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Livia took the jar and stuck her gloved finger into the petroleum, placed a small amount on her upper lip and inside her nostrils. The lemony-menthol odor immediately overwhelmed her, which was a much better alternative to the wet rot of Anthony Davis.

Sanj and Kent, donned now in gloves and protective eyewear, approached the body and began their investigation. Livia stood back and observed, which was how this week was meant to go .

“Moderate stage of putrefaction,” Kent said. “I’d say five to seven days. Rigor is spent and the body is in a state of secondary laxity.” He felt Anthony Davis’s swollen legs. “Blood is fixed. Definitely a week.”

Sanj took notes and more pictures, snapping shots of the body and the apartment from every angle as Kent moved around the body. “Definitely a heart attack risk.”

“Or stroke,” Kent said. “He died on the couch and never moved. Lividity in the butt and legs.”

After they gathered everything of relevance and found nothing else to photograph, they managed Anthony Davis carefully into a black vinyl body bag and placed him onto the gurney.

As they were securing the body, Livia took note of the couch and coffee table.

A half-eaten pizza remained on the grease-stained box it was delivered in, and a Styrofoam container next to it sat suspiciously undisturbed.

Livia carefully lifted the lid with her pen to find the dried, brittle bones of eaten chicken wings.

A soda can was on its side on the floor, having stained the carpeting from where the syrupy liquid spilled.

She looked back to the gurney. “Can I check him?”

Sanj looked up from his clipboard. “The body? Be my guest.”

Livia unzipped the bag to expose Anthony Davis’s face, then used her penlight to illuminate his mouth.

Sticking her gloved fingers between his lips, she pressed down on his lower teeth and caused Anthony Davis’s mouth to gape open.

She put the penlight closer to his mouth to get a better look, the VapoRub losing some of its effectiveness this close to the rot.

“Got anything, Doc?” Sanj asked .

“Yeah,” Livia said, staring down Mr. Davis’s throat. “He choked on a chicken wing. I see the bones in the back of his throat.”

Kent and Sanj had a look.

“That’s why you’re the doc, Doc.”

“Anyone would have found it on autopsy,” Livia said.

“Yeah,” Sanj said. “But this makes us look smart.”

“I bet he dropped his soda when he started to choke.”

Sanj made sure to photograph the spilled soda can, then zipped up the bag and they pushed the gurney out of the apartment.

Outside, the residents watched with morbid expressions as Sanj and Kent loaded their neighbor into the van.

While the investigators talked with the police and finished their report, Livia found the building’s owner.

“You’re the landlord, is that correct?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m the one who found him.”

“Neighbors called to report a smell, is that right?”

“That’s right, Doc.”

“That ever happen before? Neighbors call with a complaint and you had to check on a tenant?”

“Tenants complain all the time. But I usually make a phone call and settle things that way. I called Tony for two days, and he obviously never answered. So I came over to see what was going on.”

“How did you get into the apartment?”

“I’ve got a master to all the units. It’s in the rental agreement that I can enter any apartment so long as I identify myself and give a reasonable lead time.”

Livia nodded as she thought.

“Cops asked me about this stuff earlier this morning. ”

“Of course,” Livia said. “You did the right thing. I’m curious for a different reason.” Livia pointed to the parking lot, where Sanj and Kent were finished with the police and climbing into the van. “That’s my ride. Sorry about Tony.”

“Yeah,” the landlord said. “You sure that smell goes away?”

“Give it a day or two,” Livia said as she walked down the stairs.

* * *

They gathered two bodies on the first day of ride-alongs, and arrived back at the morgue just as another crew of investigators went out on an evening call.

It was four p.m. Calls that came in this late in the day were dished off to the night-crew investigators.

Livia thanked Sanj and Kent for their hospitality before she left, promising to see them in the morning.

In her car, she plugged an address into her GPS.

Anthony Davis’s case and her discussion with the landlord had got her thinking.

During the forty-minute ride back to the morgue, with the body lying behind her, she used her phone to get the information she needed.

