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birthday.”
         He unzips the pouch and spreads it open. The victim has raggedly cut short, black hair that is damp and still gory with bits of brain and other tissue. There is almost nothing left of her face. It looks as if a small bomb blew up inside her head, which is rather much what happened.
         “Shot in the mouth,” Dr. Lonsdale says, and he is young with an intensity that borders on impatience. “Massive skull fractures, brain pulpifaction, which of course we usually associate with suicides, but nothing else about this case is consistent with suicide. It appears to me that her head was tilted pretty far back when the trigger was pulled, explaining why her face is basically shot off, some of her teeth blown out. Again, not uncommon in suicides.”
         He switches on a magnifying lamp and positions it close to the head.
         “No need to pry open her mouth,” he comments. “Since she has no face left. Thank God for small favors.”
         Benton leans close and smells the sweet, putrid stench of decomposing blood.
         “Soot on the palate, the tongue,” Dr. Lonsdale continues. “Superficial lacerations of the tongue, the perioral skin and nasolabial fold due to the bulging-out effect when gases from the shotgun blast expand. Not a pretty way to die.”
         He unzips the pouch the rest of the way.
         “Saved the best for last,” Thrush says. “What do you make of it? Reminds me of Crazy Horse.”
         “You mean the Indian?” Dr. Lonsdale gives him a quizzical look as he unscrews the lid from a small glass jar filled with a clear liquid.
         “Yeah. I think he put red hand prints on his horse’s ass.”
         There are red hand prints on the woman, on her breasts, abdomen and upper inner thighs, and Benton positions the magnifying lamp closer.
         Dr. Lonsdale swabs the edge of a hand print and says, “Isopropyl alcohol, a solvent like that will get it off. Obviously, it’s not water-soluble and brings to mind the sort of stuff people use for temporary tattooing. Some type of paint or dye. Could also have been done in permanent Magic Marker, I suppose.”
         “I’m assuming you haven’t seen this in any other cases around here,” Benton says.
         “Not at all.”
         The magnified hand prints are well defined with clean margins, as if made with a stencil, and Benton looks for feathering strokes of a brush, for anything that might indicate how the paint, ink or dye was applied. He can’t tell, but based on the density of color, he suspects the body art is recent.
         “I suppose she could have gotten this at some point earlier. In other words, it’s unrelated to her death,” Dr. Lonsdale adds.
         “That’s what I’m thinking,” Thrush agrees. “There’s a lot of witchcraft around here with Salem and all.”
         “What I’m wondering is how quickly something like this begins to fade,” Benton says. “Have you measured them to see if they’re the same size as her hand?” He indicates the body.
         “They look bigger to me,” Thrush says, holding out his own hand.
         “What about her back?” Benton asks.
         “One on each buttock, one between her shoulder blades,” Dr. Lonsdale replies. “Look like a man’s size, the hands do.”
         “Yeah,” Thrush says.
         Dr. Lonsdale pulls the body partially on its side, and Benton studies the hand prints on the back.
         “Looks like she has some sort of abrasion here,” he says, noting a scraped area on the hand print between the shoulder blades. “Some inflammation.”
         “I’m not clear on all the details,” Dr. Lonsdale replies. “It’s not my case.”
         “Looks as if it was painted after she got the scrape,” Benton says. “Am I seeing welts, too?”
         “Maybe some localized swelling. Histology should answer that. It’s not my case,” he reminds them.