Free When Darkness Falls by James Grippando Page A

perhaps Alicia would recognize something else about her. If there was some connection between the victim and Alicia, police wanted to know about it from the get-go.
    An assistant medical examiner escorted Alicia and Detective Barber to examination room three. Barber was a familiar face around the Davis Center; he had worked homicides for several years. Alicia, however, was a newcomer. “Have you seen an autopsy before?” the assistant ME asked her.
    “Once,” said Alicia, “during training.”
    “Good. But if you feel light-headed, just let me know.”
    The pneumatic doors opened, and they were immediately slammed with the indoor equivalent of an Arctic blast from the air vents in the ceiling. Alicia felt as though she’d just discovered the epicenter of Miami’s latest cold front. Bright lights glistened off the white sterile walls and buff tile floors. The unclothed, ashen cadaver lay face-up on the stainless-steel table in the center of the room.
    The examiner knew the detective, and he introduced himself to Alicia as Dr. Petrak. Then he said something in such a heavy Eastern European accent that Alicia couldn’t understand him.
    Detective Barber translated. “He says we’re just in time.”
    From the looks of things, Alicia would have guessed they were too late. The autopsy was well under way. Two deep incisions ran laterally from shoulder to shoulder, across the breasts at a downward angle meeting at the sternum. A long, deeper cut ran from the breastbone to the groin, forming the stem in the coroner’s classic “Y” incision. The liver, spleen, kidneys, and intestines were laid out neatly beside a slab of ribs on the large dissection table. The cadaver was literally a shell of a human being, and just the sight of it was making her a little queasy. Or was it the sweet, sterile odor that was getting to her?
    “Are you okay?” asked Dr. Petrak.
    “I’m fine,” said Alicia.
    The doctor was examining the victim’s battered right cheekbone, working beneath an intense white spotlight. His powers of concentration were such that his bushy gray eyebrows had pinched together and formed one continuous caterpillar that stretched across his brow. He laid his tweezers aside and snapped a digital photograph.
    Alicia’s gaze drifted across the lifeless body. Lifeless-that was a very fitting word. Whoever she was, she had been without a life for a long time. The fingernails were jagged, several of them bitten back to the quick. The toes were deformed, presumably from shoes that didn’t fit. The calluses on her knees were thick and discolored. They told of a woman who’d spent day after day on Miami’s sidewalks, looking up to passing strangers, begging for spare change. They might never ascertain her true identity. Alicia felt sorry for her, then she felt embarrassed for herself. It seemed that people always felt compassion after it was too late to help.
    “Interesting,” said Dr. Petrak. “Verrrry interesting.”
    Alicia was suddenly reminded of an old episode of Laugh-In that she’d seen on cable. Dr. Petrak sounded like that comedian with the cigarette and wire-frame glasses who used to dress up like a German soldier from the Second World War. Vaht vahs his name?
    “What’s very interesting?” said Detective Barber.
    Arte Johnson. That was the guy. Alicia wasn’t trying to check out, but little mental journeys helped take her mind off the odor and bring the blood back to her head.
    The doctor said, “Officer Mendoza, what do you think when you see a woman with an Adam’s apple?”
    Alicia suddenly felt as though she’d been caught daydreaming in ninth-grade science. “A woman with an Adam’s apple?”
    She had stated her question as if it were an answer. It worked.
    “Exactly,” said Dr. Petrak. “It can’t be, right?”
    “Unless she used to be a man,” said Detective Barber.
    Dr. Petrak looked up, his expression deadpan. “Don’t get crazy on me, okay, detective?” He refocused on his