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toe.
    “And he’s right-handed,” Joanna continued. “That’s why we see green paint only on the toe of the right shoe. That’s the foot he would use to kick through the green plywood fence.”
    “Jesus,” Jake muttered, more puzzled than ever. “Why the hell did he want to kick a hole in the fence?”
    “To get inside,” Joanna said simply.
    Jake shook his head. “That doesn’t work. Why kick in a fence and make all that noise? That’s only going to attract people. All he had to do was walk down another forty yards and he could hop over a gate.”
    Joanna nodded in agreement. The victim could easily have climbed over the gate. The chain link in the gate would have given him an excellent toehold.
    Jake looked up the dirt ramp to the street, picturing in his mind the apartment units across from the gate. “The streetlight,” he said to himself.
    “What about it?” Joanna asked.
    “There’s a streetlight in front of the apartments across from the gate,” Jake explained. “He didn’t want to jump over the gate because the area was lighted and he thought somebody might see him. That’s why he kicked a hole in the fence.”
    “But why’d he do it?”
    “Like you said, to get in.”
    “For what?”
    Jake shrugged his shoulders. “That, I don’t know.”
    They turned as Girish Gupta, a senior medical examiner for the County of Los Angeles, came over. He was holding a medium-size bottle in his hands. “Dr. Blalock! What a pleasure to see you again.”
    “It’s nice to see you as well,” Joanna said, liking the man and his genial yet formal manners. “Lieutenant Sinclair tells me we have some nasty business here.”
    “Indeed, indeed,” Gupta said in a clipped British accent. He was a short pudgy man who was born in New Delhi but raised and trained in London. “We have dead fetuses strewn about everywhere.”
    “How many so far?”
    “This is number eight.” Gupta held up a capped, fluid-filled bottle. A small human fetus was floating inside it. “This has to be the work of a crazy person. Who else would preserve fetuses in bottles, then bury them in the ground?”
    Joanna’s brow went up. “Are all the fetuses in bottles?”
    “Every one so far,” Gupta replied. “And all are perfectly preserved. Here, see for yourself.”
    Joanna took the bottle and held it up to the light. In it was a small human fetus with well-formed arms and legs. The mouth, nose, and eyes were easily discernible. It was at the three- to four-month stage of development. Joanna tilted the bottle and the fetus floated around, facing her. Its chest and abdomen had been cut open. “Are all of them cut like this?”
    “Every one of them,” Gupta answered. “It looks as if somebody has been performing abortions, doesn’t it?”
    “I guess.”
    Joanna continued to examine the floating fetus, wondering why the incisions were so straight and the arms and legs untouched. That usually didn’t happen when the abortion was done by a D and C. She handed the bottle back. “You’ve got a tough case on your hands.”
    “I was hoping you might help us,” Gupta said with an ingratiating smile.
    “I wish I could,” Joanna told him. “But my work at Memorial is really stacked up.”
    Jake stepped in. “We could really use your assistance here, Joanna,” he urged. “I can guarantee you that this is going to be a high-profile case. The story about a cemetery of dead babies is already out, and the press will play it for all it’s worth. You’d be doing us a big favor to take this one over.”
    “But it’s Dr. Gupta’s case,” Joanna protested. “And he—”
    “No, no!” Gupta interrupted quickly. “We are so far behind at the county morgue that this case would sit on the shelf for weeks. And I don’t think we want that, do we?”
    “No,” Joanna had to agree. The Los Angeles medical examiner’s office received over two hundred cases a day. They were always backed up, usually for weeks, sometimes longer. But