Casey Delevan had been reported missing not by friends or family, but by his landlord, much like Anthony Davis.

Livia jumped onto the highway and headed west toward Emerson Bay.

When she took the off-ramp in West Bay ninety minutes later, the GPS spit out directions until Livia was in front of Casey Delevan’s former residence, a long single-story building shaped in a blocked U that held eighteen units.

She found the number to the management and dialed.

“Old Town Apartments,” the voice said .

“This is Dr. Cutty from the medical examiner’s office. We talked earlier.”

“You here already?”

“I’m parked out front.”

“I’ll be right out.”

A minute later, Livia saw the front door to the office open and a balding man walk out onto the patio. She stood from her car and approached him with a smile and an extended hand.

“Livia Cutty.”

He took her hand. “Art Munson.”

“You own the apartments?”

“The whole building. I’m only seventy percent full. You’re not looking for a place to stay, are you, Dr. Cutty?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Didn’t figure a doctor would want one of my little units. So which tenant are you interested in?”

“An old one named Casey Delevan.”

“Guy they just pulled out of the bay?”

Livia nodded. “That’s him. You’re listed as the person who reported him missing, is that correct?”

“I called the cops, if that’s what you’re asking. Didn’t know I was listed as anything.”

“Why’d you call the cops?”

“He used to pay his rent three months at a time. I require it of some of my clients, especially the ones with bad or no credit. This prevents them from leaving me high and dry. He paid three months, missed his next installment. I sent two notices with no replies. So I went to check on things when he wouldn’t answer his phone.

Lot of these guys, they don’t pick up the phone when I call.

They forget I know where they live. Came by a couple of times, he never answered the door.

Finally had to use my key to enter the unit. Knew right away he was gone.”

“Why was that?”

“Place was dusty as hell. Rotten food in the fridge. Nobody had stepped foot in there for some time. I get it from time to time with this clientele. Something comes up and they split in a hurry. So, when I knew he was gone, I called the cops.”

“When was that?”

“Just after Halloween. I went through all this with the cops. He prepaid for the summer, July through September. Never got anything from him for October. I chased him with phone calls for a couple of weeks before I discovered the apartment had been abandoned.”

“And you called the police because you thought something had happened to him?”

“No. I called because I’m required to file a report with the police before I can clear the unit.

I was already out a month’s rent, so I wanted to move fast to find a new tenant.

He didn’t have any family listed on his documents, so I stored all his stuff—required by law—for three months.

Then I started hocking it. Almost forgot about him until I heard he jumped from that bridge.

Wish he’d written me a check before he jumped.

” Art Munson let out a small laugh that he quickly stifled.

“And you say the apartment looked unlived in for some time?”

“That’s for sure.”

Livia created a timeline in her head. Casey could have disappeared anytime from July to November, confirming the OCME’s suggestion that his body was twelve to sixteen months old when it came to the morgue.

“What did you do with his belongings?” Livia asked.

“Sold some of them to a few tenants. Tossed a bunch. Think a few things are still here in storage.”

“Yeah? Think I could have a look?”

“Suppose so. What’s the interest?”

“I did the autopsy on him. We’re tying up some loose ends.”

“Sounds like something the cops should be doing.”

“My sentiments exactly. But here I am at the end of a workday, doing this stuff myself.”

“C’mon in,” Art said. “Storage is in the basement.”

Livia followed Art Munson into the apartment building and through a door in the back, down a dark stairwell and into a large, cluttered basement.

Fluorescent lights blinked to life and cast the space in a migrainous glow.

It was a hoarder’s paradise. Livia counted eight wooden desks at first glance before noticing another three under stacks of couch cushions and dusty plastic plants.

A few old televisions were stacked in the corner along with two ancient refrigerators from when they were termed ice boxes , and dozens of framed pictures and hanging mirrors.

“Looks like a mess,” Art said. “But it’s more organized than you’d guess. Got everything separated by year. Delevan was last year, so that stuff’s over here. He was my only AWOL tenant last year.”

