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chicken,” Spere said, and they both spared him a momentary glance.
    “And?” said Hazel.
    “And it was a heart attack. For sure.”
    She exhaled, and it was relief, but Deacon wasn’t done.
    “But it wasn’t a wasp sting that did it to him.”
    He beckoned them to lean down to look close up at Henry’s face. He’d been stung once high on the cheek and once under the hairline. Deacon lay a gloved fingertip just below where they could see the sting mark on his cheek. It was a black dot, as black as if it had been made with a lead pencil.
    Hazel leaned down closer and Spere nestled in beside her. “What kind of wasp leaves a black mark?” he said.
    “Watch this,” said Deacon. He had a one-centimetre pin in his hand. “I got this off of the bulletin board in the staff room.” He leaned down, and with a gloved thumb and forefinger at the edges of the mark, he gently stretched the skin. The black dot expanded and they could see athin, bloodless tunnel about half a millimetre wide descending into the dead man’s cheek. Deacon held the pin above the hole, his pinky against the top of Wiest’s eye socket to steady himself, and then he let it go. It dropped with no resistance into the wound almost all the way to its head, like a blade into a sheath. Then he withdrew the pin and held it under the light. It was completely clean.
    “What the hell is going on?” Hazel said.
    “Well, I have a theory,” said Deacon, “I already resected the ‘sting’ on his forehead, but I thought I’d wait for you to do the second.” He set the pin aside and picked up a scalpel from the tray beside the autopsy table. He set the tip of the blade above the wound and drew it down through the centre of it, splitting the skin neatly in two directly through the black mark. There was no blood at all. Hazel turned away, feeling her skin fizzing. “There you go,” she heard Deacon say.
    She turned back and looked at the edge of the cut. He’d separated the incision with his fingers. “Can I swab this?” Spere asked.
    “Go right ahead, but I can already tell you what it is.”
    Hazel looked into the wound. The channel Deacon had split in half was about the pin’s length and its edges were as black as the exterior of the wound. “It’s a burn,” she said quietly.
    “Got it in one,” said the pathologist.
    “From what?”
    Spere was running a Q-tip upwards from inside Henry Wiest’s cheek to the skin. He sealed it in an evidence bag.
    Deacon removed his hands from the man’s skin. “You know what can cause a massive infarction, pathological signs of anaphylaxis, and a burn mark?”
    “I gather a pin from a hospital bulletin board isn’t the answer.”
    “No, it isn’t.” Deacon turned to Detective Spere. “Howard?”
    Spere was lost in thought for a moment, a rare state for him, Hazel thought. Then he said, “He was electrocuted.”
    She stood in Deacon’s office with his phone against her ear. She’d been on hold for a full minute. Finally, the friendly voice returned. “Queesik Bay Police Service.”
    “Who’s your acting chief?” she asked brusquely.
    “Do you mean shift chief or the commander?”
    “Whoever’s top dog down there at this very moment.”
    “That’s Commander LeJeune.”
    “Put me through to him, please.”
    She waited a moment. “LeJeune here.” It was a woman’s voice.
    “This is Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef calling from the Port Dundas OPS. I need to have a face-to-face with you and one of your constables, Lydia Bellecourt.”
    “What is this in reference to, Detective Inspector?”
    “An investigation of yours.”
    “Well, I’m just heading out for the day, but I can see you first thing. Say, eight-thirty, if that’s not too early.”
    “It’s too late. I’m already in Mayfair. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

] 6 [
    Keeping well within the cover of the forest, Larysa passed two days in hunger. And yet they were the best days she’d passed in recent memory. She’d