NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

JUNE 22

ESSEX COUNTY HOMICIDE INVESTIGATOR Loren Muse sat in her boss's office.

"Wait a second," she said. "Are you telling me that the nun had breast implants?"

Ed Steinberg, the Essex County prosecutor, sat behind his desk rubbing his bowling-ball gut. He had that kind of build that from the back you wouldn't even know he was heavy, just that he had a flat ass. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. The shirt was yellow under the armpits. "So it appears, yeah."

"But she died of natural causes?" Loren said.

"That's what we thought."

"You don't think that anymore?"

"I don't think anything anymore," Steinberg said.

"I could make a crack here, boss."

"But you won't." Steinberg sighed and put on his reading glasses. "Sister Mary Rose, a tenth-grade social studies teacher, was found dead in her room at the convent. No signs of struggle, no wounds, she's sixty-two years old. Apparently a standard death- heart, stroke, something like that. Nothing suspicious."

"But?" Loren added.

"But there's been a new development."

"I think the word is 'augmentation.' "

"Stop it, you're killing me."

Loren turned both palms up. "I still don't see why I'm here."

"How about that you're the greatest homicide investigator in the naked, uh, county?"

Loren made a face.

"Yeah, didn't think that'd fly. This nun"- Steinberg lowered the reading glasses again-"taught at St. Margaret's High." He looked at her.

"So?"

"So you were a student there, right?"

"And again I say: So?"

"So the Mother Superior has some juice with the brass. She requested you."