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recent reply said for Sydney to speak with Dr. Carmichael directly.
    Ana printed the message and added it to the growing stack. She grabbed a scrap of paper from the cube on the corner of the desk and reached into the side drawer, feeling around for a pen. Her nail caught on a small, hard edge, and she recoiled with a yelp, sucking the tip of her middle finger, which was now dark with blood. She held pressure on the cut and searched for the culprit. An ivory business card with raised black lettering that read, “Dr. Alan Sanders, Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Fertility Specialist,” was stuck in the seam of the drawer.
    Sydney never mentioned seeing another doctor.

CHAPTER 8
    Mike entered the glass vestibule outside of the medical examiner’s office and stomped his boots. He dusted the snow from his hair and jacket and silenced his cell phone. The wet soles of his shoes squeaked against the tile floor as he made his way past a dozen quiet offices to the autopsy suite.
    Dr. Kimberly Taylor waited at the door, wearing a white lab coat and holding an electronic voice recorder. The hem of her purple dress rested just above her knees, and a gold cross necklace hung around her neck. Her short hair, the color of dark honey, was styled to emphasize her hazel eyes. Kim was only two years younger than Mike, and he’d known her almost her entire life. They’d gone through school together with only a grade between them. Kim had started early, while he had started late. She’d come a long way from the pigtailed girl he had adored from afar, and he still found her breathtaking even at her current age fifty. She smiled and reached out to hug him.
    “How are you holding up?”
    He lingered in the comfort of her warm embrace a minute before answering. “As well as can be expected. I didn’t see this coming.”
    Kim held her hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this right now?”
    He didn’t, but postponing hearing her findings for hours, a day at most, wasn’t going to change that. “I need to know what happened.”
    Three self-draining, stainless steel tables cast long shadows across the dimly lit room. There were showerhead-type attachments in each of the sinks for washing down the bodies and scales for weighing organs. Several wheeled gurneys lined the side of the room opposite the refrigerated storage drawers.
    A white sheet concealed Sydney’s body at the center of it all.
    Mike swallowed the lump in his throat and moved toward her.
    Kim pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, turned on an overhead light, and with Mike’s permission, folded the sheet back to Sydney’s shoulders.
    Her blond-on-brown highlighted hair had been freshly washed and brushed, and her eyes were closed. Kim had taken obvious extra care in preparing her.
    Mike did his best not to focus on the crude stitching that seamed Sydney’s head closed.
    “The coffin pillow will hide that,” Kim said, repositioning Sydney’s hair. She lifted an evidence bag from the cart next to the table and showed Mike the label. “The bottle you found at the scene was a prescription for zopiclone, a sleep aid that is lethal in high doses, especially when mixed with alcohol.”
    “We found an empty bottle of vodka in the room.”
    Kim nodded. “I’ve gone over the case notes. The label says the prescription was filled the day before Sydney’s death, making it a reasonable guess that there were thirty pills in the bottle when she checked in at the Aquarian.”
    “Would that be enough?”
    Kim understood what he meant without his saying it. “It would, but . . .” She drew her lips together and tilted her head.
    “But what?”
    Kim pulled Sydney’s right hand out from under the sheet. The rose-pink polish was chipped on two of her nails. Kim called attention to Sydney’s index finger. “She was brought in with dried vomit around her mouth.” Mike remembered that from the Aquarian. “See here, where her nail is broken? There were traces of vomit,