"Good morning. Dr. Scarpetta," Jenrette said, and he seemed pleased to see me.

"Greens and gloves are in the cabinet over there."

I thanked him, though I would not need them, for the young doctor would not need me. I expected this autopsy to be all about finding nothing, and as I looked closely at Ferguson's neck, I got my first validation. The reddish pressure marks I had observed late last night were gone, and we would find no deep injury to underlying tissue and muscle. As I watched Jenrette work, I was humbly reminded that pathology is never a substitute for investigation. In fact, were we not privy to the circumstances, we would have no idea why Ferguson had died, except that he had not been shot, stabbed, or beaten, nor had he succumbed to some disease.

"I guess you noticed the way the socks smell that he had stuffed in his bra," Jenrette said as he worked.

"I'm wondering if you found anything to correspond with that, like a bottle of perfume, some sort of cologne?" He lifted out the block of organs. Ferguson had a mildly fatty liver.

"No, we didn't," I replied.

"And I might add that fragrances are generally used in scenarios like this when there's more than one person involved." Jenrette glanced up at me.

"Why?"

"Why bother if you're alone?"

"I guess that makes sense." He emptied the stomach contents into a carton.

"Just a little bit of brownish fluid," he added.

"Maybe a few nut like particles. You say he flew back to Asheville not long before he was found?"

"That's right."

"So maybe he ate peanuts on the plane. And drank. His STAT alcohol's point one-four."

"He probably also drank when he got home," I said, recalling the glass of bourbon in the bedroom.

"Now, when you talk about there being more than one person in some of these situations, is this gay or straight?"

"Often gay," I said.

"But the pornography is a big clue."

"He was looking at nude women."

"The magazines found near his body featured nude women," I restated his remark, for we had no way of knowing what Ferguson had been looking at. We knew only what we had found.

"It's also important that we didn't see any other pornography or sexual paraphernalia in his house," I added.

"I guess I would assume there would be more of it," Jenrette said as he plugged in the Stryker's saw.

"Usually, these guys keep trunk loads of it," I said.

"They never throw it out. Frankly, it bothers me quite a lot that we found only four magazines, all of them current issues."

"It's like he was really new at this."

"There are many factors that suggest he was inexperienced," I replied.

"But mostly what I'm seeing is inconsistency."

"Such as?" He incised the scalp behind the ears, folding it down to expose the skull, and the face suddenly collapsed into a sad, slack mask.

"Just as we found no bottle of perfume to account for the fragrance he had on, we found no women's clothing in the house except what he had on," I said.

"There was only one condom missing from the box. The rope was old, and we found nothing, including other rope, that might be the origin of it. He was cautious enough to wrap a towel around his neck, yet he tied a knot that's extremely dangerous."

"As the name suggests," said Jenrette.

"Yes. A hangman's knot pulls very smoothly and won't let go," I said.

"Not exactly what you want to use when you're intoxicated and perched on top of a varnished bar stool, which you're more likely to fall off of than a chair, by the way."

"I wouldn't think many people would know how to tie a hangman's knot," Jenrette mused.

"The question is, did Ferguson have reason to know?" I said.

"I guess he could have looked it up in a book."

"We found no books about knot tying, no nautical- type books or anything like that in his house."

"Would it be hard to tie a hangman's knot? If there were instructions, let's say?"

"It wouldn't be impossible, but it would take a little practice."

"Why would someone be interested in a knot like that? Wouldn't a slip knot be easier?"

"A hangman's knot is morbid, ominous. It's neat, precise. I don't know. " I added," How is Lieutenant Mote? "

"Stable, but he'll be in the I. C. U for a while." Dr. Jenrette turned on the Stryker's saw. We were silent as he removed the skull cap. He did not speak again until he had removed the brain and was examining the neck.

"You know, I don't see a thing. No hemorrhage to the strap muscles, hyoid's intact, no fractures of superior horns of the thyroid cartilage. The spine's not fractured, but I don't guess that happens except in judicial hangings."

"Not unless you're obese, with arthritic changes of the cervical vertebrae, and get accidentally suspended in a weird way," I said.

"You want to look?"

I pulled on gloves and moved a light closer.

"Dr. Scarpetta, how do we know he was alive when he was hanged?"

"We can't really know that with certainty," I said.

"Unless we find another cause of death."

"Like poisoning."

"That's about the only thing I can think of at this point. But if that's the case, it had to be something that worked very fast. We do know he hadn't been home long before Mote found him dead. So the odds are against the bizarre and in favor of his death being caused by asphyxia due to hanging."

"What about manner?"

"Pending," I suggested. When Ferguson's organs had been sectioned and returned to him in a plastic bag placed inside his chest cavity, I helped Jenrette clean up. We hosed down the table and floor while a morgue assistant rolled Ferguson's body away and tucked it into the refrigerator. We rinsed syringes and instruments as we chatted some more about what was happening in an area of the world that initially had attracted the young doctor because it was safe. He told me he had wished to start a family in a place where people still believed in God and the sanctity of life. He wanted his children in church and on athletic fields. He wanted them untainted by drugs, immorality, and violence on TV.

"Thing is. Dr. Scarpetta," he went on, "there really isn't any place left. Not even here. In the past week I've worked an eleven-year-old girl who was sexually molested and murdered. And now a State Bureau of Investigation agent dressed in drag. Last month I got a kid from Oteen who overdosed on cocaine. She was only seventeen. Then there are the drunk drivers. I get them and the people they smash into all the time."

"Dr. Jenrette?"

"You can call me Jim," he said, and he looked depressed as he began to collect paperwork from a countertop.

"How old are your children?" I asked.

"Well, my wife and I keep trying." He cleared his throat and averted his eyes, but not before I saw his pain.

"How about you? You got children?"

"I'm divorced and have a niece who's like my own," I said.

"She's a senior at UVA and currently doing an internship at Quantico."

"You must be mighty proud of her."

"I am," I replied, my mood shadowed again by images and voices, by secret fears about Lucy's life.

"Now I know you want to talk to me some more about Emily Steiner, and I've still got her brain here if you want to see it."

"I very much do." It is not uncommon for pathologists to fix brains in a ten percent solution of formaldehyde called formalin. The chemical process preserves and firms tissue. It makes further studies possible, especially in cases involving trauma to this most incredible and least understood of all human organs. The procedure was sadly utilitarian to the point of indignity, should one choose to view it like that. Jenrette went to a sink and retrieved from beneath it a plastic bucket labeled with Emily Steiner's name and case number. The instant Jenrette removed her brain from its formalin bath and placed it on a cutting board, I knew the gross examination would tell me only more loudly that something was very wrong with this case.

"There's absolutely no vital reaction," I marveled, fumes from the formalin burning my eyes. Jenrette threaded a probe through the bullet track.

"There's no hemorrhage, no swelling. Yet the bullet didn't pass through the pons. It didn't pass through the basal ganglia or any other area that's vital." I looked up at him.

"This is not an immediately lethal wound."

"I can't argue that one."

"We should look for another cause of death."

"I sure wish you'd tell me what. Dr. Scarpetta. I've got tox testing going on. But unless that turns up something significant, there's nothing I can think of that could account for her death. Nothing but the gunshot to her head."

"I'd like to look at a tissue section of her lungs," I said.

"Come on to my office."

I was considering that the girl might have been drowned, but as I sat over Jenrette's microscope moments later moving around a slide of lung tissue, questions remained unanswered.

"If she drowned," I explained to him as I worked, "the alveoli should be dilated. There should be edema fluid in the alveolar spaces with disproportionate autolytic change of the respiratory epithelium." I adjusted the focus again.

"In other words, if her lungs had been contaminated by fresh water, they should have begun decomposing more rapidly than other tissues. But they didn't."

"What about smothering or strangulation?" he asked.

