Maggie had come to the third floor of the BPD and was now sitting with Jane in her office.

Elizabeth and Katherine had taken seats at a small conference table while Jane was perched on her desk chair. Maggie sat in one of the chairs at the desk and had her papers spread out in front of her. "We autopsied one of the Body Broker's victims," she said. "Another body that was still in one piece there." She had brought a couple of pictures that looked decidedly unappetizing. "A whole corpse. There aren't many in that damn basement where that lunatic was cutting up the bodies," the ME continued. "Just many body parts and nobody knows which part belongs to whom. A real puzzle."

Jane looked over the rim of her glasses and nodded slowly, lips pressed together. "I see. So what do you have?"

Maggie looked at her mother-in-law for a long moment and took a deep breath. "Nothing could be found out about the dental status of the deceased. Very reduced state of care, and he certainly wouldn't get a medal for his general condition either." She pointed to the picture of the corpse. "Strong aromatic odor of the stomach contents and body cavities. So a lot of alcohol. And the autopsy table is still full of lice and fleas now."

Jane furrowed her brows. "A lush?"

"Like he's in the book," Maggie replied. "Only the booze didn't help him anymore; on the contrary. He probably drank quite a bit just before he died. Or had it instilled in him. And then our friend the Body Broker got a hold of him."

"And how did he kill him?"

"He most likely knelt on top of him. With his knees on his torso."

Katherine pricked up her ears.

"As always, we did a layered dissection of the chest wall," Maggie continued. "In the process, we found extensive bleeding into the chest muscles."

Jane looked at the redhead long and hard. "And?" she asked, to whom Maggie was apparently not quick enough to get to the point.

"And petechiae." Maggie continued to speak, unperturbed. "So pinpoint hemorrhages in the conjunctivae. Also, petechiae under the epicardium, which is the outer skin of the heart. And pinpoint hemorrhages under the pleura, the lung coverings." She paused briefly and flipped through her notes, though she probably had them all memorized. "Most pronounced in the interlobar fissures."

Jane stared at her daughter-in-law and blinked slowly. "Where?"

"Between the lobes of the lungs." Maggie schematically drew a lung on a sheet of paper. "There are three lobes of the lungs on the right," she said, "but only two on the left because that's where the heart sits and takes up space." She placed the pencil next to the sheet. "So overall, subepicardial and subpleural hemorrhage of the chest muscles. Two ribs are also broken, which is significant, of course."

"Why?" asked Jane, now even more impatient. "What does it mean?"

"It means death occurred as a result of thorax compression."

"Highly interesting. Now, what is that again?"

"When the chest is compressed with great force."

"Compressed with great force?" Jane frowned deeply. "How is a guy like Cedric Miller supposed to manage that?"

"Well, by simply kneeling on his victim's ribcage. It's called Burking."

"Burking?" Elizabeth looked at Maggie, Jane, and Katherine in turn. "What is that?"

"That term," Katherine said, "goes back to an Englishman named William Burke."

"And who is that?"

"You might say he was one of the best-known body brokers," the psychiatrist explained. "He lived in Scotland in the early nineteenth century. The situation was --" She closed her eyes briefly to organize her thoughts. "There was a dilemma of a special kind then. The death penalty had been canceled. With the Enlightenment, there were fewer and fewer executions, so there were fewer bodies for medicine, even though up to five hundred deaths a year were needed in Edinburgh alone. Besides, body parts weren't just needed in medicine back then; they were also misappropriated for all sorts of frippery."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "For example?"

"It was common to send original death skulls with Christmas greetings engraved on them." Katherine raised her eyebrows briefly. "That didn't make things any easier."

Maggie pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Kind of a comforting thought that there have always been troubled people."

"But no, it was quite normal at the time," Katherine replied, continuing, "Anyway, the need for bodies increased as more and more medical schools opened. You could almost call it a dialectic of Enlightenment. It created a greater need for bodies through medicine and reduced the supply by abolishing capital punishment. In short, we had less supply with increasing demand. It was high season for ... well, who do you think it was for?" She glanced around at the investigators.

"For tomb raiders?" asked Elizabeth.

Katherine nodded slowly.

"And where did this Burke get the idea?"

Katherine raised her brows briefly and licked her lips. "Well, as is often the case with innovation, a roundabout way led to the goal."

