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go now?” The young man’s voice sounded choked.
    “She’ll go to the morgue,” said Brendan. “She’ll be looked after; she’ll be fine.”
    “Are they going to . . . cut her open? Do all that stuff?” His voice broke on the last word, and he sobbed as he walked, swaying a little.
    “No. There’s no reason for that. She’ll be examined. They’ll want to take a close look at her wounds. See if she has any . . . other signs that can help us.” A serology check . Blood from her killer. Semen. Detective Healy didn’t say these things.
    Stanley Clark, the coroner, came out of the house. As the man and woman loaded the body into the vehicle, Clark approached. Brendan kept an eye on Kevin, but stepped away to have a private word with Clark. Delaney had left the scene a few minutes before, coordinating the area search with the state police and two groups of deputies.
    Brendan raised his eyebrows, and Clark gave a brief report. “She has thirteen stab wounds. She has some petechial papules around her mouth and eyes. This could mean she was held down by her throat, and there was some strangulation. Or, it could be some type of pre-existing vasculitis. I won’t know until I can perform the autopsy.”
    Brendan made a clucking sound with his tongue. In a low voice head said, “I just told her brother that wouldn’t be necessary.”
    Clark looked at Brendan impassively. He seemed to regard the detective like some other life-form, one unfamiliar with indigenous customs. “Why would you do that?”
    “I was trying to comfort him.”
    The body was loaded into the hearse and the doors were closed. The man paused to offer condolences to Kevin, who himself looked like someone adrift in a foreign land. Brendan and Clark both looked at the young man, who was out of earshot. Still, they kept their voices low.
    Clark asked Healy: “Is he going to call the rest of the family?”
    “I’ll help him do it.” Brendan cut his eyes back to Clark. “What do you think happened in there?”
    Clark looked grim. “I think she was forced into the bed. There are also signs of blunt trauma to the head and left shoulder. She was stabbed repeatedly and succumbed. She’s dead.”
    “Thank you.”
    Clark offered a bird-like nod and swiftly moved away.
    Brendan stood for a moment. He had called the District Attorney’s office back. He had delegated two deputies to locate the next door neighbors and ferret out any witnesses, a car coming or going, strange noises, screams, anything. It was quiet out here in the country, Brendan thought, you could hear someone crack an egg a mile away when there was no traffic on the road. Route 12 was not a major artery, but nor was it a back road. A fair amount of vehicles had passed since he’d arrived on the scene, many of them slowing to get a look at the activity.
    Much of his to-do list would need to be delegated or accomplished back at the station. Finding out who owned the house, if not the victim, establishing a timeline, collating all the information he now had, and consulting with Clark once he had done his examination. He needed to check the victim’s phone, and look into all calls from within the past 24 hours, starting this morning and working his way back. Maybe even further back, if need be.
    First, though, there were things left to do on the scene. Brendan decided that Kevin Heilshorn shouldn’t be left alone for the time being. Kevin could also furnish Brendan with more information – whether his sister had a boyfriend, who her friends were, and above all, who else may have been invited to this “meeting,” that Kevin spoke of.
    However, one thing immediately didn’t wash about the meeting. The victim herself had called 911 and reported an intruder. If she had been expecting her brother, it would stand to reason that hearing a noise downstairs wouldn’t have caused her emergency call. She must’ve seen who’d entered the house, and either didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want