"The hyoid was intact. There were no petechial hemorrhages."

"That's right."

"And more importantly," I pointed out, "if someone tries to smother or strangle you, you're going to fight like hell. Yet there are no nose or lip injuries, no defense injuries whatsoever."

He handed me a thick case file.

"This is everything," he said. While he dictated Max Ferguson's case, I reviewed every report, laboratory request, and call sheet pertaining to Emily Steiner's murder. Her mother, Denesa, had called Dr. Jenrette's office anywhere from one to five times daily since Emily's body had been found. I found this rather remarkable.

"The decedent was received inside a black plastic pouch sealed by the Black Mountain Police. The seal number is 445337 and the seal is intact" -- "Dr. Jenrette?" I interrupted. He removed his foot from the pedal of the dictating machine.

"You can call me Jim," he said again.

"It seems her mother has called you with unusual frequency."

"Some of it is us playing telephone tag. But yes." He slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"She's called a lot."

"Why?"

"Mostly she's just terribly distraught. Dr. Scarpetta. She wants to make sure her daughter didn't suffer."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I told her with a gunshot wound like that, it's probable she didn't.

I mean, she would have been unconscious. uh, probably was when the other things were done. " He paused for a moment. Both of us knew that Emily Steiner had suffered. She had felt raw terror. At some point she must have known she was going to die.

"And that's it?" I asked.

"She's called this many times to find out if her daughter suffered?"

"Well, no. She's had questions and information. Nothing of particular relevance. " He smiled sadly.

"I think she just needs someone to talk to. She's a sweet lady who's lost everyone in her life. I can't tell you how badly I feel for her and how much I pray they catch the horrible monster who did this. That Gault monster I've read about. The world will never be safe as long as he's in it."

"The world will never be safe. Dr. Jenrette. But I can't tell you how much we want to catch him, too. Catch Gault. Catch anybody who does something like this," I said as I opened a thick envelope of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Only one was unfamiliar, and I studied it intensely for a long time as Dr. Jenrette's unemphatic voice went on. I did not know what I was seeing because I had never seen anything quite like this, and my emotional response was a combination of excitement and fear. The photograph showed Emily Steiner's left buttock, where there was an irregular brownish blotch on the skin no bigger than a bottle cap.

"The visceral pleura shows scattered petechiae along the interlobar fissures"

"What is this?" I interrupted Dr. Jenrette's dictation again. He put down the microphone as I came around to his side of the desk and placed the photograph in front of him. I pointed out the mark on Emily's skin as I smelled Old Spice and thought of my ex-husband. Tony, who had always worn too much of it.

"This mark on her buttock is not covered in your report," I added.

"I don't know what that is," he said without a trace of defensiveness. He simply sounded tired. "} just assumed it was some sort of postmortem artifact."

"} don't know of any artifact that looks like that. Did you resect it?"

"No."

"Her body was on something that left that mark." I returned to my chair, sat down, and leaned against the edge of his desk.

"It could be important."

"Yes, if that's the case, I could see how it might be important," he replied, looking increasingly dejected.

"She's not been in the ground long." I spoke quietly but with feeling. He stared uneasily at me.

"She's never going to be in better shape than she is now," I went on.

"I really think we ought to take another look at her." He did not blink as he wet his lips.

"Dr. Jenrette," I said, "let's get her up now." Dr. Jenrette flipped through cards in his Rolodex and reached for the phone.

I watched him dial.

"Hello, Dr. James Jenrette here," he said to whoever answered.

"I wonder if Judge Begley might be in? " The Honorable Hal Begley said he would see us in his chambers in half an hour. I drove while Jenrette gave directions, and I parked on College Street with plenty of time to spare. The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond's overcrowded jail, spread out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Asheville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.

"Judge Begley's not known for his patience," Dr. Jenrette warned me as we climbed marble steps inside the old courthouse. "} can promise he's not going to like your plan."

I knew that Dr. Jenrette did not like my plan, either, for no forensic pathologist wants a peer digging up his work. Dr. Jenrette and I both knew that implicit in all of this was that he had not done a good job.

"Listen," I said as he headed down a corridor on the third floor, "I don't like the plan, either. I don't like exhumations. I wish there were another way."

"I guess I just wish I had more experience in the kinds of cases you see every day," he added.

"I don't see cases like this every day," I said, touched by his humility.

"Thank God, I don't."

"Well, I'd be lying to you. Dr. Scarpetta, if I said that it wasn't real hard on me when I got called to that little girl's scene. Maybe I should have spent a little more time."

"I think Buncombe County is extremely lucky to have you," I said sincerely as we opened the judge's outer office door.

"I wish I had more doctors like you in Virginia. I'd hire you." He knew I meant it and smiled as a secretary as old as any woman I'd ever met who was still employed peered up at us through thick glasses. She used an electric typewriter instead of a computer, and I surmised from the numerous gray steel cabinets lining walls that filing was her forte. Sunlight seeped wanly through barely opened Venetian blinds, a galaxy of dust suspended in the air. I smelled Rose Milk as she rubbed a dollop of moisturizing cream into her bony hands.

"Judge Begley's expecting you," she said before we introduced ourselves.

"You can just go on in. That door there." She pointed to a shut door across from the one we had just come through.

"Now just so you know, court's adjourned for lunch and he's due back at exactly one."

"Thank you," I said.

"We'll try not to keep him long."

"Won't make any difference if you try." Dr. Jenrette's shy knock on the judge's thick oak door was answered by a distracted "Come in!" from the other side. We found His Honor behind a partner's desk, suit jacket off as he sat erectly in an old red leather chair. He was a gaunt, bearded man nearing sixty, and as he glanced over notes in a legal pad, I made a number of telling assessments about him. The orderliness of his desk told me that he was busy and quite capable, and his unfashionable tie and soft-soled shoes bespoke someone who did not give a damn how people like me assessed him.

"Why do you want to violate the sepulchre?" he asked in slow Southern cadences that belied a quick mind as he turned a page in a legal pad.

"After going over Dr. Jenrette's reports," I replied! "we agree some questions were not answered by the first examination of Emily Steiner's body."

"I know of Dr. Jenrette but don't believe I know you," Judge Begley said to me as he placed the legal pad on the desk.

"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia."

"I was told you had something to do with the FBI."

"Yes, sir. I am the consulting forensic pathologist for the Investigative Support Unit."

"Is that like the Behavioral Science Unit?"

"One and the same. The Bureau changed the name several years ago."

"You're talking about the folks who do the profiling of these serial killers and other aberrant criminals who until recently we didn't have to worry about in these parts." He watched me closely, lacing his fingers in his lap.

"That's what we do," I said.

"Your Honor," Dr. Jenrette said.

"The Black Mountain Police has requested the assistance of the FBI. There's some fear that the man who murdered the Steiner girl is the same man who killed a number of people in Virginia."

"I'm aware of that. Dr. Jenrette, since you were so kind as to explain some of this when you called earlier. However, the only item on the agenda right now is your wish for me to grant you the right to dig up this little girl.

"Before I let you do something as upsetting and disrespectful as that, you're going to have to give me a powerfully good reason. And I do wish the two of you would sit down and make yourselves comfortable. That's why I have chairs on that side of my desk."

"She has a mark on her kin," I said as I seated myself.

"What sort of mark?" He eyed me with interest as Dr. Jenrette slipped a photograph out of an envelope and set it on the judge's blotter.

"You can see it in the photograph," Jenrette said. The judge's eyes dropped to the photograph, his face unreadable.

"We don't know what the mark is," I explained.

"But it may tell us where the body lay. It may be some type of injury." He picked up the photograph, squinting as he examined it more closely.

"Aren't there studies of photographs you can do? Seems to me there's all sorts of scientific things they do these days."

