All these years reading stories about death, yet she’s never seen—certainly never touched—a corpse. All those nights looming like a dark angel over the pages, spying on autopsies and checking pulses in blind alleys, drawing shut the painted eyelids of throttled dancers . . . Death was intrigue. Death was a challenge. Death seemed a thrill. But now she has seen death, held it, only to find it strange, and sad.
