The Big Bad City

2.

"Suppose you get on a bus, and the driver is Dustin Hoffman? I mean, there's the guy sitting behind the wheel, and he looks just like Dustin Hoffman and everything, but you know he isn't Dustin Hoffman because there aren't any cameras around, they're not shooting a movie or anything on the bus. This is just a normal bus and a normal bus driver who happens to look just like Dustin Hoffman. Do you understand me ?”

"Uh-huh," Carella said.

"That's the way I felt when I saw that police sketch of Mary on the front page of the newspaper. I thought "That isn't Mary, it can't be Mary." Same as I would think "That isn't Dustin Hoffman, it's just a bus driver." Is it Mary?”

"You'll have to tell us," Carella said.

"I mean, I just saw her yesterday, and everything." They were in the Chevy sedan Carella and Brown drove whenever their preferred car was in for service, as it was today. The gift's name they thought of her as a girl because she was still in her early twenties was Helen Daniels, and she was sitting on the back seat, smoking. She was a nurse, but she was smoking. She had told them on the phone that the woman on the front page of that morning's tabloid was Sister Mary Vincent. It was now close to noon on a steamy Saturday, the twenty-se cont a day of u;u, "", .... were driving her to the morgue.

"When yesterday. Brown asked.

"At the hospital.”

Which answered where yesterday, but not when. They waited.

"We worked the same shift. Seven in the morning to three in the afternoon.”

"Was she a nurse?”

"An LPN. St. Margaret's is one of the hospitals run by hr order. She worked with the terminally ill. Cancer patients mostly.”

"What's an LPN?" Brown asked.

"A licensed practical nurse. But she was better than any RN I know, believe me.”

"Was that the last time you saw her? Yesterday at three? When the shift ...”

"Yes. Well, not three. We went for coffee together after the shift broke.”

"Then what?”

"I went to the subway.”

“Where'd she go?”

“I don't know.”

"Didn't say where she was going?”

"I guessed she was going home. It was already four, four-thirty.”

"How long have you known her?" Carella asked. "Be six months in September. That's when she started working at St. Margaret's.”

“How'd she get along there?”

“Fine.”

"Good worker?”

Oh, yes.”

"Got along with the other nuns?”

“Yes.”

“Nurses?”

"Yes, of course.”

“Doctors?”

“Yes.”

"While you were having coffee ... ," Brown said. "Where was this, by the way?”

"Deli across the street from the hospital.”

“See anybody watching her?”

“Paying unusual attention to her?”

“No, I can't think of anyone.”

"I really don't thinkf ll Wso. "Y U out of the deli?”

"When you left each other, was she walking, or did she catch a cab, or what?”

“She was walking.”

“In which direction?”

“She turned the corner and headed cross town.”

“Toward the park?”

“Yes. Toward the park.”

Helen Daniels was a nurse, and so she did not display any squeamishness at being inside a morgue. This was not the hospital for which she worked, but it was nonetheless familiar territory. She followed the detectives into the stainless-steel chamber with its stainless-steel dissecting tables and stainless-steel drawers, and watched while the attendant on duty rolled out the drawer with the unidentified corpse on it, and she looked down at the face and said, "Yes, that's Mary Vincent,"" and went outside to vomit.

First thing you had to understand about this city was that it was big.

It was difficult to explain to someone who came from Overall Patches, Indiana, that you could take his entire town and tuck it into one tiny corner of the smallest of the city's five separate sectors and still have room left over for the entire bustling municipalities of Two Trees, Wyoming, and Sleepy Sheep, South Dakota.

This city was dangerous, too. That was the next thing you had to know about it. Never mind the reassuring bulletins from the Mayor's office.

Ask the Mayor to take an unescorted two A.M. stroll through any of the city's barren moonscapes, and then interview him in his hospital bed the next morning to ask him about lower crime rates and improved police patrols. Or just watch the first ten minutes of the eleven o'clock news every night and you'll learn in the wink of an eye exactly what the people of this city were capable of doing to other people in this city. It was on last night's eleven o'clock news that the story of the unidentified dead nun had first been broadcast to a populace accustomed to news of dead people turning up in Dumpsters or abandoned bathtubs.

Bad things happened in this city every hour of the day or night, and they happened all over the city.