"There are," I answered.

"But the problem is, by the time we finish conducting any studies, the body will be in such poor condition that we'll no longer be able to tell anything from it if we still need to exhume it. The longer the interval gets, the harder it is to distinguish between an injury or other significant mark on the body and artifacts due to decomposition."

"There are a lot of details about this case that make it very odd. Your Honor," Dr. Jenrette said.

"We just need all the help we can get."

"I understand the SBI agent working the case was found hanged yesterday. I saw that in the morning paper."

"Yes, sir," Dr. Jenrette said.

"Are there odd details about his death, too?"

"There are," I replied.

"I hope you're not going to come back here a week from now and want to dig him up."

"I can't imagine that," I said.

"This little girl has a mama. And just how do you think she's going to feel about what you've got in mind?" Neither Dr. Jenrette nor I replied. Leather creaked as the judge shifted in his chair. He glanced past us at a clock on the wall.

"See, that's my biggest problem with what you're asking," he went on.

"I'm thinking about this poor woman, about what all she's been through. I have no interest whatsoever in putting her through anything else."

"We wouldn't ask if we didn't think it was important to the investigation of her daughter's death," I said.

"And I know Mrs. Steiner must want justice. Your Honor. "

"You go get her mama and bring her to me," Judge Begley said as he got up from his chair.

"Excuse me?" Dr. Jenrette looked bewildered.

"I want her mama brought to me," the judge repeated.

"I should be freed up by two-thirty. I'll expect to see you back here."

"What if she won't come?" Dr. Jenrette asked, and both of us got up.

"Can't say I'd blame her a bit."

"You don't need her permission," I said with calm I did not feel.

"No, ma'am, I don't," said the judge as he opened the door.

Dr. Jenrette was kind enough to let me use his office while he disappeared into the hospital labs, and for the next several hours I was on the phone. The most important task, ironically, turned out to be the easiest. Marino had no trouble convincing Denesa Steiner to accompany him to the judge's chambers that afternoon. More difficult was figuring out how to get them there, since Marino still did not have a car.

"What's the holdup?" I asked.

"The friggin' scanner they put in don't work," he said irritably.

"Can't you do without that?"

"They don't seem to think so."

I glanced at my watch.

"Maybe I'd better come get you."

"Yeah, well, I'd rather get there myself. She's got a pretty decent ride. In fact, there are some who say an Infinin's better than a Benz."

"That's moot, since I'm driving a Chevrolet at the moment."

"She said her father-in-law used to have a Benz a lot like yours and you ought to think of switching to an Infiniti or Legend."

I was silent.

"Just food for thought."

"Just get here," I said shortly.

"Yeah, I will."

"Fine." We hung up without good-byes, and as I sat at Dr. Jenrette's cluttered desk I felt exhausted and betrayed. I had been through Marino's bad times with Doris. I had supported him as he had begun venturing forth into the fast, frightening world of dating. In return, he had always telegraphed judgments about my personal life without benefit of having been asked. He had been negative about my ex-husband, and very critical of my former lover. Mark. He rarely had anything nice to say about Lucy or the way I dealt with her, and he did not like my friends. Most of all, I felt his cold stare on my relationship with Wesley. I felt Marino's jealous rage. He was not at Begley's office when Dr. Jenrette and I returned at half past two. As minutes crept by inside the judge's chambers, my anger grew.

"Tell me where you were born. Dr. Scarpetta," the judge said to me from the other side of his immaculate desk.

"Miami," I replied.

"You certainly don't talk like a Southerner. I would have placed you up north somewhere."

"I was educated in the North."

"It might surprise you to know that I was, too," he said.

"Why did you settle here?" Dr. Jenrette asked him.

"I'm sure for some of the very same reasons that you did."

"But you're from here," I said.

"Going back three generations. My great-grandfather was born in a log cabin around here. He was a teacher. That was on my mother's side. On my father's side we had mostly moonshiners until about halfway into this century. Then we had preachers. I believe that might be them now." Marino opened the door, and his face peeked in before his feet did. Denesa Steiner was behind him, and though I would never accuse Marino of chivalry, he was unusually attentive and gentle with this rather peculiarly put together woman whose dead daughter was our reason for gathering. The judge rose, and out of habit so did I, as Mrs. Steiner regarded each of us with curious sadness.

"I'm Dr. Scarpetta." I offered my hand and found hers cool and soft.

"I'm terribly sorry about this, Mrs. Steiner."

"I'm Dr. Jenrette. We've talked on the phone."

"Won't you be seated," the judge said to her very kindly. Marino moved two chairs close together, directing her to one while he took the other. Mrs. Steiner was in her mid- to late thirties and dressed entirely in black. Her skirt was full and below her knees, a sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore no makeup, her only jewelry a plain gold wedding ring. She looked the part of a spinster missionary, yet the longer I studied her, the more I saw what her puritanical grooming could not hide. She was beautiful, with smooth pale skin and a generous mouth, and curly hair the color of honey. Her nose was patrician, her cheekbones high, and beneath the folds of her horrible clothes hid a voluptuously well formed body. Nor had her attributes successfully eluded anything male and breathing in the room. Marino, in particular, could not take his eyes off her.

"Mrs. Steiner," the judge began, "the reason I wanted you to come here this afternoon is these doctors have made a request I wanted you to hear. And let me say right off how much I appreciate your coming. From all accounts, you've shown nothing but courage and decency during these unspeakably trying hours, and I have no intention whatsoever of adding to your burdens unnecessarily."

"Thank you, sir," she said quietly, her tapered, pale hands clasped tightly in her lap.

"Now, these doctors have found a few things in the photographs taken after little Emily died. The things they've found are mysterious and they want to take another look at her."

"How can they do that?" she asked innocently in a voice steady and sweet, and not indigenous to North Carolina.

"Well, they want to exhume her," the judge replied. Mrs. Steiner did not look upset but baffled, and my heart ached for her as she fought back tears.

"Before I say yes or no to their request," Begley went on, "I want to see how you might feel about this."

"You want to dig her up?" She looked at Dr. Jenrette, then me.

"Yes," I answered her.

"We would like to examine her again immediately."

"I don't understand what you might find this time that you didn't find before." Her voice trembled.

"Maybe nothing that will matter," I said.

"But there are a few details I noticed in photographs that I'd like to get a closer look at, Mrs. Steiner. These mysterious things might help us catch whoever did this to Emily. "

s snatch the SOB who killed your baby?" the judge asked. She nodded vigorously as she wept, and Marino spoke with fury.

"You help us, and I promise we're going to nail the goddam bastard."

"I'm sorry to put you through this," said Dr. Jenrette, who would forever be convinced he had failed.

"Then may we proceed?" Begley leaned forward in his chair as if poised to spring, for like everyone in his chambers, he felt this woman's horrible loss. He felt her abject vulnerability in a manner that I was convinced would forever change the way he viewed offenders with hard luck stories and excuses who approached his bench. Denesa Steiner nodded again because she could not speak. Then Marino helped her out of the room, leaving Jenrette and me.

"Dawn will come early and there are plans to make," Begley said.

"We need to coordinate a lot of people," I concurred.

"Which funeral home buried her?" Begley asked Jenrette.

"Wilbur's."

"That's in Black Mountain?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"The name of the funeral director?" The judge was taking notes.

"Lucias Ray."

"What about the detective working this case?"

"He's in the hospital."

"Oh, that's right." Judge Begley looked up and sighed.

