A book in the Forensic Mysteries series, 2007

CAMERYN MAHONEY WAS surprised to see the blood on her hand.

She’d always been careful to tug on a pair of latex gloves, the whisper-thin barrier she wore every time she processed a body. Today’s accident had been worse than anything she’d experienced thus far as assistant to the coroner. The decedent had been a young man-one Benjamin Baker, organ donor. Sixteen and dead, with Christmas only weeks away. In a bizarre twist, the car’s crumpled radio had played on, some country version of “Jingle Bells.” She’d listened to it as she picked through the wreckage, trying not to step in the blood that seeped from his gaping neck into an ever-widening arc across the snow.

Now, sitting in her driveway outside her own home, her car in neutral, Cameryn stared at the red mark on her hand. There must have been a tiny tear in her glove that had allowed the fluid to seep in. With the lightest touch of her fingertip, she traced the silver dollar-sized stain, a scarlet web whose threads disappeared into her finger line. Her own coroner stigmata.

“Cammie-come into the kitchen. You’re going to catch your death from the cold! Do you hear me, girl? Come inside where it’s warm.”

Startled, Cameryn looked up to see her Irish grandmother standing less than ten feet away on their back porch, the door held ajar by her hip. Stout and whitehaired, she scooped the air with a thick arm. Her mammaw’s lips were pressed into a frown, and her pale eyes, set deep into her face, were lit with worry.