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who she was.”
    Alison’s eyes grow wide. “She must have been onto something big, something that got her killed.”
    “We don’t know that,” I caution. “For all we know she might have been just traveling through town, or meeting a boyfriend, or maybe she has family up here.”
    Alison shakes her head vehemently, her eyes bright with excitement. “Nope, she was here for a story. I just know it. All I have to do is figure out what it was.”
    “That might not be a wise avenue to pursue,” Richmond says.
    Alison turns to look at him and blinks her eyes several times. “Bob Richmond? I thought you were retired?”
    He shrugs. “I still do some part-time stuff.”
    “Where’s Hurley?” Alison asks, looking over at me.
    “Sick. A stomach bug or something,” I tell her, despite my knowledge to the contrary. “Richmond is going to handle this one.”
    Alison turns back to Richmond. “You might want to be careful yourself then,” she tells him. “People who work with Mattie have an uncanny way of ending up injured or dead.”

Chapter 5
    I manage to bite my tongue and not snap back at Alison’s snide comment. I’m assisted in this incredible show of restraint by Izzy, who wisely shoos Alison from the autopsy room and asks her to wait in the lobby or the library until we have the murder weapon removed.
    It turns out that Callie’s body isn’t frozen but it is in full rigor—making it likely that the time of death was actually hours before we found her. Izzy carefully documents the wound trajectories and when that’s done, he removes the knife. It’s a wicked-looking thing, just over nine inches in length with a five-inch blade. There’s a small nick in the blade near the hasp, and the handle, which appears to be ivory, has a dragon carved into it. After taking his own pictures and cleaning the blood off the knife, Izzy sets it in a tray in preparation for Alison’s pictures.
    When we open Callie up we discover that Izzy’s guess about the cause of death is correct. The knife pierced both her aorta and her left ventricle. Eventually the first wound alone would have been fatal as it caused massive bleeding. Since the second wound would have stopped the heart, the amount of blood lost suggests that some time elapsed between the two wounds, making me wonder if the woman was alive and aware she was dying during the interval.
    The remainder of the autopsy is relatively uneventful. Colbert does himself proud by managing to not only stay upright throughout the entire thing, but also asking intelligent, thoughtful questions about our findings, which other than the knife wounds and the single hair, consist mainly of some tiny metallic-looking globs we find entangled in Callie’s hair. The metal pieces will need to be packaged and taken to the Madison crime lab where they can analyze them using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. We also discover that Callie had caps on her teeth and breast implants, both of which will make it easier to confirm Alison’s tentative ID.
    I let Izzy deal with Alison and the knife photography, and after cleaning up the autopsy room, I change into my regular clothes, and head home. I’m eager to get to Hurley’s place but need to stop by my own first to let my dog, Hoover, out for a break.
    I’ve had Hoover for all of three weeks. I found him—filthy, frightened, and emaciated—hovering beside a grocery store Dumpster. Judging from his coloring, his ears, and the shape of his head, I’m guessing he’s part yellow Lab or golden retriever. Judging from the way he inhales food, I suspect the other part is vacuum cleaner, hence his name.
    So far Hoover has proven to be gentle, friendly, and quite smart. He has already mastered the come, sit, and stay commands, and he and my cat, Rubbish, entertain themselves quite nicely when I’m gone. Hoover’s only negative is his predilection for eating the crotch out of any panties I leave lying around, a habit made even more annoying by