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Josie growled at him as she pulled into a parking spot and turned off her vehicle. She hopped out and stalked off toward the hospital entrance without him, though she heard his laughter trailing behind her. They rode the elevator to the basement, where Denton’s city morgue was located, in silence. As they stepped out, the odor of fresh paint filled Josie’s nostrils. For all of Josie’s career, the hallway leading to their medical examiner’s suite of rooms had been unused and in a state of disrepair. Its cracked, yellowed floor tiles and grimy walls had made it look like something out of a horror movie. Now, from the elevators all the way past Dr. Feist’s domain, evidence of renovations was everywhere. Most of the walls were a fresh light tan. Half the old tile had been dug up, replaced by new, shiny flooring. Workers moved up and down the hall and in and out of long-abandoned rooms, focused on their tasks.

Josie and Turner picked their way through the construction and pushed open the doors to the autopsy suite. Inside, the usual smell of decomposition and harsh chemicals greeted them. Two stainless-steel autopsy tables with overhead light fixtures were positioned in the center of the room. One of them was occupied. A sheet covered the body.

Dr. Anya Feist stood at one of the stainless-steel countertops that ran the length of the walls, clicking away on her laptop. When they entered, she turned to face them and leaned against the lip of the counter, offering a smile. While she had on her customary navy-blue scrubs, her silver-blonde hair fell to her shoulders.

“Hey, Doc,” Turner said. “What do you have for us?”

“That’s it?” Anya stared at him for a couple of beats. “No icebreaker questions? You don’t want to know what movie I’d want to watch for the rest of my life if I was stranded on a deserted island?”

He grinned. “Yeah, I do. You gonna tell me?”

“No,” Anya said. “I’ve got work to do.”

“I think you miss my questions, and you don’t answer them so I’ll keep coming back.”

Anya laughed. “Don’t be delusional. Besides, you have to come back for your job.”

Josie watched the exchange with interest. Turner had always had a strange fascination with their medical examiner. She wasn’t sure if the constant getting-to-know-you questions he peppered Anya with were his form of flirting or if he was just that socially inept. For her part, Anya only ever seemed marginally annoyed with him, finding him more strange than infuriating. Then again, he’d never called her “honey” or “sweetheart,” or purposely gotten her name wrong or done everything he could to royally piss her off.

Josie walked over to the table and watched as Anya peeled back the sheet to reveal Sylvia West’s charred remains. Her skull was a blackened lump, her long blonde hair burned away. While the shape of her facial features was still visible, the skin was coal black, just like the rest of her body, save for a few uneven sections on her legs and feet where the tissue was still somewhat intact. In some places, the fire had burned away everything but bone. In others, the blackened skin cracked and peeled, revealing layers of yellow fat. She looked shrunken, like the slightest touch would cause what was left of her to disintegrate into a pile of ash. Josie had seen some deeply disturbing things in her career, but this struck her as particularly gruesome.

“Jesus,” Turner muttered. “Tell me you got something we can use.”

“I’m not sure, unfortunately. I can confirm that she was deceased before the fire. There were no soot deposits in the mucous membranes of her respiratory tract or esophagus, which means she wasn’t alive to inhale any smoke. I also tested her carboxyhemoglobin levels. Typically, less than ten percent of COHb in the blood indicates the victim was already deceased at the time of the fire. I’ve got a desktop CO-oximeter here and it did show less than ten percent, as expected. In terms of time of death, that’s a lot more difficult to determine.”

“Trinity and I got there at eight,” Josie said. “Sylvia was already dressed for church by the looks of it.”

“She was probably killed pretty close to when you arrived,” Turner pointed out. “I haven’t talked to Macy Russell yet but I’m thinking we can assume the fire was arson.”

Josie thought about the spiral of smoke rising from the back of the house and the thump that Trinity had heard. Was that the killer leaving through the back after setting the fire? Had her sister been in the house with him at the same time?

The thought made her nauseated. Had Trinity walked in a few minutes earlier, she could have been killed while Josie sat across the street. Placing a hand on her stomach, she concentrated on the box breathing she’d learned in therapy. Inhale for four seconds. Hold, exhale, hold—for four seconds each. By now, most people couldn’t tell when she practiced it. If Turner noticed she was doing what he called “that weird breathing shit,” he didn’t mention it.

Anya moved on. “Most of her internal structures were intact, so I was able to examine her for evidence of sexual assault. I couldn’t find anything.”

From what Josie recalled from Trinity’s many info dumps about the Last Kiss Killer, he didn’t rape his victims. However, she would need to review the actual police files from the prior victims to confirm that fact.

“Quinn said she had ligature marks around her neck,” Turner said. “Any way to prove she was strangled given that those were burned away?”

Anya waved them toward her laptop where she pulled up some scans. “This is a post-mortem CT,” she explained. “They’re especially useful in cases of charred remains.”

An image that appeared to have been taken from under Sylvia’s chin appeared. Near the bottom was a fraction of the cervical spine, white against a black background, and above that, an upside-down U that Josie recognized as the hyoid bone.

Anya pointed to the long ends of the U. “These two together are the greater horn of the hyoid.”

“Both those ends are broken,” Turner said.

“Right. Sometimes the heat from a fire can cause what are called thermal amputations where the soft tissue is destroyed and the bone fractures. Those usually have a flute-like appearance, and as you can see, that’s not what we have here. This was definitely caused by trauma so I can confidently say the cause of death is strangulation. I can’t specifically say, based on the autopsy alone, that it was ligature strangulation. I would have liked to see the marks myself to try to determine what he used, but I’ve got to work with what I have. That aspect will be up to you guys.”

“We need to look at the files of his previous victims,” said Josie. “There will be photos.”

“I requested those files yesterday,” Turner said.

“You did?” Josie said, not bothering to keep the surprise from her voice.

“I’m not incompetent.”

“That’s debatable.”