“How dead was she?” Lee laughed to herself at the question. The woman was dead, obviously. There weren’t variants of death. One couldn’t be only partially deceased. All or nothing, death was. Either she was or she wasn’t. Nevertheless, Lee asked anyway. The pathologist knew what she meant.

“Well, Lee…” the man, who was well-past middle aged, ran his hands through what was left of his snow-white hair. He pondered for a moment and then waggled his hand iffily. “She was dead enough.”

“Enough?”

“I’ll put it this way,” he leaned back in his chair. It creaked loudly; the only noise to break the pregnant silence in the dark, paneled room. “There were enough pills in her stomach to kill her. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean,” another pause, almost as if he was being exceedingly careful in choosing his words. “That she did it to herself.”

Lee looked down at her scribbled notes in a moment of reflection. “Too many for accident,” she mused.

“Correct.”

“Too few for suicide?” She looked up.

“Exactly.”