The Mourning Sexton by Michael Baron

area near the base of the tongue. Even a pathologist as second-rate as Sam Avery would have checked the hyoid, Granger said. Moreover, Judith's X-rays indicated no such fracture.
    In many cases, Granger explained, exhumation of the body, even years later, could provide the necessary confirming (or refuting) evidence. But not here. As the copy of the death notice in Judith Shifrin's file confirmed, a Jewish mortuary prepared her body for interment, Rabbi Zev Saltzman of Anshe Emes officiated at the funeral, and she was buried (next to her mother) in an Orthodox cemetery. Observant Jews do not embalm their dead, believing that the soul's return to God is dependent upon the body's swift return to the earth.
    For dust you are and to dust you shall return.
    Three years after her burial, Judith Shifrin's corpse would have no remaining relevant soft tissues to examine.
    So now what?
    The day after Jack Bellows's press conference, Hirsch had shifted his focus to the Ford Motor Company. If Jack the Ripper wanted to throw down the gauntlet, he was prepared to pick it up and smash him in the face with it. He'd assigned one of Rosenbloom's brightest paralegals to research accidents involving Ford Explorers. She'd already found him an Explorer accident database at a Web site maintained by a national organization of plaintiffs personal injury lawyers specializing in SUV crash cases. Each day, he'd called another two or three of the lawyers listed on the site who'd handled accident cases against Ford. Although he didn't have much yet, he'd come across a few promising leads, or what had seemed to be promising leads before yesterday's meeting with Henry Granger.
    Strangled her?
    Was it even conceivable?
    He tried to visualize Brendan McCormick—six foot four, at least two hundred sixty pounds these days—choking little Judith Shifrin.
    Strangulation was a crime of passion.
    Obviously.
    No one committed a premeditated murder by strangulation.
    What could have set off that type of rage in McCormick? An affair gone bad? Announcement that she was pregnant? He tried to imagine a scenario that would end in her death.
    Nothing.
    He thought back to the rumors he'd heard during their assistant U.S. attorney days together. Vague rumors about McCormick's sexual antics at Mizzou. About rough stuff with football groupies—some involving McCormick alone, others involving several players at once. Rumors about one such incident that ended with the young woman in intensive care.
    Just rumors, though. McCormick was never charged. None of them were. Which didn't prove a thing, of course. Back then, athletic departments of the major football schools tended to view sexual assaults as a cost of running a successful program. Boys would be boys, and when something got out of hand, there were influential alumni standing by to help keep things quiet.
    Just rumors.
    Then again, he'd once witnessed McCormick's rage up close. Almost twenty-five years ago. Several of the assistant U.S. attorneys had gone over to Broadway Oyster Bar for drinks after work. There'd been a blues band playing that night, and the place was jammed. Bodies jostling against one another, a haze of cigarette smoke in the air, waitresses squeezing through the crowd with drink trays held aloft, the blues harp wailing and the electric bass thumping. He'd been standing directly behind McCormick when it happened. A skinny guy with long hair and a scraggly mustache was working his way through the crowd toward the men's room. A mug of beer in his hand, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. Someone bumped him from behind. He staggered against McCormick, beer slopping over the edge of his mug, cigarette burning a hole in his shirt. McCormick stepped back, shirt wet, clearly pissed off. He shouted something at the skinny guy, who said something back—Hirsch couldn't hear over the din. McCormick suddenly punched the guy in the stomach. As he doubled over in pain, McCormick grabbed him by his hair, jammed