At the county coroner’s office on North Mission, we find Belinda Frost closing up the body in autopsy room four. She looks up at our entrance. “You missed all the fun.” “Looks like it.” Sloan leads the way across the room and stands next to Frost. Sherry’s brown hair looks almost damp, clinging to her body and the gurney in small clumps, and her skin is even paler than I remember from the crime scene. Then again, the bright fluorescent overhead lights certainly accentuate the pastiness. The Y-cut of the autopsy is half closed, with Frost’s neat stitches running from Sherry’s abdomen to her chest, while the arc from collarbone to collarbone remains open. “Well?” I stand on the other side of the gurney with Carey next to me. The autopsy may be finished, but at least we can talk to Frost while her findings are fresh in her mind. “Cause of death is going to be tricky.” She sighs. “Like I said yesterday, we’ve got no medical way of measuring the amount of blood in a body at death, and I haven’t found anything else today to indicate cause of death.