I was not sure why I went straight there, except that I had said I would, and I was mad at Marino. I was irrationally offended by, of all things, his allusion to my Mercedes, which he had unfavorably compared to an Infiniti. It wasn't that his comment was right or wrong, but that its intent was to cause irritation and insult. I would not have asked Marino to go with me now had I believed in Loch Ness monsters, creatures from lagoons, and the living dead. I would | have refused had he begged, despite my secret fear of water snakes. Actually, of all snakes greatj and small. | There was enough light left when I reached Lake Tomahawk to retrace what I had been told were Emily's last steps. Parking by a picnic area, I followed the shoreline with my eyes as I wondered why a little girl would walk out here as night began to fall. I recalled how fearful I had been of the canals when I was growing up in Miami. Every log was an alligator and cruel people loitered along the isolated shores. As I got out of my car, I wondered why Emily had not been afraid. I wondered if there might be some other explanation for why she had chosen this route.

The map Ferguson had passed around during the consultation at Quantico indicated that on the early evening of October 1, Emily had left the church and veered off the street at the point where I was standing. She had passed picnic tables and turned right on a dirt trail that appeared to have been worn by foot traffic rather than cleared, for the path was well defined in some spots and imperceptible in others as it followed the shore through woods and weeds.

I briskly passed riotous clumps of tall grasses and brush as the shadow of mountain ranges deepened over water and the wind picked up, carrying the sharp promise of winter. Dead leaves crackled beneath my shoes as I drew upon the clearing marked on the map with a tiny outline of a body. By now, it had gotten quite dark.

I dug inside my handbag for my flashlight, only to recall that it was broken and still inside Ferguson's basement. I found one book of matches left from my smoking days, and it was half empty.

"Damn," I exclaimed under my breath as I began to feel fear.

I slipped out my. 38 and tucked it in a side pocket of my jacket, my hand loose around its grips as I stared at the muddy ledge at the water's edge where Emily Steiner's body had been found. Shadows compared to photographs I recalled indicated that surrounding brush had recently been cut back, but any other evidence of recent activity had been gently covered by nature and the night. Leaves were deep. I rearranged them with my feet to look for what I suspected the local police might not.

I had worked enough violent crimes in my career to have learned one very important truth. A crime scene has a life of its own. It remembers trauma in soil, insects altered by body fluids, and plants trampled by feet. It loses its privacy just as any witness does, f r no stone is left undisturbed, and the curious do not stop coming just because there are no further questions to ask. It is common for people to continue visiting a scene long after there is a reason. They take souvenirs and photographs. They leave letters, cards, and flowers. They come in secret and leave that way, for it is shameful to stare just because you cannot help it. It seems a violation of something sacred even to leave a rose.

I found no flowers in this spot as I swept leaves out of the way. But my toe did strike several small, hard objects that dropped me to my hands and knees, eyes straining. After much rooting around, I recovered what appeared to be four gum balls still in plastic wrappers. It was not until I held them close to a lighted match that I realized the candies were jawbreakers, or Fireballs, as Emily had called them in her diary. I got up, breathing hard. Furtively, I glanced around, listening to every sound. The noise of my feet crashing through leaves seemed horrendously loud as I followed a path that I now could not see at all. Stars were out, the half moon my only guide, my matches long since spent. I knew from the map that I was not far from the Steiners' street, and it was closer to pick my way there than attempt returning to my car.

I was perspiring beneath my coat and terrified of tripping, for in addition to not having a flashlight, I also had failed to bring my portable phone. It occurred to me that I would not want any of my colleagues to see me now, and if I injured myself, I might have to lie about how it happened. Ten minutes into this awful journey, bushes grabbed my legs and destroyed my hose. I stubbed my toe on a root and stepped in mud up to my ankles. When a branch stung my face, barely missing my eye, I stood still, panting and frustrated to the point of tears. To my right, between the street and me, was a dense expanse of woods. To my left was the water.

"Shit," I said rather loudly. Following the shore was the lesser danger, and as I continued I actually got somewhat more adept at it. My eyes adapted better to moonlight. I became more surefooted and intuitive, and could sense from shifts in dampness and temperature of air when I was nearing dryer ground or mud or straying too far from the path. It was as if I were instantly evolving into a nocturnal creature in order to keep my species alive. Then, suddenly, streetlights were ahead as I reached the end of the lake opposite where I had parked. Here the woods had been cleared for tennis courts and a parking lot, and as Emily had done several weeks before, I veered off the path and momentarily was on pavement again. As I walked along her street, I realized I was trembling.

I remembered the Steiner house was two down on the left, and as I got closer to it I wasn't certain what I would say to Emily's mother. I had no desire to tell her where I had been or why, for the last thing she needed was more upset. But I knew no one else in this area and could not imagine knocking on a stranger's door to use the phone. No matter how hospitable anyone in Black Mountain might be, I would be asked why I looked as if I had been lost in a wilderness. It was possible someone might even find me frightening, especially if I had to explain what I did for a profession. As it turned out, my fears were invalidated by an unexpected knight who suddenly rode out of the dark and nearly ran me down.

I got to the Steiners' driveway as Marino was backing out of it in a new midnight-blue Chevrolet. As I waved at him in the beam of his headlights, I could see the blank expression on his face as he abruptly hit the brakes. His mood shifted from incredulity to rage.

"God damn sonofabitch, you practically gave me a heart attack. I coulda run you over."

I fastened my shoulder harness and locked the door.

"What the fuck're you doing out here? Shit!"

"I'm glad you finally got your car and that the scanner works. And I very much need a very strong Scotch and I'm not sure where one finds anything like that around here," I said as my teeth began to chatter.

"How do you turn the heat on?" Marino lit a cigarette, and I wanted one of those, too. But there were some vows I would never break. He turned the heat on high.

"Jesus. You look like you've been mud wrestling," he said, and I couldn't remember when I had seen him so rattled.

"What the heli've you been doing? I mean, are you okay?"

"My car's parked by the clubhouse."

"What clubhouse?"

"On the lake."

"The lake? What? You've been out there after dark? Have you lost your friggin' mind?"

"What I've lost is my flashlight, and I didn't remember that until it was a little late." As I spoke, I slipped my. 38 out of my coat pocket and returned it to my handbag, a move that Marino did not miss. His mood worsened.

"You know, I don't know what the fuck's your problem. I think you're losing it. Doc. I think it's all caught up with you and you're getting goofy as a shithouse rat. Maybe you're going through the change."

"If I were going through'the change' or anything else so personal and so none-of-your-business, you can rest assured I would not discuss it with you. If for no other reason than your vast male dullness or sensitivity of a fence post--which may or may not be gender related, I have to add, to be fair. Because I wouldn't want to assume that all men are like you. If I did, I know I would give them up entirely."

"Maybe you should."

"Maybe I will!"

"Good! Then you can be just like your bratty niece! Hey. Don't think it ain't obvious which way she swings."

"And that is yet one more thing that isn't your goddam business," I said furiously.

"I can't believe you're stooping so low as to stereotype Lucy, to dehumanize her just because she doesn't make the exact choices you would."

"Oh yeah? Well maybe the problem is that she does makes the exact same choices I would. I date women."

"You don't know the first thing about women," I said, and it occurred to me that the car was an oven and I had no idea where we were going.

I flipped the heat down and glared out my window.

"I know enough about women to know you'd drive anybody crazy. And I can't believe you were out walking around the lake after dark. By yourself. So just what the hell would you have done if he was out there, too?"

"Which he?"

"Goddam I'm hungry. I saw a steakhouse on Tunnel Road when I was up this way earlier. I hope they're still open."

"Marino, it's only six forty-five."

"Why did you go out there?" he asked again, and both of us were calming down.

"Someone left candy on the ground where her body was discovered.

Fireballs. " When he made no reply, I added," The same candy she mentioned in her diary. "

"I don't remember that."

"The boy she had a crush on. I think his name was Wren. She wrote that she had seen him at a church supper and he gave her a Fireball. She saved it in her secret box."

"They never found it."

"Found what?"

"Whatever this secret box was. Denesa couldn't find it either. So maybe Wren left the Fireballs at the lake."

