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months seems new to you.” She looked back to her writing.
    â€œSeems like you’re on the wrong side of Doc Peltier today. You come in late? I was two minutes late for a meeting with her once, and she just about—”
    â€œEver see a doctor about that nose problem?”
    â€œNose problem?”
    â€œThe way it pokes into other people’s business.”
    I watched her fingertips shake slightly as she wrote; the room was cold.
    â€œI apologize,” I said. “I’ve worked with Clair, uh, Dr. Peltier, for a year now and always feel like I’m on her wrong side. Like maybe she doesn’t have a right side. But if she didn’t have a right side, how could she have a right hand? And if she didn’t have a right hand, how could . . .” I heard myself babbling inanely but couldn’t stop, my version of small talk.
    Dr. Davanelle gathered her papers and stood.
    â€œNice to have met you, Detective Carson, but I—”
    â€œRyder. It’s Carson Ryder.”
    â€œâ€”have much to do today. Good-bye.”
    I followed her across the room until she turned like I was a smelly dog sniffing at her legs.
    â€œSomething else I can do for you, Detective Carson?”
    â€œRyder. Carson Ryder. I’m here to observe the post on the Nelson body, Dr. Davanelle.”
    â€œWhy don’t you have a seat in the lobby,” she said, punching the word lobby . “Someone will let you know when we’re ready.”

C HAPTER 4
    â€œ. . . rats . . . rats . . . rats.”
    Dr. Davanelle’s gloved hands pressed aside the victim’s pubic hair as she leaned over the body and finished a slow and precisely enunciated reading of the inscription. “The ink is light lavender and difficult to decipher from a distance. Preliminary findings suggest a writing instrument with a very fine stylus. Slight penetration into the epidermis can be observed. Microphotos are in the case file. . . .”
    Summoned from exile after a half-hour wait, I’d found Dr. Davanelle and the ancient diener, Walter Huddleston, positioning the body. A tall, broad-shouldered black man with the strength of a much younger man, Huddleston had eyes like red torches and never smiled. I pictured Halloween’s children trooping to his house, the door creaking open to Huddleston’s scarlet glare, the kids sprinting away in a melee of screams and flying candy.
    Dr. Davanelle finished the visual inventory. There was no other writing, only a tattoo on the scapula, an Oriental dragon. She pulled her cloth mask tightly into place, picked up the scalpel, and the procedure progressed—the Y cut, the revelation of the dark machinery. I was impressed by her economy of motion, gloved hands moving with such floating, independent grace as to suggest each had its ownhomunculus in the rafters. Clair and the other staff paths, Stanley Hoellker and Marv Rubin, seemed heavy handed in comparison, brusque and mechanical. I watched for a half hour, entranced, a word I never thought I’d connect to an autopsy.
    â€œYou’ve got great hands,” I said. “Ever think of playing shortstop?”
    She lifted the heart to the scale, dropped it in. “Surely you know the procedure is being taped, Detective,” she said. “I’d appreciate your remaining quiet.”
    â€œSorry,” I said.
    Dr. Davanelle continued down the cavity for another fifteen minutes. She removed and weighed the first kidney, then proceeded to the second. It squirted from her hand and fell toward the floor. Without seeming to look, she caught the tumbling organ in her other hand.
    â€œThere you go,” I said, forgetting myself. “Shortstop all the way.”
    Her green eyes blazed from above her mask. I shrugged and said, “Forgive me. Just making conversation.”
    She flicked her head toward the door. “The hall’s over there, the way you