Detective Rhys MacFarlane never approached the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner on Mission Road without thinking what an odd name it had—what became of the missing “the,” he wondered—and how unfit the building seemed for its function. Built as a general hospital in 1910, it was an extravaganza of red brick and pale marble, Romanesque scrolls and curliques. Its striped facade, he thought, might have been more appropriate to a vast amusement arcade than to a hospital, or now, to the offices pertinent to a morgue.
But then, MacFarlane reflected, it housed not only the coroner’s offices but a gift shop called Skeletons in the Closet that sold everything from toe tags and tee-shirts to blankets marked L.A. County Medical Examiner. He wondered if people didn’t find it offensive in an en
