legs spread apart by plastic ties tied to the footboard. Her upper body was twisted to the left. Her left hand was tied to the headboard, and Matt could see another tie hanging loose from her right wrist.

She looked at him out of sightless eyes, and his mind was instantly filled with Susan Reynolds’s sightless eyes looking at him in the parking lot of the Crossroads Diner.

He felt the knot in his stomach and the cold sweat forming on his back, and stepped quickly away from the door.

Jesus, not now! Dear God, don’t let me get sick to my stomach and make an ass of myself on my first Homicide job!

He bumped into something, somebody, and saw that it was Detective Olivia Lassiter, and that he had almost knocked her over.