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cyanide, but I’d be shocked if either test was positive.’
    Now he had my full attention. ‘Prior to death?’ I asked. ‘Is that what you said? Or after?’
    â€˜Certainly prior, though perhaps both. Let me explain.’ Hyong was smiling now, exposing the yellowed teeth and coated tongue of a heavy smoker. ‘Lividity was fully set before the removal of the victim’s organs. I know this because the volume of blood in her body would have been greatly reduced if she’d been eviscerated immediately after death, producing a much fainter lividity. I can’t be certain, of course, that she was returned to a cold space in the hours between her death and the removal of her organs. But it does make sense.’
    Hyong’s response directly addressed an anomaly I’d already considered. Blunt force injuries are almost always driven by passion, by the heat of the moment, yet the preparation of the body for disposal had been carefully thought out. A gap of many hours between the two events would go a long way toward resolving the dilemma. Perhaps the killer simply cooled down enough to get his act together, or perhaps a second actor had arrived, somebody more experienced, to lend a guiding hand.
    â€˜The organ removal,’ I asked, ‘do you think it was done by somebody with medical knowledge?’
    â€˜No, this is the work of a hunter or somebody who works at a slaughterhouse. The victim’s sternum was cut with a heavy-bladed knife, and there are nicks, probably from the same knife, on her ribs.’
    I considered this for a moment, before asking an obvious question. ‘You said she was exposed to cold prior to her death. How much cold?’
    â€˜Thirty-five to forty degrees would be my guess, the internal temperature of a common refrigerator. But I want you to take a look at her dentition.’ He pulled down the woman’s jaw, then stretched her lips away from her teeth. ‘Please, look,’ he said.
    Though I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just describe whatever he’d discovered, I walked over to the table and stared down at my victim’s molars, two of which bore gold crowns. But that wasn’t what struck me as odd. It appeared that she had no cavities.
    â€˜Notice those fillings?’ Hyong asked.
    â€˜Do you mean the crowns?’
    Hyong’s face was round and slightly dished in the center. When he compressed his lips, his disapproval apparent, his mouth all but vanished. ‘Look closer,’ he demanded.
    I did as I was told, noticing that my victim’s many fillings were white instead of the silver I was used to seeing. ‘It’s quite likely your victim was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain. In the East, they use composite fillings, the white you see in her mouth; in the West, metal or silver. Notice the gold crowns, common in Europe, while here we cap teeth with porcelain.’
    My first thought was of the neighborhood just to the north of Williamsburg, to Greenpoint and the many thousands of Poles who’d emigrated there following the break-up of the Soviet Union. From even the furthest reaches of Greenpoint, it was only a few miles to where my victim’s body was discovered. Now I had a place to begin.
    â€˜I hope you’re not going to ask me about time of death,’ Hyong declared when I turned away from the body and took up a position near the door.
    â€˜I don’t suppose there’s any point.’ In fact, every physical indicator of time of death is altered by cold: rigor mortis, livor mortis and insect activity are greatly retarded, while the loss of body heat is accelerated.
    â€˜There’s a case reported by the DiMaios, father and son,’ Hyong announced, ‘in which the body of a young boy who’d drowned in a cold lake was still in full rigor when it was recovered seventeen days later.’
    I looked back at my victim. Hyong had left her with her mouth