"We need to talk to him," I said.

"It would appear that you and Mrs. Steiner are developing a good rapport. "

"Nothing like this should ever have happened to someone like her."

"Nothing like this should ever happen to anyone."

"I see a Western Sizzler."

"No, thank you."

"How about Bonanza?" He flipped on his turn signal.

"Absolutely not." Marino surveyed brightly lighted restaurants lining Tunnel Road as he smoked another cigarette.

"Doc, no offense, but you've got an attitude."

"Marino, don't bother with the'no offense' preamble. All it does is telegraph that I'm about to be offended."

"I know there's a Peddler around here. I saw it in the Yellow Pages."

"Why were you looking up restaurants in the Yellow Pages?" I puzzled, for I'd always known him to shop for restaurants the same way he did for food. He cruised without a list and took what was easy, cheap, and filling.

"I wanted to see what was in the area in case I wanted something nice.

How about calling so I know how to get there? "

I reached for the car phone and thought of Denesa Steiner, for I was not who Marino had hoped he would be taking to the Peddler this night.

"Marino," I told him quietly.

"Please be careful."

"Don't start in about red meat again."

"That's not what worries me most," I said.

The cemetery behind Third Presbyterian Church was a rolling field of polished granite headstones behind a chain link fence choked with trees. When I arrived at 6:15, dawn bruised the horizon and I could see my breath. Ground spiders had put up their webbed awnings to begin the business of the day, and I respectfully stepped around them as Marino and I walked through wet grass toward Emily Steiner's grave. She was buried in a corner close to woods where the lawn was pleasantly mingled with cornflowers, clover, and Queen Anne's lace.

Her monument was a small marble angel, and to find it we simply followed the scraping noise of shovels digging dirt. A truck with a winch had been left running at the site, and its headlights illuminated the progress of two leathery old men in overalls. Shovels glinted, the surrounding grass bleached of color, and I smelled damp earth as it fell from steel blades to a mound at the foot of the grave. Marino turned on his flashlight, and the tombstone stood in sad relief against the morning, wings folded back and head bent in prayer. The epitaph carved in its base read: There is no other in the World-- Mine was the only one

"Jeez. Got any idea what that means?" Marino said close to my ear.

"Maybe we can ask him," I replied as I watched the approach of a startlingly large man with thick white hair. His long dark overcoat flowed around his ankles as he walked, giving the eerie impression from a distance that he was several inches off the ground. When he got to us, I saw he had a Black Watch scarf wrapped around his neck, black leather gloves on his huge hands, and rubbers pulled over his shoes. He was close to seven feet tall, with a torso the size of a barrel.

"I'm Lucias Ray," he said, and enthusiastically shook our hands as we introduced ourselves.

"We were wondering about the significance of the epitaph," I said.

"Mrs. Steiner sure did love her little girl. It's just pitiful," the funeral director said in a thick drawl that sounded more Georgian than North Carolinian.

"We have a whole book of verses you can look through when you're deciding on what to have inscribed."

"Then Emily's mother got this from your book?" I asked.

"Well, to tell you the truth, no. I believe she said it's Emily Dickinson." The grave diggers had put down their shovels, and it was light enough now for me to see their faces, wet with sweat and as furrowed as a farmer's fields. Heavy chain clanked as they unwound it from the winch's drum. Then one of the men stepped down into the grave. He secured the chain to hooks on the sides of the concrete vault as Ray went on to tell us that more people had shown up for Emily Steiner's funeral than he had ever heard of around here.

"They were outside the church, on the lawn, and it took close to two hours for all of them to walk past the casket to pay their respects."

"Did you have an open casket?" Marino asked in surprise.

"No, sir." Ray watched his men.

"Now, Mrs. Steiner wanted to, but I wouldn't hear of it. I told her she was distraught and would thank me later for saying no. Why, her little girl wasn't in any kind of shape for a thing like that. I knew a lot of folks would show up just to stare. Course, a lot of rubber neckers showed up anyway, seeing as how there was so much in the news." The winch strained loudly and the truck's diesel engine throbbed as the vault was slowly lifted from the earth. Soil rained down in chunks as the concrete burial chamber rocked higher in the air with each turn of the crank, and one of the men stood by like a member of a ground crew to direct with his hands. At almost the precise moment the vault was free of its grave and lowered to the grass, we were invaded by television crews with cameras mounted and reporters and photographers. They swarmed around the gaping wound in the earth an the vault so stained with red clay that it almost looked bloody.

"Why are you exhuming Emily Steiner?" one of them called out.

"Is it true the police have a suspect?" yelled another.

"Dr. Scarpetta?"

"Why has the FBI been called in?"

"Dr. Scarpetta?" A woman pushed a microphone close to my face.

"It sounds like you're second-guessing the Buncombe County medical examiner."

"Why are you desecrating this little girl's grave?" And above the fray Marino suddenly bellowed as if he had been wounded, "Get the fuck out of here now! You're interfering with an investigation! You hear me, goddam it?" He stomped his feet.

"Leave now!" The reporters froze with shocked faces. They stared at him with open mouths as he continued to rail against them, complexion crimson, blood vessels bulging in his neck.

"The only one desecrating anything around here is you assholes! And if you don't leave right now, I'm gonna start breaking cameras and anything else in my reach, including your goddam ugly heads!"

"Marino," I said, and I placed my hand on his arm. He was so tense he had turned to iron.

"All my goddam career I've been dealing with you assholes and I've had it! You hear me! I've goddam had it, you bunch of mother fuckin sonofabitch BLOODS UCKW PAKASITES! "

"Marino!" I pulled him by the wrist as fear electrified every nerve in my body. Never had I seen him in such a rage. Dear Lord, I thought. Don't let him shoot anyone.

I got in front of him to make him look at me, but his eyes danced wildly above my head.

"Marino, listen to me! They're leaving. Please calm down. Marino, take it easy. Look, every last one of them is leaving right now. See them? You've certainly made your point. They're almost running." The journalists were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, like some phantom band of marauders that had materialized and vanished in the mist. Marino stared across the empty expanse of gently rolling lawn with its sprigs of plastic flowers and perfect rows of gray markers.

The clarion sound of steel striking steel rang out again and again. With hammer and chisel the diggers broke the vault's coal tar seal, then lowered the lid to the earth as Marino hurried into the woods. We pretended not to notice the hideous grunts and groans and gagging sounds coming from mountain laurels as he vomited.

"Do you still have a bottle of each of the fluids you used for embalming?" I asked Lucias Ray, whose reaction to the advancing troops of media and Marino's outburst seemed more quizzical than bothered.

"I may have half a bottle left of what I used on her," he said.

"I'll need chemical controls for toxicology," I explained.

"It's just formaldehyde and methanol with a trace of lanoline oil--as common as chicken soup. Now, I did use a lower concentration because of her small size. Your detective friend sure don't look too good," he added as Marino emerged from the woods.

"You know, the flu's going around."

"I don't think he has the flu," I said.

"How did the reporters find out we were here?"

"Now, you got me on that one. But you know how folks are." He paused to spit.

"Always someone who's got to run his yap." Emily's steel casket was painted as white as the Queen Anne's lace that had grown around her plot, and the diggers did not need the winch to lift it out of the vault and gently lower it to the grass. The casket was small like the body inside it. Lucias Ray slipped a radio out of a coat pocket and spoke into it.

"You can come on now," he said.

"Ten-four," a voice came back.

"No more reporters, I sure hope like heck?"

"They're all gone."

A shiny black hearse glided through the cemetery's entrance and drove half in the woods and half on the grass, miraculously dodging graves and trees. A fat man wearing a trench coat and porkpie hat got out to open the tailgate, and the diggers slid the casket inside while Marino watched from a distance, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

"You and I need to talk." I had moved close and spoke quietly to him as the hearse went on its way.

