A young doctor stood by the table, masked below the eyes and wearing green scrubs and rubber gloves. They had met previously over other bodies. The pathologist nodded to Riker, recognizing him as less than a friend but more than an acquaintance. The younger man turned his face back to the microphone suspended above the body as he continued to intone the list of statistics.

‘… well-developed female, approximately twenty-five years old…’

As Riker bent over the corpse, the overhead lamp highlighted every silver hair and deepened the lines of his slept-in face and suit.

‘… wound and bruising to lateral forearm…’

A defensive wound? So there had been a struggle.

Blonde curls framed a porcelain face. He squinted past the dried blood of the head wound and the damage done by a feasting of maggots and beetles.

It was the wrong face.

‘… wound to the side of the skull…’

He pulled back the lid of one eye which had lost its roundness and gone all cloudy. Still, this eye was not and never had been green. His own eyes went to the roots beneath the curls. Not blonde roots.

Not Kathy.

‘… body 66 inches in length…’

This young woman was not as tall by five inches, but she was slender, like Kathy, and the same age.

‘… bones of the cervical vertebrae are broken…’

Riker was slow to regain control over all the muscles in the face and throat that could prevent a burnt out, I-seen-everything, rummy cop from crying like a man who still had feelings after thirty-five years on the force. He closed his eyes.

‘Detective Palanski is a damn idiot,’ said a familiar voice behind his back. Riker turned to face the chief medical examiner. Dr Edward Slope was pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. A green surgical mask hung free beneath his cragged and deadpan face. All the anger was in the man’s words. Slope had also known Kathy in her puppy days.