So if you came here thinking, Gee, there's going to be a neat little murder takes place in a town house and some blue-haired lady will solve it in her spare time when she isn't tending her rose garden, then you came to the wrong city at the wrong time of the year. In this city, you had to pay attention. In this city, things were happening all the time, all over the place, and you didn't have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind.

he had come home from work yesterday evening to find that her apartment had been "robbed," as she'd put it when she phoned the police. The two responding uniformed cops informed her that the correct expression was "burglarized," as if that made a damn bit of difference, and then asked her a lot of dumb questions about "access”

and "vulnerability," which she supposed meant Who has a key to the front door and Which window opens onto a fire escape? And now only a day late and a dollar short here were two plainclothes detectives asking the same dumb questions. Her best friend, Sylvia, whose apartment had been broken into last year around this time, told her that there wasn't a single recorded instance in this city of the cops ever catching who did it or ever recovering the stolen goods, it was all a waste of time and taxpayers' money. But here they were at twenty minutes to one on the day after the burglary, when she had a hundred Saturday afternoon errands to run.

"We're sorry to bother you," the bald one was saying. She was sure he'd introduced himself as Meyer Meyer, but that couldn't be a person's name, could it? He was a tall, burly man wearing pale blue trousers and a lightweight sports jacket, the collar of his shirt open and worn outside the jacket collar, the way teenagers in America used to wear it in the forties and the way Russian gangsters wore it today, from pictures she had seen in Life magazine.

"What time did you get home from work last night?" the blond one asked. He was very good-looking, if you cared for apple pie and chocolate milk midwestern shit-kicking looks, an inch or so taller than his partner, just as wlae n me snouiaers, oom t them in their mid-to-late thirties, she supposed, which made them both too young for her, not that she was interested. Annie Kearnes was forty-two years old, almost to the day, since her birthday had been last Tuesday, August eighteenth, a Leo as she was proud of telling first dates. Annie went on a lot of first dates. She wondered if either of these two boring gentlemen was married, though police work seemed an extraordinarily dangerous occupation.

"I get home most nights a little before six," she said.

"And last night?”

"The same.”

Did they think she was telling them she got home most nights a little before six because last night she'd got home at seven? What kind of mentality was that? Or was this just cops zeroing in on the facts, ma'am, as if she herself was the one who'd robbed her own apartment, burglarized it, whatever the hell. Where she worked was R&R Ribbons, which manufactured the shiny little red and blue and green and gold bows you peeled the backs off and stuck to all sorts of presents.

August was the busiest time of the year for R&R, which stood for Rosen and Riley. August was when all the Christmas orders came in. October was when they shipped. What she really needed was a friggin robber breaking into her apartment yesterday. "How'd the place look?" Meyer asked.

"Excuse me, but did you say Meyer Meyer?" Annie asked.

"Yes, ma'am, that's correct," Meyer said.

"That's unusual," she said, "Yes, it is," he agreed. J Nice gentle manner, like a dentist who treated mostly kids. She wondered again if he was married. Too bad he wasn't a dentist. Bring a cop home to her mother, oh boy, what a scene that would be. The blond one was looking at a framed picture on the wall, which showed Mr. Rosen and his wife in her mink coat sticking a giant bow onto a giant package outside the city's biggest department store seven Christmases ago, while it was snowing very hard. It hadn't snowed at all this past Christmas. Nor even this entire winter, for that matter. People had been grateful it was such a mild winter. Boy, are we lucky, people were saying all over the place. Now it was so hot you could melt in your panties and everybody was in the streets on their hands and knees, praying for a stray breeze, it just goes to show, she thought.

"That's Mr. Rosen," she said to him, by way of flirtation. "He's one of my bosses.”

"Nice," he said.

Typical big dumb cop remark.

Nice.

Bert Kling his name was. A name to match his obvious intelligence.

"So how'd the apartment look when you walked in?" Meyer asked.

"Same as always," she said.

If you're so curious about how the apartment looked, she thought, why didn't you come around last night, so you could see it right after it was robbed? No wonder you never catch anybody, she thought.

"Was there a mess or anything?" Kling asked. "No. Neat as a pin,”

Annie said.

"When did you realize someone had been in here?”

“When I found the bag of cookies.”

“On the bed?" Meyer asked.

Mind reader, she thought. Or had the two Keystone Kops from yesterday submitted a report on what she'd told them? "On the pillow, yes. Chocolate chip cookies.”

The cookies still infuriated her. The goddamn nerve.t Guy breaks in, steals all her jewelry and a red-fox jacket that had cost her two thousand dollars wholesale and then he had the audacity to leave a box of chocolate chip cookies on her pillow? Like spitting in her eye, wasn't it? Did he expect her to eat the damn cookies? Who knew what was in those cookies, what kind of poison he'd put inside them, the friggin lunatic? "We just want to make sure it's the same person," Meyer said. "He's been getting some play in the papers and on TV, he might be inspiring copycats.”

