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thousand guys who want a spot fighting fire there is one job in the county. A thousand to one odds.
    Back when Doug was a toddler, a big uniformed man picked him up in wraparound arms and gave him a drink of juice in a squad car. Doug was squatting with his mom in a shooting gallery flophouse along with other heroin addicts. He'd been without a meal for days and likely would have died of neglect had the place not gone down in a bust. The big policeman took him to a place with food, toys and a bed. A place where people smelled nice and spoke kindly.
    The silver lining to all this was an early PhD in the streets. He'd already heard every lie, every con, every scheme possible from his parents before turning legal age. It was hard to put a con over on Doug, even his first week on patrol. The younger the criminal he busted, the better. He told it straight when he got a teenage delinquent in his car. He told them they still had a choice in life. He described the direction they were headed in and where it would lead. Occasionally, he made headway.
    He's brought back to the present by exiting the 5 freeway at Main. The Crown Vic jounces over downtown's infamous potholes. Funny how the sunshine streets of LA change the minute you get in the 213 area code—from pleasantly sunny to baked glare. A guy needs eye protection just to look at the asphalt. Doug turns onto Daly Street, in chronic disrepair even though the passing mom-and-pop burger stands, tired storefronts and an 18-minute Laundromat must pay taxes like everybody else. The worn commercial strip finally gives way to little clapboard houses, built back when this had been a nice neighborhood, before the 5 chopped it in half.
    Doug pulls into the entrance of the County of Los Angeles, Department of Coroner. The sign says, Law and Science Serving the Community . He turns right, past the stately main building with its grand, 1915 facade of red brick and Corinthian columns, and keeps going to a squat yellow and brown structure, so un-idealistic it doesn't even rate a sign. Its identity is stenciled in muddy green letters on the outside wall: 1104A, Medical Examiner Forensic Laboratories .
    The lot is jammed with precisely parked and gleaming Crown Victorias, white in color with the distinctive coroner's logo on the side showing a microscope, a beaker, a set of scales and a medical symbol . Designed in 1966 at the suggestion of LA's original celebrity coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi. The doctor was famous for his work on the Manson family murders and the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
    But celebrity history is for tourists, not working detectives. Dougchecks in and heads to the basement. The pungent smell of plastic-wrapped bodies, disinfectant, body odor and air freshener brews a noxious perfume: "Eau de Coroner" by those who know it well. The smell permeates everything.
    Claire is in the large room, "the body shop" as Doug calls it on the outside. It's bright in here, even the floor is white tile, plumbed with drainage. It's the kind of room meant to be hosed down from ceiling to floor at the end of the day. Claire is engrossed in watching the coroner's every move over twin autopsy tables. The bodies delivered a few hours ago have been removed from their bags and rest on full-size metal trays, placed side-by-side, each on their own table.
    Doug takes a deep breath he's instantly sorry for and steps inside. The plastic bags over Hector Stamos' hands are long gone, just like Claire promised. Plastic bags are avoided because they accumulate moisture, destroying evidence. Lecturing the capable Dr. Claire on this point at a crime scene could have earned him lifelong-enemy status at the coroner's and he feels a surge of pride and relief—13 years of marriage and he's actually learned something about male-female relations.
    Claire looks up. "We did a saliva washing." Doug comes closer as the coroner measures bite marks on both bodies.
    "Anything on the clothing?"
    "A few hair