“Geez,” said Buchanan. “A woman her age?”

Maura glanced up. “You think fifty’s ancient, do you?”

“I mean-well, that’s my mom’s age.”

Careful, boy. I’m only ten years younger.

She picked up the knife and began to cut. This was her fifth postmortem of the day, and she made swift work of it. With Dr. Costas on vacation, and a multivehicle accident the night before, the cold room had been crammed with body bags that morning. Even as she’d worked her way through the backlog, two more bodies had been delivered to the refrigerator. Those would have to wait until tomorrow. The morgue’s clerical staff had already left for the evening, and Yoshima kept looking at the clock, obviously anxious to be on his way home.

She incised skin, gutted the thorax and abdomen. Removed dripping organs and placed them on the cutting board to be sectioned. Little by little, Gloria Leder revealed her secrets: a fatty liver, the telltale sign of a few too many rums and Cokes. A uterus knobby with fibroids.

And finally, when they opened the cranium, the reason for her death. Maura saw it as she lifted the brain in her gloved hands. “Subarachnoid hemorrhage,” she said, and glanced up at Buchanan. He was looking far paler than when he had first walked into the room. “This woman probably had a berry aneurysm-a weak spot in one of the arteries at the base of the brain. Hypertension would have exacerbated it.”

Buchanan swallowed, his gaze focused on the flap of loose skin that had been Gloria Leder’s scalp, now peeled forward over the face. That’s the part that usually horrified them, the point at which so many of them winced or turned away-when the face collapses like a tired rubber mask.

“So… you’re saying it’s a natural death?” he asked softly.

“Correct. There’s nothing more you need to see here.”

The young man was already stripping off his gown as he retreated from the table. “I think I need some fresh air…”