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Exactly how their murder victim diedwas a key question. The answer could lead them to why she had been killed, and the ultimate question: by whom?
    Experienced homicide investigators have different ways of getting through the macabre ordeal—inhaling the combined odors of formaldehyde and disinfectant and stale death that pervade a morgue; watching a human body be opened up like a ripe watermelon by scalpel, drill, electric saw, and other assorted hand tools; vital organs like the heart, kidneys, lungs, and brain examined, removed, weighed, and dissected. Some old-timers puff on cigars, bathing their smell and taste senses in strong smoke. The trick, most detectives agree, is to remain detached. The body on the table isn’t someone they know, and it isn’t even the human being it had once been. That person is gone.
    For this—only his second autopsy as a homicide detective—Bertocchini kept notes, as it was his case. The distraction was a welcome one. Seeing a dead body was a strong argument to support the existence of a divine savior, he had already concluded. Without the spirit of life, a human body was just a piece of meat.
    In his seven years working Homicide, Rosenquist had been present for more than a hundred autopsies. The only ones that got to him anymore were when the victim was a baby or young child. In such cases, the procedure was akin to cleaning a chicken.
    During the autopsy of Jane Doe, Bertocchini took down his and Rosenquist’s observations, which were later typed up by a clerk and made part of the case journal, known euphemistically as the “Murder Book.” The pathologist turned in his own signed coroner’s report.
    Before the body had been disrobed by a coroner’s technician—the clothing would be bagged and labeled and sent to the crime lab—the detectives took another look at the twigs underneath the rear brassiere strap. The longest was about 5 inches, and it was centered under the bra. This was a big-busted young woman, and the bra was tight. In fact, once her bra was removed, a clear impression was left in her back by the twigs. Even if she had been dragged on her back—the trail of matted-down grass at the crime scene suggested that the body had been dragged to the ditch—it seemed unlikely that these long twigs could get so far under the strap. Besides, they had seen brush with these types of twigs and leaves growing down by the water in the ditch, but none up on top of the embankment. Had the killer placed these twigs under her bra as part of some weird ritual? Or had the bra been snapped together by his fumbling hands in the dark as his victim lay on the ground by the ditch, either dead or otherwise incapacitated, and in so doing did he catch the twigs accidentally inside the strap?
    They had also noticed something funny about the way she was wearing her shorts. The waistband was turned inside , suggesting to the detectives that someone else had last pulled them up. Had the killer actually taken the time to dress his victim before dumping her body? If so, he had missed one article of clothing: her top. Had he hidden it? If so, why? Or had he taken it?
    After the Polaroid shots of Jane Doe were taken, Bertocchini began his report with a detailed description of the victim. “Short blond hair. Brown eyes. One pierced hole in each earlobe. Moderate tan with white bikini-marked areas. On her upper chest her skin is peeling due to a sunburn. No jewelry.”
    Meanwhile, the pathologist had opened a metal drawer and laid out an assortment of tools on an adjacent chrome table. He slipped on a headset with a small microphone at the mouthpiece, then turned on the tape recorder clipped to his belt.
    Looking down at the dead body as if it were a familiar road map, he began. As he worked, he spoke into the recorder with the clinical cadence of someone who had done this hundreds of times before.
    “The neck has a discontinuous horizontally oriented 1-inch bandlike abrasion. It is most noticeable in