Mark’s bloodstream, the doctor told me, carried heavy concentrations of powerful sedatives, the kind of drugs my husband had never taken in his life, never been prescribed, had no reason on earth to have in his system.

I will not name the specific compounds, or describe how the dosing was calibrated, because a recipe for making a living person appear convincingly dead is not a thing that belongs on a page.

It is enough to say this: that a large enough dose of the right sedatives, combined with the extreme cold of an industrial freezer, can slow a person’s breathing and heartbeat so profoundly that, to a careless or a corrupt examiner, they can appear to have stopped altogether.

That was what had been done to my husband.