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was, then the killer was carrying it in with him, perhaps unaware, and this could be important and eventually lead us to where he worked or lived.
    "Yeah," Marino's voice came over the line, "well, I'll poke around in the cabinets and so forth. But I got my own thought."
    "Which is?"
    "The husband here's in a play, right? Has practice every Friday night, which is why he gets in so late, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but actors wear greasepaint."
    "Only during dress rehearsals or performances."
    "Yeah," he drawled. "Well, according to him, a dress rehearsal's exactly what he had just before he came home and supposedly found his dead wife. My little bell's ringing. My little voice is talking to me-" I cut him off. "Have you printed him?"
    "Oh, yeah."
    "Place his card inside a plastic bag and when you come in bring it straight to me."
    He didn't get it.
    I didn't elaborate. I was in no mood to explain.
    The last thing Marino told me before hanging up was "Don't know when that will be, Doc. Got a feeling I'm going to be tied up out here most of the day. No pun intended."
    It was unlikely I would see him or the fingerprint card until Monday. Marino had a suspect. He was galloping down the same trail every cop gallops down. A husband could be St. Anthony and in England when his wife is murdered in Seattle, and still the cops are suspicious of him first.
    Domestic shootings, poisonings, beatings and stabbings are one thing, but a lust murder is another. Not many husbands would have the stomach for binding, raping and strangling their wives.
    I blamed my disconcertedness on fatigue.
    I had been up since 2:33 A. M. and it was now almost 6:00 P. M. The police officers who came to the morgue were long gone. Vander went home around lunchtime. Wingo, one of my autopsy technicians, left not long after that, and there was no one inside the building but me.
    The quiet I usually craved was unnerving and I could not seem to get warm. My hands were stiff, the fingernails almost blue. Every time the telephone rang in the front office, I started.
    The minimal security in my office never seemed to worry anyone but me. Budget requests for an adequate security system were repeatedly refused. The commissioner thought in terms of property loss, and no thief was going to come into the morgue even if we put out welcome mats and left the doors open wide at all hours. Dead bodies are a better deterrent than guard dogs.
    The dead have never bothered me. It is the living I fear.
    After a crazed gunman walked into a local doctor's office several months back and sprayed bullets into a waiting room full of patients, I went to a hardware store and bought a chain and padlock myself, which after hours and on weekends were used to reinforce the front glass double doors.
    Suddenly, while I was working at my desk, someone shook those front doors so violently the chain was still swaying when I forced myself to go down the hallway to check. No one was there. Sometimes street people tried to get in to use our restrooms, but when I looked out I didn't see anyone.
    I returned to my office and was so jumpy that when I heard the elevator doors opening across the hall I had a large pair of scissors in hand and was prepared to use them. It was the dayshift security guard.
    "Did you try to get in through the front glass doors a little while ago?" I asked.
    He glanced curiously at the scissors I was clutching and said he didn't. I'm sure it seemed an inane question. He knew the front doors were chained, and he had a set of keys to the other doors throughout the building. He had no reason to try to get in through the front.
    An uneasy silence returned as I sat at my desk trying to dictate Lori Petersen's autopsy report. For some reason, I couldn't say anything, couldn't bear to hear the words out loud. It began to dawn on me that no one should hear these words, not even Rose, my secretary. No one should hear about the glittery residue, the seminal fluid, the fingerprints, the