Dust to Dust

asked.
    “I’ll do it in my free time. We’re doing good in the lab. Don’t worry,” he said. “Am I ever not on top of things?”
    “I never worry about the DNA lab,” said Diane. “Thanks, Jin.”
    “Sure thing, Boss. We’ll have to do this again sometime. It was fun.”
    “Where to now?” said Kingsley. “Shall I take you home?”
    Diane shook her head. “Let’s arrange for a medical examiner. I have someone in mind.” Diane made a call on her cell to see if it was a convenient time for a visit, and directed Kingsley to the home of Lynn Webber. She lived in an apartment complex close to the university.
    “Hey,” said Lynn when she answered the door. “This is a surprise. What are you doing in this area?” She looked at Ross Kingsley as Diane was about to introduce him. “I know you. You’re the FBI profiler, aren’t you? I worked on those hanging victims. That was just terrible.”
    “That’s right,” said Ross. “I’m not with the FBI anymore. I work for a private firm.”
    “Well, come in and tell me about it,” she said.
    Lynn Webber’s home was clean, neat, and modern. There were a lot of white- and cream-colored fabrics, shiny chrome, crystal fixtures, and modern art.
    Lynn was about five feet five, shorter than either Kingsley or Diane. She had short, shiny black hair that always looked as if it had been done at an expensive salon. Her eyes were dark and her smile bright. She wore turquoise silk slacks and a white silk shirt and silver jewelry. Many men who met her fell in love with her. Diane could see Kingsley found her interesting. But she wasn’t particularly worried about him. Kingsley’s wife, Lydia, was pretty interesting herself and more than a match for Lynn.
    “Please sit down. You have me intrigued. Can I get you something to drink? I always have fresh coffee.”
    Diane and Kingsley accepted and had several sips of hot coffee before Diane began her request.
    “By intrigued , what Lynn means is, what am I trying to get her involved in now?” said Diane. “She knows I have a habit of coming to her with, uh, interesting problems.”
    “Oh, dear, what are you up to?” said Lynn, smiling over her cup of coffee.
    Diane let Kingsley explain his job at Darley, Dunn, and Upshaw. When he got to Stacy’s file, which he had brought with him, Diane took over.
    “I’d like you to look at the autopsy report and the photograph. It’s the only one we have of her. If there were any autopsy photos of her, we don’t have them,” said Diane. She handed Lynn the photograph and the report.
    Lynn examined them carefully for several minutes. “I see your concern,” she said, tapping them with her polished fingernails.
    “We have the father’s permission to exhume her and were wondering if you would perform the second autopsy,” said Diane. “I don’t know the ME who did the first one, but I don’t imagine he will be pleased.”
    “He won’t,” said Lynn. “I know Oran Doppelmeyer.” She looked at Kingsley and then at Diane. “He won’t be pleased at all, which, I’m so ashamed to say, is the main reason I’d be happy to do it.”

Chapter 17
    Both Ross Kingsley and Diane looked at Lynn Webber with raised eyebrows. Ross had his coffee cup halfway to his lips, about to drink the last sip. He held it there.
    “There must be a story here,” he said.
    “There is. It’s a two-cups-of-coffee story,” said Lynn.
    She poured them each another cup.
    “About seven years ago, Doppelmeyer was the medical examiner in South Carolina and I was assistant ME to him. One evening I was called to the apartment of a young couple after neighbors heard a gunshot and alerted the police. She was on the couch, gun in hand, with a bullet entry wound in her right temple and a big exit wound in the left side of the head. It was messy. She had been dead only about fifteen minutes by the time I got there. She held the gun so tight in her hand, it took me and two paramedics to pry it loose.
    “The neighbors said she and her husband had been arguing. The arguing stopped. A few minutes later there was the gunshot. The husband was an accountant and said he left the apartment following the argument and went to his office to work. That’s where the police found him.”
    She took a sip of coffee and set down her cup, almost spilling it on the glass coffee table.
    “I did the autopsy, determined the manner of death to be suicide, and released the coroner’s report. Well, you would have