Contact. Evelyn Vaughn

knock at the open doorway startled her so badly, Faith sprang back from the corpse with a cry. Then she stared at her boss, confused. How had Greg gotten so close without her hearing him?

      Just how upset was she?

      Still, now that she did notice him, his heartbeat sounded comfortingly, familiarly like Greg. He wore Nikes, not boots. He, at least, wasn’t the killer.

      “This is your version of keeping distance from the case?” he asked, pale eyes frowning behind his glasses.

      Faith flushed. “I came looking for you and I…I found her like this.” It was technically the truth. She was just leaving out the middle part, where a more honest woman would say, and I heard someone coming and hid in the drawer and then climbed back out once he was gone and then I found her like this.

      “Like what?” He came closer. He had a clipboard in one hand, a pen behind his ear, fresh gloves flapping out of his pocket. That was so Greg. Now that she’d noticed him, he wasn’t the least bit silent. Just…quiet-natured.

      Easy to be with.

      “Uncovered. And…some of her hair’s been cut off. Did the medical examiner take it to run tests?”

      Greg took her by the shoulders—luckily his hands made contact with her sleeves, not her bare skin, but subtle sensations flowed across her all the same.

      Nothing bad.

      “That’s it, Faith. You’re done for the day. I don’t care where you go, but you’re too close to this case to be here until we’ve finished processing the evidence. Consider it bereavement leave.”

      This time, Faith was aware of someone else coming. He didn’t sound like a threat. He sounded like the medical examiner. “But Greg, look. She’s missing hair.”

      At least he looked—which meant he also let go of her. And he frowned. “That’s odd.”

      “Then the M.E. didn’t…?”

      “Didn’t what?” asked Dr. Mandelet, entering. He was a round man with café-au-lait skin, curly black hair and a neatly trimmed beard, his accent faintly touched by the Caribbean. His shoes, Faith noticed, had crepe soles.

      “If you took hair to test, wouldn’t you take it by the root?” asked Greg, using his pen to ruffle the fresh, blunt cut amidst Krystal’s perm.

      “I’d want the follicle attached, yes. But—” Close enough to see the cut himself, Mandelet swore. Then he glared at Faith. “Did you do this?”

      “No!”

      “Of course she didn’t,” agreed Greg. This time, his hand on her shoulder felt downright comforting. His belief in her innocence felt simple, straightforward. Easy. She found that she could still concentrate on the situation around them, even with this subtle, physical connection to another human. Interesting. “So who would have?”

      “Didn’t you say the DB was a tarot reader?” asked the M.E.

      Faith frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

      “It matches her hands.” Now that he had an audience, Mandelet drew one of Krystal’s waxy hands out from beneath the sheet. Faith caught a glimpse of her friend’s bare hip beyond it, and felt embarrassed for her. “She’s got calluses on the inside joints of her fingers, on the edges of her thumbs. See? Feel here.”

      Faith shook her head.

      Mandelet grinned, clearly thinking Faith’s hesitance had to do with the fact that Krystal was dead, not knowing that Faith had hesitated to touch her even when she lived. “Trust me. This young lady knew her way around a deck of cards. So what I’m thinking is, one of her witchy friends snuck in.”

      “What? No!”

      “Faith,” cautioned Greg. “We’re just theorizing.”

      “It’s happened more than once around here, especially in the funeral homes,” Mandelet insisted. “Voodoo practitioners. People pretending to be voodoo practitioners. Pagans. Psychics. Hair and nail clippings are a big deal to those kinds of weirdos.”

      Faith’s roommate Evan, a practicing Wiccan, would call it the Law of Contagion. Having a piece of something, or something that had been in constant contact with your focus, was considered as good as having the actual focus.

      “Huh.” Greg sounded amused. But he also dropped his hand from Faith’s shoulder, so she couldn’t tell why he was amused and had to get her information the old-fashioned way—by turning to him. He was taller than he looked.

      “I was just thinking about how important hair and nail clippings are to us,” he explained. “Maybe this is another case of magic and science being more closely connected than they’re given credit for.”

      Sometimes Faith really liked Greg.

      “Anyway,” said Mandelet, and from the way he eyed Faith, she knew he hadn’t completely discounted her as a suspect in the hair theft, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

      But before he twitched the sheet back over Krystal’s face, Faith had to ask. “Wait. How—exactly how did she die? I really need to know.”

      Mandelet and Greg exchanged a look, and Greg nodded. The M.E. shrugged and pulled the sheet farther down, so that it barely covered Krystal’s breasts. “You work here, little lady. How about you tell me?”

      “She’s a desk clerk,” protested Greg, but this time Faith didn’t appreciate his protection.

      “She was strangled,” she said, starting with the obvious. “I don’t know what he used—”

      “He?” inquired Mandelet.

      “Women only account for a tenth of the murder arrests made, right? And then they usually kill lovers or their children. And aren’t women more likely to kill from a distance, like with poison, than in a physical attack?”

      Both men were nodding. So Faith felt sure enough to ask, “But what did he use?”

      “Wire garrote?” suggested Mandelet. “That would be a professional’s choice.” But he waited for her response.

      “That would leave a cleaner line, wouldn’t it?” She bent closer to what had, thankfully, been reduced back to evidence. “And a belt would have left a wider mark. I’m thinking some kind of cord or rope?”

      “Silk,” agreed Mandelet. “Red silk. I removed fibers from the wound. If we can find that rope, her DNA will be all over it. The killer may have left epithelial evidence on it from his own hands as well, so that we can work toward a second DNA match.”

      “And if we can’t find the rope? Did she maybe scratch him, or pull some of his hair, or—”

      The M.E. shook his head. “The only tissue under her nails was her own, from when she fought the rope. There was evidence that she’d had sex in the last few days, but not recently enough for us to match the semen. It seems to have been consensual, in any case. The pattern of tearing on the—”

      “That’s enough,” Greg interrupted firmly, and drew the sheet over Krystal’s face. “This is getting too personal. Faith, you’re taking a few days off, and that’s that.”

      She nodded slowly. If we can find that rope…

      It was as good a place to start as any, and she couldn’t very easily start looking for it if she was at work all day. “You’re right. I’ll go. Thank you, though. Both of you.”

      “When you get back, you’re welcome to sit in on a few autopsies,” offered Mandelet, and as disgusting a thought as it was, Faith recognized the compliment in his offer. “You have a good eye for it. You don’t want to stay a clerk forever, do you?”

      “Stop poaching my administrative staff,” warned Greg, saving Faith the necessity of answering that question. She really didn’t