"Mister, I didn't catch your-"

She heard the click of the receiver, then a dial tone. Jerk, she thought. What if he didn't show up? What if he didn't call back?

She dialed Homicide and left a message for Beamis and Shradick: "Get your butts back to the morgue." Then she waited.

At noon, she got a buzz on the intercom from the front desk. "There's a Mr. Quantrell here," said the secretary. "He says you're expecting him. Want me to send him down?"

"I'll meet him up there," said M. J. "I'm on my way."

She knew better than to just drag a civilian in off the street and take him straight down to the morgue. He would need a chance to prepare for the shock. She pulled a white lab coat over her scrub suit. The lapel had coffee stains, but it would have to do.

By the time she'd ridden up the basement elevator to the ground floor, she'd rearranged her hair into a semblance of presentability and straightened her name tag. She stepped out into the hallway. Through theglass door at the end of the corridor she could see the reception area with its couch and upholstered chairs, all in generic gray. She could also see a man pacing back and forth in front of the couch, oblivious to her approach. He was nicely dressed, and didn't seem like the sort of man who'd be acquainted with a Jane Doe from South Lexington. His camel-hair jacket was perfectly tailored to his wide shoulders. He had a tan raincoat slung over his arm, and he was tugging at his tie as though it were strangling him.

M. J. pushed the glass door open and walked in. "Mr. Quantrell?"

At once the man turned and faced her. He had wheat-colored hair, perfectly groomed, and eyes a shade of which she'd never seen before. Not quite blue, not quite gray, they seemed as changeable as a spring sky. He was old enough-his early forties perhaps-to have amassed a few character lines around those eyes, a few gray hairs around his temples. Under more relaxed circumstances, it would have been a pleasure to look at that face, but what she saw there now, in his gaze and the set of his jaw, was pure tension.