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“I didn’t participate in her autopsy,” he is sure to remind them. “I glanced at her. That was it before I just now rolled her out. I did look over the autopsy report.”
         Should the chief’s work be negligent or incompetent, he’s not about to take the blame.
         “Any idea how long she’s been dead?” Benton asks.
         “Well, the cold temperatures would have slowed rigor.”
         “Frozen when she was found?”
         “Not yet. Apparently, her body temperature when she got here was thirty-eight degrees. Fahrenheit. I didn’t go to the scene. I can’t give you those details.”
         “The temperature at ten o’clock this morning was twenty-one degrees,” Thrush tells Benton. “The weather conditions are on the disk I gave you.”
         “So the autopsy report has already been dictated,” Benton says.
         “It’s on the disk,” Thrush answers.
         “Trace evidence?”
         “Some soil, fibers, other debris adhering to blood,” Thrush replies. “I’ll get them run in the labs as quick as I can.”
         “Tell me about the shotgun shell you recovered,” Benton says to him.
         “Inside her rectum. You couldn’t see it from the outside, but it showed up on x-ray. Damnedest thing. When they first showed me the film, I thought maybe the shell was under her body on the x-ray tray. Had no idea the damn thing was inside her.”
         “What kind?”
         “Remington Express Magnum, twelve-gauge.”
         “Well, if she shot herself, she’s certainly not the one who shoved the shell up her rectum after the fact,” Benton says. “You running it through NIBIN?”
         “Already in the works,” Thrush says. “The firing pin left a nice drag mark. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

    Chapter 8

         Early the next morning, snow blows sideways over Cape Cod Bay and melts when it touches the water. The snow barely dusts the tawny sliver of beach beyond Lucy’s windows but is deep on nearby rooftops and the balcony beyond her bedroom. She pulls the comforter up to her chin and looks out at the water and the snow, unhappy that she has to get up and deal with the woman sleeping next to her, Stevie.
         Lucy shouldn’t have gone to Lorraine’s last night. She wishes she hadn’t and can’t stop wishing it. She is disgusted with herself and in a hurry to leave the tiny cottage with its wraparound porch and shingled roof, the furniture dingy from endless rounds of renters, the kitchen small and musty with outdated appliances. She watches the early morning play with the horizon, turning it various shades of gray, and the snow is falling almost as hard as it was last night. She thinks of Johnny. He came here to Provincetown a week before he died and met someone. Lucy should have found that out a long time ago, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t face it. She watches Stevie’s regular breathing.
         “Are you awake?” Lucy asks. “You need to get up.”
         She stares at the snow, at sea ducks bobbing on the ruffled gray bay, and wonders why they aren’t frozen. Despite what she knows about the insulating qualities of down, she still can’t believe that any warm-blooded creature can comfortably float on frigid water in the middle of a blizzard. She feels cold beneath the comforter, chilled and repulsed and uncomfortable in her bra and panties and button-down shirt.
         “Stevie, wake up. I’ve got to get going,” she says loudly.
         Stevie doesn’t stir, her back gently rising and falling with each slow breath, and Lucy is sick with regret and is annoyed and disgusted because she can’t seem to stop herself from doing this thing, this thing she hates. For the better part of a year, she has told herself no more, and then nights like last night happen and it isn’t smart or logical and she is always sorry, always, because it is degrading and then she has to extricate herself and