"Did they give you the list?" Annie asked.

"The officers who responded? Yes, they did. Thank you. We're working on it now.”

"They're calling him The Cookie Boy," Kling said. "Cute," she said, and pulled a face. "You ever catch him, I'll give him cookies." She hesitated for just an instant, and then she said, "Will you catch him?”

"We'll try," Meyer said. "Yes, but will you?”

"We'll be circulating the list to pawnshops all over the city, maybe we'll get a call, who knows?" Kling asked the air.

"Also," Meyer said, "we make a lot of unrelated arrests every day of the week. Someone we pull in may drop something about him, who knows?”

"What do you mean?”

"Thieves talk to each other, they learn things they sometimes use to bargain with us.”

"Like what?”

"Like this guy leaves cookies on the pillow, he mentioned he was in an apartment on South Twentieth two days ago, like that," Kling said.

"You actually had someone tell you this?”

"No, I'm just giving you an example.”

"So what you're saying is it's all a matter of luck, is what you're saying.”

"No, not at all," Kling said.

"Not at all," Meyer said.

"Must be an echo in here," Annie said. "Then what is it, if not luck? You send a list to pawnshops, you hope some pawnbroker'll spot my sapphire ring and give you a call. Or you arrest some rapist or whatever, some bank robber, and you hope he'll turn in his best friend, who happens to be The Cookie Burglar ...”

“The Cookie Boy.”

"Cute," she said again, and again pulled a face. "What's that if it isn't luck?”

"Well, there is a certain amount of luck involved," Meyer agreed. The good dentist.

"But we'll be doing a lot of investigative work as well," Kling said.

"Like what?”

"Well, it would take all day to explain.”

I'll bet, she thought.

"What it looks like to me," she said, "is I can kiss my stuff goodbye, right?”

"We may surprise you," Kling said, and smiled. "Surprise Mr. Cookie instead," she said.

The message from a woman named Annette Ryan was waiting on Carella's desk when they got back go the squad room It said that she could identify the dead nun whose picture she had seen on television this morning, and asked that he please call her. When he reached her at two that afternoon, he discovered that Annette Ryan was Sister Annette Ryan, who told him she'd been Mary Vincent's spiritual director ever since she'd come to this city from the order's mother house in San Diego. Carella asked if he might come to see her, and she gave him the address of her convent in Riverhead. He put the phone back on its receiver, and turned to where Brown was settling in behind his own desk.

"Don't get too comfortable," he suggested.

The Honda Sonny Cole was driving had been loaned to him by a nineteen-year-old girl he'd met three months ago. He'd been seem her on and off the past month or so, movies and such, all that datin shit.

She was willin to slobber the Johnson when her mama wasn't home, but fearful of doing the major push, fraid she'd get pregnant. So much easier with hookers, you didn't have to go through none of this courtship bullshit, none of these restrictions. One thing Sonny hated was rstrictions.

"Why do you need to follow this man?" Coral had asked him, The whole name put on her by her Southern mama was Coralee, but she'd shortened it to Coral the minute she got to be fifteen and learned where it was at. Coral was a sophomore at Ramsey University, studying to be a television broadcaster. Clean as a baby's first tooth. Do it clean, man, cause you the first one they goan come lookin for. Clean piece, no partners, in, out, been nice to know you.

"He owes me money," Sonny said. "He knows I'm after him, he'll skip town.”

"So you need to follow him in my car.”

"Any car, actually. Be nice if you lent me yours, though.”

"Why don't you just go up to him and ask him for the money?" Coral asked.

"Doesn't work that way, honey," he said.

"Why does he owe you this money, anyway?”

So Sonny had wrote a whole big story out of thin air, told her how the man was a police officer married to his first cousin ... "Your cousin's married to a cop ?" Coral said. "Was. They split up three months ago.”

“Gee," Coral said.

What it was, Sonny explained to her, his cousin had been in the hospital needing a costly operation and Sonny had gone to his bank and withdrawn practically his entire life savings to lend to the husband cause he'd saved his life out there in the desert during the fracas in the Gulf, all bullshit, and now the girl had recovered, Sonny's first cousin, and Sonny had asked him for the money back because he had a large business opportunity looming, but the man had since separated from her and Sonny was now trying to find out where he'd moved, or his cousin either, for that matter, because last time he'd gone to their apartment the landlady told him they'd both left for God knew where, all of it bullshit, which is why he was following him so he could maybe find where his cousin was, you see, the one had the thing done on her kidney, cost twenty thousand dollars of Sonny's hard-earned cash, maybe plead on her kindness to intercede with her husband, who Sonny thought until now was one of his closest friends on earth, all of which was merely blowin smoke up Coral's skirt. But it had got him the loan of the car.

