As we drove along a snow-blurred, Christmas-card-pretty Colchester Avenue in the darkening cold air, I had to admit that while I enjoyed the occasional autopsy, I wouldn’t make them a habit. For all their incredibly vicious, stupid, venal and self-centered moments, I still preferred my fellow humans alive. Her office was small, warm, and friendly, decorated with childish drawings and family pictures taken at the beach and on a mountain top. It was also cluttered with hundreds of books, magazines, and mysterious black-bound volumes that were parked neatly on every available surface. In many ways, it reminded me of movies I’d seen featuring the favorite professor’s hideaway study. Classical music drifted from some hidden radio behind her desk. She served the cocoa from a machine parked on the window ledge and handed me a cup. In the midst of her own cozy environment, immune from the swirling dark snow outside and all it hid, her earlier tenseness slid away. She raised her cup in a toast.