Art Munson pointed at a desk that held a stack of hardcover books, a microwave, and a computer.

“Most of his furniture sold. He had some halfway decent stuff, so it was easy to move. This is all that’s left. ”

Livia walked to the desk and surveyed the stack of books.

She saw a biography on Jeffrey Dahmer and an encyclopedia of serial killers.

She paged through them to find they were heavily outlined and dog-eared.

Livia pulled open the top drawer to a mess of pens and paper clips and unremarkable office supplies jostled and scattered during the desk’s journey to Art Munson’s storage space.

She pulled open the other drawers and rooted around unimpressed.

When she pulled on the bottom drawer, it was locked.

She went back to the books and paged more carefully through them.

“You gonna be a while, Doc?”

“Maybe a few minutes.”

“I’ll be outside. Let me know if you need anything.”

When Mr. Munson was gone, Livia pulled open the top drawer again and sifted through the junk.

She looked for a key to the locked drawer but didn’t find one.

She looked around the basement at the other stacks of junk.

The fluorescent lighting was starting to warm and the storage area was brighter now than it had been originally.

On the third desk she found a toolbox. Inside was a flat-head screwdriver.

Back at Casey’s desk, she inserted it into the space between the locked drawer and desk frame, and pried with everything she had.

Just as a grunt escaped her lips, the drawer splintered at the lock and sprung open.

Livia waited a moment to make sure Mr. Munson didn’t come down to check the ruckus, then she paged through the upright files hanging in the drawer.

Bank records and bills. The Old Town Apartments rental agreement.

Then a thicker folder. She pulled this out and placed it on the desk.

Newspaper articles spilled from the folder as she laid it down.

Meticulously cut from the paper, they had sharp, ninety-degree edges and long horizontal rectangles that contained the headlines.

Scanning them, Livia read articles chronicling the abduction of a Virginia girl named Nancy Dee.

A sick and eerie feeling came over her as Livia paged through the articles, which first covered the initial reports of the missing girl and the search for answers.

The police reports and speculation on how Nancy might have been abducted, where she had been the day she went missing—a timeline of her life that pieced together her steps that day, the last time she was seen alive.

The articles covered the police investigation, the town’s search, and the vigils held by family and friends.

The articles brought Livia back to Nicole’s abduction.

The Dee family had gone through the same process.

The difference, however, came as Livia continued to page through the stories.

Six months after Nancy Dee had disappeared, her body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Virginia woods more than one hundred miles from her hometown.

Livia stuffed the articles into the folder and rooted back through the drawer.

She found a map of Virginia in one of the folders, pulled it out, and dropped it on the desk.

Her fingers walked through the other hanging folders in the drawer, each labeled with a name.

She saw Paula D’Amato and Diana Wells scrawled on the labels. She pulled the folders from the drawer.

“Doc?” Art Munson yelled from the top of the stairs. “You almost done?”

Livia stacked the three folders and the Virginia map into a pile and stuck them in her purse. She closed the drawer and brushed the splintered wood particles under the desk .

“Yeah,” she said, rearranging her purse so it looked loose and casual before heading up the stairs.

Livia followed Art Munson outside. It was past six p.m. and dusk had settled over Emerson Bay, the fall sky lit by a fading lavender glow.

“Police ever look at any of Casey Delevan’s belongings?” Livia asked.

Art shook his head. “Nope. Just took my statement, asked a few questions. Said they’d get back to me. After three months, I told them I was renting the apartment and moving his stuff. Never heard from them again.”

“I’m still working with the detectives on this. Just making sure we don’t miss anything.” Livia handed him a business card. “If you remember anything else that feels important about Mr. Delevan, give me a call.”

“Will do. I thought he jumped off Points Bridge. Something else going on with him?”

Livia shrugged. “That’s it. We’re just crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Part of the bureaucratic process.”

Art held up Livia’s card as she climbed into her car. “You find out he left any money behind, he still owes me a month.”

Livia started the car. “If I find anything, I’ll make sure you get a check. Thanks for your help.”