Sonny was a good driver. Stayed nailed to the blue Chevy sedan up ahead, but at the same time kept a respectable distance behind. Next few days he'd learn the whereabouts and wherewithals of every move Carella made. Find a place he could lay in wait and cold-cock him. Had to catch him alone. Bang him from behind. Goodbye nemesis, which in the dictionary said, "A person who inflicts relentless vengeance or destruction" he'd looked it up the minute his lawyer paid the bail and popped him.

Meanwhile, careful was the thing. Slow and easy. These were cops he was following, so presumably they knew all about tails. Oreo pair again, he noticed. Did the police department deliberately team up brothers and honkies to keep the peace? He had nothing but contempt for brothers who joined the enemy camp.

Where the hell were they going, anyway? The convent of the Order of the Sisters of Christ's Mercy was located on a tree-lined street in a section of Riverhead that could easily have passed for a small New England village. On this hot summer afternoon late in August, butterflies floated above the flowers lining the path that led to the arched wooden door of the modest stone building where Sister Annette Ryan and eleven other nuns made their home. There was a cemetery on one side of the convent, and on the other a smaller stone building. A nun in habit was a rare sight these days, but the sister who answered their ring was at least seventy years old, and she was wearing the simple black-and-white habit of the order, a wooden crucifix hanging around her neck, a slender gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She led them down a hushed unadorned corridor and knocked discreetly on the arched door at its end.

"Yes, come in, please," a woman's voice said. Sister Annette Ryan ...

"Please call me Annette," she said at once. was a tall, slender worn an in her late fifties, Carella guessed, wearing tailored slacks, a pale blue cotton sweater, and low-heeled walking shoes. She had high cheekbones and a generous mouth, graying red hair cut close, eyes that matched the patch of lawn sparkling in the cloister beyond the arched and leaded windows of her study. She introduced the nun who'd answered the door as Sister Beryl, possibly in deference to her age, and then offered the detectives tea.

"Yes, please," Brown said.

"Please," Carella said.

"How do you take it?" Sister Beryl asked. "Milk? Lemon? Sugar?”

"Just milk in mine," Brown said.

"Lemon, please," Carella said.

Sister Beryl smiled graciously and scurried off. To Carella, nuns in habit always seemed to be moving fast like windup toys. Perhaps because their means of locomotion was hidden by the long voluminous skirt. The door whispered shut behind her. The book-lined study went still again. Outside, Carella could hear the sound of a sprinkler tirelessly watering the lawn.

"Not good news," Annette said, and shook her head in disbelief.

"Not good," he agreed.

"Do you have anything yet?”

"Nothing.”

"How can I help?”

"Well, we know where she worked...," Carella said. "That's recent, you know.”

Brown was already consulting his notebook.

"Six months, we have. From a nurse named Helen Darnels.

"Yes, that's correct. St. Margaret's is one of the three hospitals conducted by the sisters. Our order was founded expressly for the care of the sick, you see, especially the impoverished sick. That was a long time ago, of course. 1837, in fact, in Paris. The charism has changed somewhat over the years ...”

Charism, Carella wondered, but did not ask.

"... to include teaching of the handicapped. We run a school for the deaf next door, for example, and another for the blind, in Calm's Point.”

Carella wondered if he should mention that his wife was deaf and that he. did not consider her handicapped. He let the moment pass.

"Mary was working with terminally ill patients. She was marvelous with the sick.”

"So we understand," Carella said.

"A prayerful nun," Annette said. "And a unique individual. She was only twenty-seven, you know, but so mature, so compassionate.”

She turned her head aside for an instant, perhaps to mask a tear, her gaze falling blindly on the open leaded window beyond which the sprinkler persisted. There was a knock at the door. Sister Beryl came in bearing a tray, which she set on a low table.

"There we go," she said, sounding remarkably sprightly for a woman her age. "Enjoy.”

"Thank you, Sister Beryl.”

The old nun nodded, surveyed the table as if she had not only made the tea but the tray upon which it sat. Pleased with what she saw, she nodded again, and hurried out of the room, the skirt of her black habit whispering along the stone floor.