"I don't need nothing right now." His face was pale.

"I've got to meet Dr. Jenrette at the morgue. Are you coming?"

"No," he said.

"I'm going on back to the Travel-Eze. I'm gonna drink beer until I puke again, then I'm gonna switch to bourbon. And after that I'm gonna call Wesley's ass and ask him when the shit we can get out of this armpit town, because I tell you, I don't have another decent shirt here and I just ruined this one. I don't even have a tie."

"Marino, go lie down."

"I'm living out of a bag this big," he went on, holding his hands not too far apart.

"Take Advil, drink as much water as you can hold, and eat some toast.

I'll check on you when we finish at the hospital. If Benton calls, tell him I'll have my portable phone with me or he can call my pager. "

"He's got those numbers?"

"Yes," I said. Marino glanced at me over his handkerchief as he mopped his face again. I saw the hurt in his eyes before it slipped back behind its walls.

L/r. Jenrette was doing paperwork in the morgue when I arrived as the hearse did shortly before ten. He smiled nervously at me as I took off my suit jacket and put a plastic apron over my clothes.

"Would you have a guess as to how the press found out about the exhumation?" I asked, unfolding a surgical gown. He looked startled.

"What happened?"

"About a dozen reporters showed up at the cemetery."

"That's a real shame."

"We need to make sure nothing more gets out," I said, tying the gown in back and doing my best to sound patient.

"What happens here needs to remain here. Dr. Jenrette." He said nothing.

"I know I am a visitor and I wouldn't blame you if you resented the hell out of my presence. So please don't think I'm insensitive to the situation or indifferent to your authority. But you can rest assured that whoever murdered this little girl keeps up with the news. Whenever something gets leaked, he finds out about it, too."

Dr. Jenrette, pleasant person that he was, did not look the least bit offended as he listened carefully.

"I'm just trying to think of who all knew," he said.

"The problem is by the time word got around that could have been a lot of people."

"Let's make sure word doesn't get around about anything we might find in here today," I said as I heard our case arrive. Lucias Ray walked in first, the man in the porkpie hat right behind him pulling the church cart bearing the white casket. They maneuvered their cargo through the doorway and parked close to the autopsy table. Ray slipped a metal crank out of his coat pocket and inserted it in a small hole at the casket's head. He began cranking loose the seal as if he were starting a Model-T.

"That should do it," he said, dropping the crank back into his pocket.

"Hope you don't mind my waiting around to check on my work. It's an opportunity I don't usually get, since we're not in the habit of digging up people after we bury'em." He started to open the lid, and if Dr. Jenrette hadn't placed his hands on top of it to stop him, I would have.

"Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem, Lucias," Dr. Jenrette said.

"But it's really not a good idea for anyone else to be here right now."

"I think that's being a might bit touchy." Ray's smile got tight.

"It's not like I haven't seen this child before. Why I know her inside and out better than her own mama."

"Lucias, we need you to go on now so Dr. Scarpetta and I can get this done," Dr. Jenrette spoke in his same sad soft tone.

"I'll call you when we're finished."

"Dr. Scarpetta" --Ray fixed his eyes on me"--I must say it does appear folks are a little less friendly since the Feds came to town."

"This is a homicide investigation, Mr. Ray," I said.

"Perhaps it would be best not to take things personally since nothing has been intended that way."

"Come on. Billy Joe," the funeral director said to the man in the porkpie hat.

"Let's go get something to eat."

They went out. Dr. Jenrette locked the door.

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling on gloves.

"Lucias can be overbearing sometimes, but he really is a good person."

I was suspicious we would find that Emily had not been properly embalmed or had been buried in a fashion that did not reflect what her mother had paid.

But when Jenrette and I opened the casket's lid, I saw nothing that immediately struck me as out of order. The white satin lining had been folded over her body, and on top of it I found a package wrapped in white tissue paper and pink ribbon. I started taking photographs.

"Did Ray mention anything about this?" I handed the package to Jenrette.

"No." He looked perplexed as he turned it this way and that. The smell of embalming fluid wafted up strongly as I opened the lining. Beneath it Emily Steiner was well preserved in a long-sleeve, high-collar dress of pale blue velveteen, her braided hair in bows of the same material.

A fuzzy whitish mold typically found on bodies that have been exhumed covered her face like a mask and had started on the tops of her hands, which were on her waist, clasped around a white New Testament. She wore white knee socks and black patent leather shoes. Nothing she had been dressed in looked new.

I took more photographs; then Jenrette and I lifted her out of the casket and placed her on top of the stainless steel table, where we began to undress her. Beneath her sweet, little girl clothes hid the awful secret of her death, for people who die gracefully do not bear the wounds she had. Any honest forensic pathologist will admit that autopsy artifacts are ghastly. There is nothing quite like the Y incision in any pre mortem surgical procedure, for it looks like its name. The scalpel goes from each clavicle to sternum, runs the length of the torso, and ends at the pubis after a small detour around the navel. The incision made from ear to ear at the back of the head before sawing open the skull is not attractive, either.

Of course, injuries to the dead do not heal. They can only be covered with high lacy collars and strategically coiffed hair. With heavy makeup from the funeral home and a wide seam running the length of her small body, Emily looked like a sad rag doll stripped of its frilly clothes and abandoned by its heartless owner. Water drummed into a steel sink as Dr. Jenrette and I scrubbed away mold, makeup, and the flesh-colored putty filling the gunshot wound to the back of the head and the areas of the thighs, upper chest, and shoulders where skin had been excised by her killer. We removed eye caps beneath eyelids and took out sutures. Our eyes watered and noses began to run as sharp fumes rose from the chest cavity. Organs were breaded with embalming powder, and we quickly lifted them out and rinsed some more. I checked the neck, finding nothing that my colleague hadn't already documented. Then I wedged a long thin chisel between molars to open the mouth.

"It's stubborn," I said in frustration.

"We're going to have to cut the masseters. I want to look at the tongue in its anatomical position before getting at it through the posterior pharynx. But I don't know. We may not be able to. " Dr. Jenrette fitted a new blade into his scalpel.

"What are we looking for?"

"I want to make certain she didn't bite her tongue." Minutes later I discovered that she had.

"She's got marks right there at the margin," I pointed out.

"Can you get a measurement?"

"An eighth of an inch by a quarter."

"And the hemorrhages are about a quarter of an inch deep. It looks like she might have bitten herself more than once. What do you think?"

"It looks to me like maybe she did."

"So we know she had a seizure associated with her terminal episode."

"The head injury could do that," he said, fetching the camera.

"It could, but then why doesn't the brain show that she survived long enough to have a seizure?"

"I guess we've got the same unanswered question."

"Yes," I said.

"It's still very confusing." When we turned the body, I absorbed myself in studying the peculiar mark that was the point of this grim exercise as the forensic photographer arrived and set up his equipment. For the better part of the afternoon we took rolls of infrared, ultraviolet, color, high-co trast, and black-and-white film, with many special filters and lenses.

Then I went into my medical bag and got out half a dozen black rings made of acrylonitrile-butadiene- styrene plastic, or more simply, the material that commonly composes pipes used for water and sewage lines. Every year or two I got a forensic dentist I knew to cut the three-eighth-inch-thick rings with a band saw and sand them smooth for me. Fortunately, it wasn't often I needed to pull such an odd trick out of my bag, for rarely was it necessary to remove a human bite mark or other impression from the body of someone murdered. Deciding on a ring three inches in diameter, I used a machinist's die punch to stamp Emily Steiner's case number and location markers on each side.

Skin, like a painter's canvas, is on a stretch, and in order to support the exact anatomical configuration of the mark on Emily's left buttock during and after its removal, I needed to provide a stable matrix.

