It was 9 a.m. Dr. Lauren Huddle strode down the hall to the lab, her white coat pristine, her stiletto heels clicking loudly on the marble floor.

“Greg, I would like to know the make-up of this DNA sample,” she said crisply to the young, tattooed lab tech. “Within the next thirty minutes.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” Greg said with a grin. “Anything for you.”

Dr. Huddle frowned. She rarely smiled and never joked with the lab technicians or her colleagues. Murder was not a laughing matter.

Dr. Lauren N. Huddle is not a character in a television crime show. She currently is the Forensic Pathology Fellow at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond. She does not wear high heels to work. She spends time in ditches with snails and maggots. More