“Sorry,” Fielding said. “There was no film in the drawer. I forgot. By the way, it's your job to keep film in the drawer.”

“It would help if you d tell me when the film drawer's empty.”

Women are supposed to be intuitive. I didn't think I needed to tell you.”

“I got the measurement of these burns around his head;” Susan reported, ignoring his remark.

“Okay.” - Susan gave him the measurements, then started work on the tongue.

Marino backed away from the table. “Jesus,” he said again. “That always gets me.”

“Liver temp's one hundred and five,” I reported to Fielding.

I glanced up at the clock. Waddell had been dead for an hour. He hadn't cooled much. He was big. Electrocution heats you up. The brain temperatures of smaller men I had autopsied were as high as a hundred and ten. Waddell's right calf was at least that, hot to the touch, the muscle in total tetanus.

“A little abrasion at the margin. But nothing big time,” Susan pointed out to me.

“He bite his tongue hard enough to bleed that much?”

Marino asked.

“No,” I said.

“Well, they're already raising a stink about it.”

His voice rose. “I thought you'd want to know.”

I paused, resting the scalpel on the edge of the table as it suddenly occurred to me. “You were a witness.”

“Yeah. I told you I was going to be.”

Everybody looked at him.

“Trouble's brewing out there,” he said. “I don't want no one leaving this joint alone.”

“What sort of trouble?” Susan asked.

“A bunch of religious nuts have been hanging out at Spring Street since this morning. Somehow they got word about his bleeding, and when the ambulance drove off with his body they started marching in this direction like a bunch of zombies.”

“Did you see it when he started bleeding?” Fielding asked him.

“Oh, yeah. They juiced him twice. The first time he made this loud hiss, like steam coming out of a radiator, and the blood started pouring out from under his mask. They're saying the chair might have malfunctioned.”