He seemed a nice enough kid. Morgan walked back into the living room, where Miranda was sitting on the sofa, small and alone amidst the commotion.
“You all right?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Did you see the stuff scrawled on the bathroom walls?”
She looked at him quizzically, cocking her head like a wounded animal.
“Hieroglyphs of some sort. Written in blood.”
“Philip’s ...” she murmured, her voice trailing off.
A woman from the CSI unit kneeled in front of them.
“Detective Quin, I’m going to need some bits and pieces.”
Miranda held out her hands one at a time, and the woman pared residual matter from under her nails into a small plastic envelope.
“Did you wash?” she asked.
“Yeah, I had a shower. I flushed the toilet.” Miranda seemed almost embarrassed.
“That’s okay. I need to check what I can.”
“There’ll be powder under my nails,” said Miranda. “I was on the range yesterday.”
“With the murder weapon?”
“Pardon?”
“The murder weapon,” the woman repeated, nodding in the direction of the bedroom.
“I guess so. I don’t know.” It seemed inconceivable he could have been killed with her own gun. And inevitable that he was.
“And we’re going to need a vaginal scraping.”
“He was my lover, for God’s sake.”
“Did you have sex last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll need to find out.”
“Yeah, okay. Where?”
“As soon as we can. We’ll take you over to Women’s.”
Morgan felt for her, but it was standard procedure.
“Can you do it here?” Miranda asked.
“I can’t, but the M.E. could.”
“A coroner’s pelvic — see if she’s up for it.”
The woman went to find Ravenscroft. Morgan leaned over the sofa from behind, resting his hand lightly on her shoulder.
“We’ll have to go down to Headquarters,” he said. “Spivak and Eeyore, they’ll want to talk.”
“How long?”
“What? Downtown —”
“No. How long’s he been dead?” she asked.
“Five or six hours.”
“Is it bad?”
“He’s dead.”
“Gruesome?”
“Yeah, very.”
“Disembowelled?”
“Eviscerated —”
“God!”
“Yeah.”
“While I slept. Oh, Jesus.”
“You were unconscious, you’ll need to be tested. Someone slipped you something. Given the outcome, I’m guessing it wasn’t Philip.”
Morgan’s cellphone buzzed. He flinched at the intrusiveness. The CSI woman and Ellen Ravenscroft approached Miranda and led her into the bathroom.
When Miranda walked past Philip, exposed on the bed with his guts looping out of his abdomen, she did not flinch. She had seen worse. The bathroom, she found more distressing. Blood on the walls, taunting with unrevealed meaning. The horror, she thought, the horror, and nothing else came to her mind.
“You sure you want me to do this?” asked Ellen.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” said Miranda.
“Fully licensed, fifteen years this side of the pond, may the House of Windsor and my own dead mother forgive me.”
“So, help yourself,” said Miranda, sitting on the edge of the tub.
“You’ll have to drop your knickers, love.”
With an annoying air of solicitude the CSI woman helped Miranda back onto her feet. She closed her eyes tight, and then opened them slowly. Curiously, she felt little grief. Rage, fear, a sense of violation, of profound loss — it was not about Philip, it was the gaping hole his absence left inside her.
Although Miranda preferred skirts, anticipating the police she had put on slacks, feeling less vulnerable that way. The CSI woman held out a bath towel, and averting her eyes she wrapped it around Miranda, who stepped out of her slacks and underwear.
“You want me to assume the position?” Miranda asked, dubiously eyeing the bathmat on the floor. Instead, she sat down again on the edge of the tub.
“Okay, spread ’em,” said the M.E. “Let’s see what’s been happening in there.”
As Miranda leaned back to brace herself, Ellen Ravenscroft hunkered between her knees with a penlight in her mouth. Miranda flinched involuntarily as the M.E. reached in with a swab.
“You had a shower, right? But no douche?”
“No. Damnit. I don’t remember. Get the hell out of there.”
“Just a minute, love. Okay. I’d say you had a right good night of it. Well, until, you know —”
“That’s gratifying. Are we finished?”
Miranda closed her legs, stood up, and retrieved her clothes. The M.E. fell backwards on her bottom.
“Yes,” said Ellen as she unceremoniously struggled to her feet while the other two women watched. “We’re done.”
“How long have you been doing this?” Miranda asked as she slipped back into her clothes.
“With dead people? Seems forever. I actually trained as an OB/GYN. God only knows why. Staring into the gaping maws of womanhood day in, day out, it palls after a while. So I made a lateral move to the morgue.”
“You’d rather work with the dead?”
“Wouldn’t we all, dear. Look at the three of us.” Her glance included the CSI technician. “Women in our prime, the three witches of Caldor, whatever, guiding the departed into the underworld —”
“Is there anything else?” asked the CSI woman, edging toward the door, but instead of leaving she leaned against it as if she were afraid an intruder might overhear them.
Ravenscroft leaned close to Miranda and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Sorry about this, love.”
“Me too,” said Miranda.
“I’ll need a blood sample and a urine specimen, then we’re finished. You threw up, didn’t you, but we’re hoping for traces of a knock-out drug, maybe GHB or something more potent.”
“Hoping for?”
“Your alibi, love.”
The M.E. took blood and without a fanfare of modesty Miranda produced urine.
“Is that everything?” she asked, turning the vivid yellow vial