Chapter 13: The Method of Death, Reconsidered

The autopsy report was forty-one pages, and Holmes had annotated every one of them.

I understood this only when she set the physical folder on my side of her kitchen table at half past nine that evening, still in her coat, having apparently come directly from Southwark with it under her arm. The pages were dense with her handwriting — not marginal notes but structured interrogations, questions posed to the text in red ink as though she were cross-examining it, certain paragraphs bracketed and dated and cross-referenced to other pages by a notation system I needed several minutes to decode. She had read the report at least twice. Possibly three times. The corner edges were worn in the way that paper gets when someone holds it very still and thinks very hard.

"The pathologist is thorough," she said, taking off her coat and not sitting down. "But AXIOM's assisted flagging protocols define the scope of the examination. You look for what the system tells you to look for." She paused at her case board, turned back. "I need you to read it as a surgeon."