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"Who is he?" Fiona de at David

"He’s a newcomer to the area, but a vahed "Well, of course, you can," he ht ThatHe ih, before anyone had to find hireed with some of our rules, but isn’t that the American way?"

"There’s notDewey said They were in autopsy The corpse of the beautiful blonde still looked as angelic as when it had first been discovered "I haven’t opened her up yet--we’ll get to that toraphs and taken what blood we could for tests--which was hard, since she’s been drained almost completely dry If there’s a quarter of a pint left in her body, I’d be surprised Cause of death--well, I could be wrong, but it looks pretty obvious that she bled out It’s as if it was siphoned from her body We’ve tried to find se results, particularly given e just found out in the last fewsexual assault has been almost impossible"

"What? Why? Was there evidence of semen? Or condoms?"

"At least seven different brands," Dewey said dryly

"We’re taking it step by step I’h--I know you want to catch this killer before panic fills the city"

There was so that seemed eternally sad about the snohite body on the table, though the white gown had been replaced by aout in the last few er said "You knoho she is?"

"Got a match on her prints The results posted to your office and o," Dewey told him, an odd look on his face

"What is it?"

"Snow White here isn’t what she appears to be Her name is Tina Lawrence She worked at Barely, Barely, Barely, which is a pretty lo establish hielic Miss Tina Lawrence had a rap sheet a s, prostitution and assault and battery

"Wow," he said

"Not a nice young lady," Dewey said

Jagger winced "She knifed a college student for being four dollars short," he said quietly

"Keep reading She tried to cut the balls off another john Get this, she ad she wasn’t in jail," Dewey said

"We can pick people up, but we can’t always get theer said "See connections and the DA offered her a plea in order to pick up a few of her friends ere higher up in the drug chain"

"Not a nice girl Actually a deadly girl--and now a dead one," Dewey couess you’ll be heading off to the strip club," Dewey said, punching hier walked out of the autopsy rooue He called Tony Miro, and told hi Tina Lawrence’s friends, coworkers and employer, and to pull the credit card receipts and find out who had been in attendance at Tina’s last show He needed to hang around near thefor the sun to fall

As Dewey had said, Tina Lawrence hadn’t been a nice girl She’d been a deadly one

He could only begin to iine the horror that would be Tina Lawrence as a vampire

Chapter 3

The coroner’s office never closed It e with financial and clerical staff Under the Napoleonic Code of Law still in effect in Louisiana, the New Orleans coroner’s office was responsible not only for the classification of death, but also the evaluation of sex crieneral health of the citizens of the city, specifically recognizing serious threats froists, forensic psychiatrists, patient liaisons, nurses in charge of sexual assault exaists and ed the corridors

Death didn’t stop at any particular tihtfall the accountants, assistants and usually even the experts in such fields as toxicology, entoy and more had called it quits for the day, and only a skeleton crew--if the pun could be forgiven--were on duty The dead, after all, were dead

Usually

Fiona headed down Martin Luther King Boulevard and arrived outside the building’s entrance while it was still early; she watched as people ca as they h the change, to concentrate and enter as a vauards never suspected a thing as she went by; the outer offices, where a few doctors were still working, were easily breeched; and she breezed by the night attendant sitting outside thenoticed Because several people had died in recent days, she took a chance and searched through the records to find the right body

Then she headed into the dim, chilly room

To her surprise, the body of Tina Lawrence had not been slid away neatly into a refrigerated slot but she was stretched out on an autopsy table