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Rich and I stood back froator drove off

“Were you able to reach Kelly?” I asked my partner

“Got her answering machine I didn’t knohat to say” He shook his head “I finally said, ‘It’s Rich Conklin I know it’s been a long tiht away?’ ”

“That’s good That’s fine”

“I don’t know She’ll either think I’ to say hello after twelve years Or, if she knows that I’m a cop, I just scared the hell out of her”

Chapter 21

THE ME’S OFFICE is in a building connected to the Hall of Justice by a breezeway out the back door of the lobby Claire was already working in the chilly gray heart of the autopsy suite when I got there at 9:30 thatup as she drew her scalpel from Patty Malone’s sternum to her pelvic bone The dead woless body was carbonized

“She hardly looks like a person,” I said

“Bodies burn like candles, you know,” Claire said “They become part of the fuel” She clamped back the burned tissue

“Did the blood tests come back from the lab?”

“About ten o Mrs Malone had had a couple of drinks Mr Malone had antihistamine in his blood That could have made him sleepy”

“And what about carbon h reception and back to where we stood over the table

“I picked up the Malones’ dental records, Claire,” he said “I’ll put them in your office”

Claire nodded, said, “I was about to tell Lindsay that the Malones lived long enough to get a carbon ative for projectiles or obvious broken bones But I did find so to want to see”

Claire adjusted her plastic apron, which just barely spanned her ever-thickening girth, and turned to the table behind her She pulled back the sheet exposing Patricia Malone’s legs and touched a gloved finger to a thin, barely discernible pink line around one of the woman’s ankles