"Yeah, I would. Are they bringing lawyers?"

"I don't know. I do know that they moved Maison to the ME's, and he was coming in to take a look. I'm going over."

"Wait for meI'll walk along."

The ME was a middle-sized man with long graying hair tied in a neat ponytail, gold-rimmed glasses, and a distracted air. They talked in his office, a routine government cubicle with no bodies in sight. "I've taken a preliminary look, is all I've donewe'll get right on the full autopsy. I'll do it myself. We'll start getting some chemistry back by late afternoon. But I can tell you three things," he said. "Your guys told me that she was strangled, and I can confirm that that's almost certainly the case. This wasn't accidental sexual asphyxiation or anything like that. Her hyoid bone's broken, and that takes direct pressure, probably with the thumbs, from a pair of strong hands."

"A man, then," Sloan said.

Lucas frowned. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"There are some rumors that she swung the other way," Sloan said. "Really, that she swung both ways, but recently, mostly with women."

The ME shook his head. "I can't tell you that it was a man, for sure. Just that it was somebody with strong hands. The second thing is this: The crime-scene people say that her condition suggested sexual activity before her death. And I can tell you that shedid engage in sexual activity, not long before her death, but at leastsome time before. An hour, maybe as many as two hours. There are two or three small scratches and some light bruising next to her vulva. Fingernails, I think, just enough to draw a little bloodbut the bruises had time to develop before she was killed. And it appearsI'll tell you for sure after the autopsythat while there is light bruising suggestive of rough sexual play, she was not fully penetrated. Not by a penis, anyway. It appears that the sexual play was primarily manual and oral. There's no semen."