North of Montana

cloud of steam scented with toasted bread crumbs and Gorgonzola cheese.

I open an Amstel Light.

And the envelope.

Inside is a series of photographs of an autopsy taken by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office.

I stare at the glossy images in a state of numb disbelief. They are eight-by-tens, in color, and more pornographic than anything I have ever seen or could imagine. The victim is identified by a plate reproduced in the bottom right corner of each as V. ALVARADO. There is no cover letter, there doesn’t have to be: the angry marks of the sender are all over the photographs like fingerprints.

First there are aerial shots of an intersection with an arrow drawn in grease pencil to show the probable route taken by the car.

Next, overall streets: bars, warehouses, street corners, alleys.

Orientation view of the crime scene: The body as it lay face down on the sidewalk. White triangular markers set next to a purse thrown five feet away and more markers where the bullets hit a bus-stop bench and a wall.

Closer on the body: She had tiny bare feet. God knows what happened to her shoes. The tight jeans with zippers at the ankles have white embroidered flowers over the pockets. The shirt is still tucked in neatly but the entire back is blackened with blood and a tangle of dark hair that blends into the sharp shadow cast by the flash.

Her face, on its side looking at the camera, is heart shaped, jaws apart, tongue swollen and protruding in the classic configuration of a choking victim. The eyes are half closed and that is what draws you to the picture, those dark glinting slices of obsidian beneath lids set halfway between anguish and nothingness.

The pictures of the actual autopsy, showing the progression of the body from when it was brought in fully clothed through every step of the procedure, are grisly as hell.

But the worst — as I sit frozen on my kitchen stool — is not the surgical blood and gore but the initial shot of the naked body lying on its back on the gurney after it has been undressed and still looks like a person. It is shameful to look so frankly at someone no longer able to defend herself, spread in death with blood smeared all over, rudely exposed with no secrets left. The magnitude of the violence that it takes to shatter a human body to this degree is deeply sobering. I think, my God, somebody take care of this woman, pull the sheet back over her, do whatever it takes to restore her dignity.

The rest of the photos document the probing of the wounds to remove the 45s. The Y incision down the abdomen to the pubic bone. The removal of the rib cage, which I have been told they do with a pair of pruning shears. The examination of internal organs. Until all that is left of the victim, the violence, and the scientific examination of that violence is a scraped-out carcass. A bit of nonliving refuse and on to the next. The packet is minus any medical dictation except a form stamped M.E. REPORT PENDING.

I slip the photos back into the envelope, shaken by the impact and outraged that John Roth would send them to me. But why should I be surprised? He’s always favored shock tactics — the midnight phone call, the drunken appearance from behind a pillar in the garage. Six months ago I heard he received a thirty-day suspension for firing a handgun into the pitchers mound of a public park while doing some righteous partying with a bunch of other officers. I jump off the stool and stalk into the bedroom. The smell of congealed Gorgonzola cheese is making me sick.

Punching his number without even thinking about it, “Stop pulling this shit.”

“Cool out, Ana. You’re way over the top.”

He sounds stoned. I got him in his apartment in Redondo Beach, where I can easily picture him sitting on the seat of a rowing machine — because the only other furniture is a NordicTrack — wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants and smoking a joint. Young to be a detective sergeant, he has built himself one of the world-class torsos, but still wears that sort of Tom Selleck moustache that went out in the seventies, maybe to distract from rivulets of acne scars that run across his cheeks.

“Ana … what are you so afraid of?”

He used to whisper that in bed, challenging me to take it farther until we passed some very distant boundaries. When I told him I’d had enough, his bombardment of flowers, phone messages, faxes, cute little trolls with open arms took on the same aggression as his sex, infuriating me to the point where I once threw a punch and cracked him on the lower jaw. The more I pulled away the harder he came on, relentless and increasingly irrational, until I took to carrying a weapon at all times.

“What is the point, John?”

“Thought you’d be interested in a last look at your cousin.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me?” He laughs. “Miss Senorita Alvarado was a fucking dope dealer.”

Mrs. Gutierrez described Miss Senorita Alvarado as a long suffering mother of two.

‘What makes you say she was dealing dope?”

“It was a hit.”

I am interested. “Were there witnesses?”

“A street kid named Rat called it in to 911 but — no surprise — later told the investigating officer he didn’t see a thing. Doesn’t matter. It was a drive-by. The weapon was a forty-five-caliber Mac-10, fully automatic, good for nothing but killing people. Fifteen shots were fired. The victim was hit by seven.”

“Could have been random.”

“Take a look at picture number five.”

I walk back into the kitchen with the phone to my ear and pick up number five, the one where the body was washed to show the wounds. Half-inch bullets do not make neat pinholes. They break bones. They rip out the windpipe and cause hemorrhaging in the thorax.

“That’s a lot of destruction.”

“You know what it feels like to get an injection. Imagine something the size of a pencil being shoved through your body.”

“How do you die?”

“Blood fills the chest cavity until you can’t breathe.”

“How long do you think it takes to drown in your own blood, John?”

“Couple of minutes,” he answers matter-of-factly. “You lay there thinking about it. Look at the hands.”

No hands, just two bloody stumps.

“They blew off her hands,” he instructs. “As punishment for taking what didn’t belong to her. Dealers like that kind of thing. It’s a symbol even a lowlife can understand.”

It is easier to talk to him as a colleague, two professionals on safe ground. I remember that was part of it, too.

“Was there evidence of drugs?”

“No, but what are the two reasons a female would be out on Santa Monica Boulevard at five in the morning? Dealing crack or turning tricks.”

“A typically sexist assumption.”

“That’s me.”

“No shit.”

“This Gutierrez woman keeps bugging us, swears the victim was related to Ana Grey in the big FBI and that she has proof.”

“What kind of proof?”

“Yo no se but the thought ambled across my cocked-up brain that if Alvarado was dealing and the bad guys were pissed enough to blow her away, and if they know you’re a fed … Who the fuck knows, there could be some kind of fallout.”

“I appreciate the concern.”

Now I can clearly hear him taking a toke. On the exhale, “Relax, Ana. You’ll be happy to know I’m boffing the lady lieutenant over on homicide.”

What was I afraid of?

John Roth hadn’t stopped calling until I threatened a court order. A few weeks later I found a blood-soaked tampon hanging from the doorway in my living room — a symbol even a lowlife could understand that John was seeing another woman. I never confronted him, never had proof, but changed the locks and stopped dating