"Have you got Super Glue?" I asked Dr. Jenrette. |j "Sure." He brought me a tube.

"Keep taking photographs of every step, if you don't mind," I instructed the photographer, a slight Japanese man who never stood still. Positioning the ring over the mark, I fixed it to the skin with the glue and further secured it with sutures. Next I dissected the tissue around the ring and placed it en bloc in formalin. All the while I tried to figure out what the mark meant. It was an irregular circle incompletely filled with a strange brownish discoloration that I believed was the imprint of a pattern.

But I could not make out what, no matter how many Polaroids we looked at from how many different angles. We did not think about the package wrapped in white tissue paper until the photographer had left and Dr. Jenrette and I had notified the funeral home that we were ready for their return.

"What do we do about this?" Dr. Jenrette asked.

"We have to open it." He spread dry towels on a cart and set the gift on top of them.

Carefully slicing the paper with a scalpel, he exposed an old box from a pair of size-six women's loafers. He cut through many layers of Scotch tape and removed the top.

"Oh my," he said under his breath as he stared in bewilderment at what someone had intended for a little girl's grave. Shrouded in two sealed freezer bags inside the box was a dead kitten that could not have been but a few months old. It was as stiff as plyboard when I lifted it out, its delicate ribs protruding. The cat was a female, black with white feet, and she wore no collar. I saw no evidence of what had killed her until I took her into the X-ray room, and a little later was mounting her films on a light box.

"Her cervical spine is fractured," I said as a chill pricked up the hair on the back of my neck. Dr. Jenrette frowned as he moved closer to the light box.

"It looks like the spine's been moved out of the usual position here." He touched the film with a knuckle.

"That's weird. It's displaced laterally? I don't think that could happen if she got hit by a car."

"She wasn't hit by a car," I told him.

"Her head's been twisted clockwise by ninety degrees."

I found Marino eating a cheeseburger in his room when I returned to the Travel-Eze at almost seven p. m. His gun, wallet, and car keys were on top of one bed and he was on the other, shoes and socks scattered across the floor as if he had walked out of them. I could tell he had probably gotten back here not too long before I did. His eyes followed me as I went to the television and turned it off.

"Come on," I said.

"We have to go out." The "gospel truth" according to Lucias Ray was that Denesa Steiner had placed the package in Emily's casket. He had simply assumed that beneath the gift wrapping was a favorite toy or doll.

"When did she do this?" Marino asked as we walked briskly through the motel's parking lot.

"Right before the funeral," I replied.

"Have you got your car keys?"

"Yeah."

"Then why don't you drive."

I had a nasty headache I blamed on formalin fumes and lack of food and sleep.

"Have you heard from Benton?" I asked as casually as possible.

"There should have been a bunch of messages at the desk for you."

"I came straight to your room. And how would you know if I had a lot of messages?"

"The clerk tried to give'em to me. He figured between the two of us I look like the doctor."

"That's because you look like a man." I rubbed my temples.

"It's mighty white of you to notice."

"Marino, I wish you wouldn't talk like such a racist, because I really don't think you are one."

"How do you like my ride?" His car was a maroon Chevrolet Caprice, fully loaded with flashing lights, a radio, telephone, scanner. It had even come equipped with a mounted video camera and a Winchester stainless steel Marine twelve-gauge shotgun. Pump action, it held seven rounds and was the same model the FBI used.

"My God," I said in disbelief as I got into the car.

"Since when do they need riot guns in Black Mountain, North Carolina?"

"Since now." He cranked the engine.

"Did you request all this?"

"Nope."

"Would you like to explain to me how a ten-person police force can be better equipped than the DEA?"

"Because maybe the people who live around here really understand what community policing's all about. This community's got a bad problem right now, and what's happening is area merchants and concerned citizens are donating shit to help. Like the cars, phones, the shotgun. One of the cops told me some old lady called up just this morning and wanted to know if the federal agents that had come to town to help would like to have Sunday dinner with her."

"Well, that's very nice," I said, baffled.

"Plus, the town council's thinking about making the police department bigger, and I have a suspicion that helps explain some things."

"What things?"

"Black Mountain's gonna need a new chief."

"What happened to the old one?"

"Mote was about as close to a chief as they had."

"I'm still not clear on where you're going with this."

"Hey, maybe where I'm going is right here in this town. Doc. They're looking for an experienced chief and treating me like I'm 007 or something. It don't take a rocket scientist to figure it out."

"Marino, what in God's name is going on with you?" I asked very calmly. He lit a cigarette.

"What? First you don't think I look like a doctor? Now I don't look like a chief, either? I guess to you I don't look like nothing but a Dogtown slob who still talks like he's eating spaghetti with the mob back in Jersey and only takes out women in tight sweaters who tease their hair. " He blew out smoke furiously.

"Hey, just because I like to bowl don't mean I'm some tattooed redneck. And just because I didn't go to all these Ivy League schools like you did don't mean I'm a dumb shit."

"Are you finished?"

"And another thing," he railed on, "there's a lot of really good places to fish around here. They got Bee Tree and Lake James, and except for Montreal and Biltmore, the real estate's pretty cheap. Maybe I'm just sick as shit of drones shooting drones and serial killers costing more to keep alive in the pen than I friggin' get paid to lock their asses up. J/the assholes even stay in the pen, and that's the biggest'if of all. " We had been parked in the Steiner driveway for five minutes now. I stared out at the house lit up wondering if she knew we were here and why.

"Now are you finished?" I asked him.

"No, I ain't finished. I'm just sick of talking."

"In the first place, I didn't go to Ivy League schools..."

"Well, what do you call Johns Hopkins and Georgetown?"

"Marino, goddam it, shut up." He glared out the windshield and lit another cigarette.

"I was a poor Italian brought up in a poor Italian neighborhood just like you were," I said.

"The difference is that I was in Miami and you were in New Jersey. I've never pretended to be better than you, nor have I ever called you stupid. In fact, you're anything but stupid, even if you butcher the English language and have never been to the opera.

"My list of complaints about you all go back to one thing. You're stubborn, and when you're at your worst, you're bigoted and intolerant. In other words, you act toward others the way you suspect they're acting toward you." Marino jerked up the door handle.

"Not only do I not got time for a lecture from you, I ain't interested in one." He threw down his cigarette and stamped it out. We walked in silence to Denesa Steiner's front door, and I had a feeling when she opened it she could sense Marino and I had been fighting. He would not look my way or acknowledge me in any way as she led us to a living room that was unnervingly familiar because I had seen photographs of it before. The decor was country, with an abundance of ruffles, plump pillows, hanging plants, and macrame. Behind glass doors, a gas fire glowed, and numerous clocks did not argue time. Mrs. Steiner was in the midst of watching an old Bob Hope movie on cable. She seemed very tired as she turned off the television and sat in a rocking chair.

"This hasn't been a very good day," she said.

"Well, now, Denesa, there's no way it could have been." Marino sat in a wing chair and gave her his full attention.

"Did you come here to tell me what you found?" she asked, and I realized she was referring to the exhumation.

"We still have a lot of tests to conduct," I told her.

"Then you didn't find anything that will catch that man." She spoke with quiet despair.

"Doctors always talk about tests when they don't know anything. I've learned that much after all I've been through."

"These things take time, Mrs. Steiner."

"Listen," Marino said to her.

"I really am sorry to bother you, Denesa, but we've got to ask you a few more questions. The Doc here wants to ask you some." She looked at me and rocked.

"Mrs. Steiner, there was a gift-wrapped package in Emily's casket that the funeral director says you wanted buried with her," I said.

"Oh, you're talking about Socks," she said matter- of-factly.

"Socks?" I asked.

