I returned to the department wondering how Ava had felt when she made the switch of Jeremy’s tissue for the man found in the river. Surely she had realized she would be forever changed by the deception. She must have believed it worth the price. I pictured her with the decayed carcass on the gleaming autopsy table, water rinsing beneath the ragged, necrotic flesh. Were other autopsy tables nearby? I wondered, pathologists speaking into recorders, assistants weighing, marking, bagging, maybe a cop nearby to observe a procedure. I wondered if the substitution had been dangerous, Ava having to slip Jeremy’s tissue from her clothes as the dead man’s sample was pocketed, her face a mask of innocence as her fingers broke the law. Was her face as calm and natural as Gary Ocampo making a quarter disappear from my closed palm? Gary Ocampo holds my hand at the bottom, touches it on the top. I know exactly where the quarter is, and yet I do not. All my attention is diverted, exactly how he wants things.
