Carved in Bone

or something.” Again she slammed the scalpel down on the metal table—it seemed to make her feel better—and again I flinched. “Goddamnit, this is not junior high school.”
    I had misunderstood utterly, had misinterpreted the tension and angry looks completely. A wave of giddy relief washed over me. I started to laugh, and found I couldn’t stop. I laughed so hard my stomach muscles began to ache; my mask grew so wet with tears that I had to rip it off just to breathe.
    She stared openmouthed at me. Then, slow and bright as sunrise, a smile dawned across her face. She waggled a gloved finger at me, shook her head, and said, “And what were you talking about? Are you her boyfriend?”
    “No. No! ” I thought I was starting to laugh again, but I was crying. She laid a hand on my arm and left it there till I got hold of myself. “Oh, God, Jess, I’ve made a royal mess of things.”
    “You screwing a student? Hey, it’s not like you’re the first professor to take a bite out of that shiny apple. Just between you and me, back in my own reckless youth…”
    I stared at her. “ You?! ”
    “Dr. Crowder. Microbiology. And talk about microscopic!” She laughed. “So you and Miss Priss got something going on? That why she bared her fangs at me?”
    “No. At least, not like that. It’s complicated.” She raised her eyebrows quizzically, and so I told her everything: how I came unglued in class; how Sarah came to my office that night to return the bones; how we fell into a torrid clutch; how Miranda reacted to the sight. “Jesus, Jess. I’ve compromised myself with a student—an undergraduate, at that—and simultaneously alienated my best graduate assistant. I don’t know how to fix things.”
    She fixed me with a stern, no-bullshit look. “Bill, when’s the last time you got laid?”
    I flushed. “It’s been awhile. Not since Kathleen died. A few months before Kathleen died.”
    She held the look. “So, what, two years or more? That’s a long damn time for a man in his prime. And you’re around young women—smart, attractive young women, women who look up to you—day in and day out. I’m amazed you haven’t thrown some poor lass to the floor and ravished her by now. Jesus, Bill, give yourself a break. Yeah, you kissed a student. Probably as much her doing as yours—take my word for that. And yeah, your timing sucked. Too bad. You want to apologize to one of them, or both of them, go ahead. And then go on .” Her voice softened. “Bill, Bill. We all make mistakes. Even you. Grieving, lonely, stiff-upper-lip you. And if getting caught in a kiss knocks you off that pedestal your diener’s put you on, well, maybe that’s best.” She leaned closer, right into my face. “Understandable as it is, Bill, it’s not healthy for her to idolize you.”
    I blinked. A lot had just happened: confession, understanding, forgiveness, counsel. “I thought you were supposed to be a pathologist. Sound more like a shrink. A damn good one, by the way.”
    She smiled. “Nope, just a woman who’s been around the block a time or two. If I weren’t happily lesbian now, I might take you for a spin myself, try to put a smile back on your face. But enough with the therapy. We’ve got a corpse to dissect.”
    She left me with my jaw hanging open—“happily lesbian now”? Whatever happened to the husband she’d introduced me to at that forensic conference a year or so ago?—and turned her attention to Ledbetter’s corpse. The Y incision from Dr. Hamilton’s autopsy had been stitched shut with coarse black baseball-style sutures, which Jess cut with a flick of the scalpel. Stuffed into the abdomen was a red plastic biohazard bag; extricating it and laying it on the table, she said, “Well, at least he bagged the organs instead of just dumping them into the cavity. We might as well look at the lungs first, although I’m not feeling optimistic about what kind of shape they’re in.”
    “Nine months is a long time,” I agreed. “I’ll be surprised if they’re not completely putrefied.”
    “Me too. Looks like our man got the bare minimum of cosmetic embalming—just enough in the neck to keep his face presentable for the funeral. And the organs were already removed and bagged at that point, so they didn’t get any formalin at all.” She cut the zip tie at the neck of the bag. “Brace yourself—this is going to be pretty ripe.” Opening the bag wide, she revealed the contents to our eyes and