Innovation? thought Elizabeth. She didn't think digging up and selling dead bodies was particularly innovative.

"It was sometime around 1820," Katherine continued, "when Burke's friend Donald died. Burke didn't think that was a big deal; the only thing he thought was bad was that Donald still owed him four pounds and had died before he'd paid it all back. So Burke asked himself, 'How do I get money from a dead man?'"

"Banks and insurance companies ask that daily, too," Jane interjected.

"Yeah, only Burke had a good solution. He got money from the dead guy, not directly, but indirectly. Because he made money off the dead guy by selling him."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together again. "But tomb raiders have always existed."

Katherine nodded slowly. "That's true, but mostly they were after trinkets in the graves rather than the bodies. Body excavations to exploit the corpses scientifically or artistically, so to speak, have only occurred sporadically. For example, in the times of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, they dissected bodies in secret, without the knowledge of the church. In any case, in the nineteenth century, people were well aware of tomb raiders and took countermeasures."

"I think I read that once," Jane said with furrowed brows. "Didn't that even go so far as to invent cages for coffins?"

Katherine nodded again. "Yes. Because of body snatchers, the rich had steel cages built around the coffins. You could say it was a gated community for the dead." She folded her hands but immediately took them apart again. "Especially here in the United States, there were steel cages like that. The advertisement for it was, 'I don't want your loved ones to be among the forty thousand bodies that disappear every year.' So people secured their bodies."

Jane made a face. "With those cages?"

Katherine pulled the corners of her mouth down and raised her shoulders briefly. "Some did indeed use those cages. Of course, it no longer made sense for tomb raiders to dig up bodies they couldn't get to because of the cage. Other morticians did it in such a way that they let the corpses decompose on purpose and only then buried them, so to speak, with continued putrefaction. Completely decomposed corpses were of no interest to the body snatchers because the anatomy departments at the universities didn't cough up a dime for them."

"And now, what has that got to do with this Burke?"

"Burke," said Katherine, "had an idea about that, too. He and his buddy took some of the dead out of the caskets while they were still in the funeral home and put sandbags in their coffins so that the loss of the body wasn't even noticeable. In the church and later at the graveside, the dead man in the coffin was commemorated, but in reality, the priest was speaking to a sandbag, and the body had long since gone to the anatomy."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "And that worked?"

Katherine nodded slowly. "For a while. Then it got harder because security was tightened. But Burke had another idea. He did it just like our Body Broker because he said to himself, if I can't find bodies that are still in good condition and that I can make money off of, I'll provide supplies myself."

"By killing people and selling the bodies?" asked Elizabeth.

"That's right. Like Cedric Miller, our body broker. Literally a surefire business."

"So what is this Burking?"

"It's killing someone by sitting on their chest and holding their nose and mouth closed like Cedric Miller did. That leads to asphyxia pretty quickly, which leads to death. Especially if the victims are drunk."

"What about this Burke guy? Did he get caught at any point?" wanted Jane to know.

Katherine nodded again. "He was caught around 1830, and I read something about it recently, but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, what was called the Anatomy Act was passed to prevent such tomb raids."

"And what happened to Burke?"

"He was hanged a year after his capture. Tickets for his execution were in extremely high demand, comparable to today's rock band concerts back then. Even after his death, the Burke hype didn't die down. His skeleton is on display in Edinburgh at the Medical Museum, and I saw it there during my last vacation."

"Kind of sick, the whole thing," Maggie muttered.

"Oh, that's not all about our dear Mr. Burke. A couple of jokers came up with making purses out of Burke's skin back in the day. And a business card box and that box was resold at auction a few years ago."

"Wonderful," Jane said, leaning back in her chair. "Then we'll know about William Burke for now. Let's see what Nick can get out of our Body Broker." She stood up, grabbed her empty coffee cup, and looked at Katherine with furrowed brows. "This Burke comparison reinforces your belief that there are two killers?"

Katherine looked at her mother for a long moment and nodded. "Yes, more than ever. Foreman and that stone thrower were killed in bestial ways. Miller's victims, however, died at the hands of Burking. It doesn't add up, not one bit."

"Bell won't be happy about that at all," Jane replied with furrowed brows.

Katherine took a deep breath and shrugged. "Even Sigmund Freund said that man being happy was not in the creation plan."