"Where had Mary worked before?" Carella asked. "You said the job was recent ...”

"Yes, she'd just come here from San Diego. That's where our mother house is. Actually, just outside San Diego. A town named San Luis Elizario.”

"So then you've only known her since she came east," Brown said.

"Yes. We met in March. Our major superior called me from San Diego and asked that I help get Mary settled here.”

"Your major ... ?”

"What we used to call mother superior. Times have changed, you know, oh how they've changed. Well, Vatican Two," she said, and rolled her eyes as if mere mention of the words would conjure up for them the sweeping reform that had swept the church in the sixties. "Even major superior is a bit outdated. Some communities have gone back to calling her the prioress. But she's also called the president and the provincial and the superior general and the provincial superior and the delegate superior or even simply the administrator. It can get confusing.”

"Was Mary Vincent living here?”

"You mean here at the convent? No, no. There are only twelve of us here.”

"Then where did she live?" Brown asked.

"She was renting a small apartment near the hospital.”

"Are nuns allowed to do that?”

Annette suppressed a smile.

"It's different nowadays," she said. "The focus today is less on the group than it is on the individual.”

“Can you let us have that address?" he asked. "Of course," she said.

"And the name and phone number of the major superior in San Diego.”

"Yes, certainly," Annette said.

"When you say you were Mary's spiritual director," Brown said, "what do you mean?”

"Her advisor, her guide, her friend. Everyone needs someone to talk to occasionally. Women religious have problems, too, you know. We're human, you know.”

Women religious, Carella wondered, but again did not ask.

"When's the last time you talked?" he said.

"The day before yesterday.”

"This past Thursday?" Brown said, surprised. "Yes.”

Both detectives were thinking she'd come to see her spiritual director on the day before she was killed. Both detectives were wondering why.

Brown picked up the ball.

"Was she having a problem?" he asked.

"No, no. She just felt like talking. We saw each other every few weeks. Either she'd come here to the convent for dinner or I'd meet her in the city.”

“So this wasn't an unusual visit.”

“Not at all.”

"Nothing specific on her mind.”

"Nothing.”

"No spiritual problems.”

"None that she mentioned.”

"Did anything at all seem to be troubling her?”

“She seemed her usual self.”

"Mention any threatening phone calls ... ?”

"No.”

"Or letters?”

"No.”

"Anyone lurking about the building where, she lived?”

"No.”

"Anyone unhappy with the nursing care she was giving?”

"No.”

"Perhaps a relative or friend of someone she was treating.”

"Nothing like that.”

"Anyone with a minor grievance ...”

“She didn't mention anyone like that.”

“... or petty annoyance?”

“No one.”

"Any idea what she was doing in Grover Park " ?”

yesterday.

"No”

"Did she mention she might be going to the park?”

"No.”

"Was it a usual thing for her to do?”

"I don't know.”

"Walk all the way cross town to the park? Sit on a bench there?”

"I can't imagine her doing that.”

"She didn't say she went there to pray or anything, did she?" Brown asked. "Or meditate? Anything like that?”

"No, she prayed at home in the morning. For half an hour to forty-five minutes, before leaving for the hospital. And she went to mass once or twice a week.”

"Where would that be?”

"The church?”

"Yes.”

"Our Lady of Flowers. I'll give you the address there as well, if you like. And the name of the parish priest.”

"Please," Carella said.

Annette rose majestically and swept across the room just as if she were still wearing the habit. She opened the drawer on a longi: rectory table, and removed from it a leather-bound address book. Over her shoulder, as she began leafing through the book, she said, "Please find who did it, won't you?”

It sounded almost like a prayer.

It was five minutes past three when they got back to the squad room and called the mother house in San Luis Elizario. The woman to whom they spoke identified herself as Sister Frances Kelleher, assistant to the major superior. She was shocked and dismayed to learn of Mary Vincent's death, and apologized for the absence of Sister Carmelita, who was in Rome at the moment.

"She's expected back in three days, if you'd like to try again," she said. Carella marked the date on his calendar: August 25. "Actually,”

he said, "we're trying to locate a next of kin we can notify. Would you have any information regarding her family?”

"I'm sure we do," Sister Frances said. "Let me transfer you to the records office.”

The nun in the records office answered the phone with a cheerful, "Louise Tracht, good morning," and then immediately said, "Oops, it's ten past noon already.”

"Good afternoon then," Carella said, and identified himself, and gave her much the same information he'd given Sister Frances. Again, there was the shocked reaction, though Sister Louise admitted she hadn't known Mary all that well. "Let me check her file," she said, and was gone from the phone for perhaps two or three minutes. When she returned, she said, "Both her parents are dead, but I have an address and phone number for a brother in Philadelphia, if you'd like that?”

"Please," Carella said.

Vincent Cochran was asleep when Carella reached him at three forty-five that Saturday afternoon. He told Carella at once that he was a stand-up comic and that he didn't get to bed till sometimes seven, eight in the morning ... "So what's this about?" he asked.

The man sounded annoyed and cranky. This was perhaps not the most opportune moment to tell him about his sister's murder. Carella took a deep breath.

"Mr. Cochran," he said, "I hate to be bringing you this kind of news, but .... “

"Has something happened to Anna?" Cochran asked at once.

Carella didn't know who Anna was.

"No, it's your sister," he said, and plunged ahead. "She was murdered last night in Grover Park here." Silence on the other end of the line.

"We were able to make positive identification only this morning." The silence lengthened. "We got your name and phone number from her mother house in San Diego. I'm sorry to bring you such news.”

Silence.

"Am I speaking to her brother, sir?”

“Once upon a time," Cochran said.

"Sir?”

"When she was still Kate Cochran, yes. I was her brother before she became Sister Mary Vincent?”

"Sir?”

"Before she became a nun.”

There was another silence on the line.

"Mr. Cochran," Carella said, "your sister's remains are currently at the Buena Vista morgue here in Isola. If you'd like to make funeral arrangements ...”

"Why would I?" Cochran said. "The last time I even talked to her was four years ago. Why would I want to see her now?”

"Well, sir ...”

"Tell her beloved church to bury her," he said.

"Maybe that way she'll get to heaven sooner." There was a click on the line. Carella looked at the phone receiver. "Is he coming up?" Brown asked. "I don't think so," Carella said.

Carl Blaney had violet eyes, somewhat too exotic for a medical examiner, perhaps, but there they were nonetheless, neither blue nor gray but as violet as Elizabeth Taylor's eyes were supposed to be.

Rather sad eyes as well, as if they'd seen far too many internal organs in far too many degrees of trauma.

He greeted Carella in the mortuary at ten to five that Saturday afternoon and had the decency not to mention that he was almost three hours late, their scheduled meeting having been for two. Carella instantly explained that he'd had to shlepp all the way up to Riverhead in ninety-degree heat on clogged roadways, and then had to make some phone calls when he finally got back to the squad room all of which impressed Blaney not a whit.

He told Carella that nobody here at the morgue was in any hurry, anyway, and besides he'd only just finished the autopsy on the woman who'd come into the morgue as an unidentified Jane Doe, had immediately been dubbed Jane Nun, and then Jane None, after a mortuary wag discovered she still hadn't been identified a situation now rectified or so Carella informed him.

Even Blaney's initial examination had revealed the extensive bruising characteristic of manual strangulation. The bluish-black fingertip bruises, oval in shape, somewhat pale and blurred. The crescent-shaped fingernail marks. But he had then raised the shoulders on a head block, eviscerated the body, and removed the brain, allowing the blood to drain from the base of the skull. When the blood flow from the chest also stopped, Blaney began his examination of the intact neck organs. He made his first incision just below the chin, allowing him clear and unobstructed scrutiny without the necessity of handling the organs before dissection.

"In manual strangulation," he explained, "fractures of the larynx are common. I was searching for the horns because those are particularly weak parts of the thyroid cartilage and therefore ...”

"The horns?”

"The ends of the hyoid bone. We'll sometimes find fractures of calcified hyoid bone in old people who've suffered a fatal fall or some sort of accidental blow to the neck. But usually the bone and cartilage fractures we see are caused by strangulation. That's not to say we don't get old people who've been strangled. Or even strangled and raped. Your nun was how old?”

twenty-seven. "Sure. Of course, fractures can happen during dissection, but then we don't find focal bleeding. However slight, hemorrhaging of the tissues adjacent to a laryngeal fracture indicates it occurred while the victim was still alive. We found blood. She was strangled, Steve, no question.”

"Was she also raped?”

"Whenever a strangulation victim is female, we routinely check the genitalia. That entails a search for sperm in the vaginal vault, and acid phostase determinations on vaginal washings. She wasn't raped, Steve.”

I'll tell Homicide.”

“Incidentally ..." Carella looked at him.

"Are you sure she's a nun?”

"Why?" Carella asked. "What else did you find?”

“Breast implants,”

Blaney said.