"She was a stray kitten who started coming around here. I guess that would have been a month or so ago. And of course Emily was such a sensitive thing she started feeding it and that was it. She did love that little cat." She smiled as her eyes teared up.

"She called her Socks because she was pure black except for these perfect white paws." She held out her hands, splaying her fingers.

"It looked like she had socks on."

"How did Socks die?" I carefully asked.

"I don't really know." She pulled tissues from a pocket and dabbed her eyes.

"I found her one morning out in front. This was right after Emily... I just assumed the poor little thing died of a broken heart." She covered her mouth with the tissues and sobbed.

"I'm going to get you something to drink." Marino got up and left the room. His obvious familiarity with both the house and its owner struck me as extremely unusual, and my uneasiness grew.

"Mrs. Steiner," I said gently, leaning forward on the couch.

"Emily's kitten did not die of a broken heart. It died of a broken neck." She lowered her hands and took a deep, shaky breath. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wide as they fixed on me.

"What do you mean?"

"The cat died violently."

"Well, I guess it got hit by a car. That's such a pity. I told Emily I was afraid of that."

"It wasn't hit by a car."

"Do you suppose one of the dogs around here got it?"

"No," I said as Marino returned with what looked like a glass of white wine.

"The kitten was killed by a person. Deliberately."

"How could you know such a thing as that?" She looked terrified, and her hands trembled as she took the wine and set it on the table next to her chair.

"There were physical findings that make it clear the cat's neck was wrung," I continued to explain very calmly.

"And I know it's awful for you to hear details like this, Mrs. Steiner, but you must know the truth if you are to help us find the person responsible."

"You got any idea who might have done something like that to your little girl's kitten?" Marino sat back down and leaned forward again, forearms resting on his knees, as if he wanted to assure her that she could depend on and fe l safe with him. She silently struggled for composure. Reaching for her wine, she took several unsteady sips.

"I do know I've gotten some calls." She took a deep breath.

"You know, my fingernails are blue. I'm such a wreck." She held out a hand.

"I can't settle down. I can't sleep. I don't know what to do." She dissolved into tears again.

"Denesa, it's all right," Marino said kindly.

"You just take your time. We're not going anywhere. Now tell me about the phone calls." She wiped her eyes and went on.

"It's been men mostly. Maybe one woman who said if I'd kept my eye on my little girl like a good mother, this wouldn't have... But one sounded young, like a boy playing pranks. He said something. You know. Like he'd seen Emily riding her bike. This was after. So it couldn't have been. But this other one, he was older. He said he wasn't finished. " She drank more wine.

"He wasn't finished?" I asked.

"Did he say anything else?"

"I don't remember." She shut her eyes.

"When was this?" Marino asked.

"Right after she was found. Found by the lake." She reached for her wine again and knocked it over.

"I'll get that." Marino abruptly got up.

"I need to smoke."

"Do you know what he meant?" I asked her.

"I knew he was referring to what happened. To who did this to her. I felt he was saying it wasn't the end of bad things. And I guess it was a day later I found Socks."

"Captain, maybe you could fix me some toast with peanut butter or cheese. I feel like my blood sugar's getting low," said Mrs. Steiner, who seemed oblivious to the glass on its side and the puddle of wine on the table by her chair. He left the room again.

"When the man broke into your house and abducted your daughter," I said, "did he speak to you at all?"

"He said if I didn't do exactly what he said, he'd kill me."

"So you heard his voice." She nodded as she rocked, her eyes not leaving me.

"Did it sound like the voice on the phone that you were just telling us about?"

"I don't know. It might have. But it's hard to say."

"Mrs. Steiner... ?"

"You can call me Denesa." Her stare was intense.

"What else do you remember about him, the man who came into your house and taped you up?"

"You're wondering if he might be that man in Virginia who killed the little boy." I said nothing.

"I remember seeing pictures of the little boy and his family in People magazine. I remember thinking back then how awful it was, that I couldn't imagine being his mother. It was bad enough when Mary Jo died. I never thought I'd get past that."

"Is Mary Jo the child you lost to SIDS?" Interest sparked beneath her dark pain, as if she were impressed or curious that I would know this detail.

"She died in my bed. I woke up and she was next to Chuck, dead."

"Chuck was your husband?"

"At first I was afraid he might have accidentally rolled on top of her during the night and smothered her. But they said no. They said it was SIDS."

"How old was Mary Jo?" I asked.

"She'd just had her first birthday." She blinked back tears.

"Had Emily been born yet?"

"She came a year later, and I just knew the same thing was going to happen to her. She was so colicky. So frail. And the doctors were afraid she might have apnea, so I had to constantly check on her in her sleep. To make sure she was breathing. I remember walking around like a zombie because I never had a night's sleep. Up and down all night, night after night. Living with that horrible fear." She closed her eyes for a moment and rocked, brow furrowed by grief, hands clenching armrests. It occurred to me that Marino did not want to hear me question Mrs. Steiner because of his anger, and that was why he was out of the room so much. I knew then his emotions had wrestled him into the ropes. I feared he would no longer be effective in this case. Mrs. Steiner opened her eyes and they went straight to mine.

"He's killed a lot of people and now he's here," she said.

"Who?" I was confused by what I had been thinking.

"Temple Gault."

"We don't know for a fact he's here," I said.

"I know he is."

"How do you know that?"

"Because of what was done to my Emily. It's the same thing." A tear slid down her cheek.

"You know, I guess I should be afraid he'll get me next. But I don't care. What do I have left?"

"I'm very sorry," I said as kindly as I could.

"Can you tell me anything more about that Sunday? The Sunday of October first?"

"We went to church in the morning like we always did. And Sunday school. We ate lunch, then Emily was in her room. She was practicing guitar some of the time. I didn't see her much, really." She stared the wide stare of remembering.

"Do you recall her leaving the house early for her youth group meeting?"

"She came into the kitchen. I was making banana bread. She said she had to go early to practice guitar and I gave her some change for the collection like I always did."

"What about when she came home?"

"We ate." She was not blinking.

"She was unhappy. And wanted Socks in the house and I said no."

"What makes you think she was unhappy?"

"She was difficult. You know how children can get when they're in moods. Then she was in her room awhile and went to bed."

"Tell me about her eating habits," I said, recalling that Ferguson had intended to ask Mrs. Steiner this after he returned from Quantico. I supposed he'd never had the chance.

"She was picky. Finicky."

"Did she finish her dinner Sunday night after her meeting?"

"That was part of what we got into a fuss about. She was just pushing her food around. Pouting." Her voice caught.

"It was always a struggle... It was always hard for me to get her to eat."

"Did she have a problem with diarrhea or nausea?" Her eyes focused on me.

"She was sick a lot."

"Sick can mean a lot of different things, Mrs. Steiner," I said patiently.

"Did she have frequent diarrhea or nausea?"

"Yes. I already told Max Ferguson that." Tears flowed freely again.

"And I don't understand why I have to keep answering these same questions. It just opens up things. Opens up wounds."

"I'm sorry," I said with a gentleness that belied my surprise. When had she told Ferguson this? Did he call her after he left Quantico? If so, she must have been one of the last people to talk to him before he died.

"This didn't happen to her because she was sickly," Mrs. Steiner said, crying harder.

"It seems people should be asking questions that would help catch him."

"Mrs. Steiner--and I know this is difficult--but where were you living when Mary Jo died?"

"Oh God, please help me." She buried her face in her hands. I watched her try to compose herself, shoulders heaving as she wept. I sat numbly as she got still, little by little, her feet, her arms, her hands. She slowly lifted her eyes to me. Through their bleariness gleamed a strange cold light that oddly made me think of the lake at night, of water so dark it seemed another element. And I felt fretful the way I did in my dreams. She spoke in a low voice.

"What I want to know. Dr. Scarpetta, is do you know that man?"

"What man?" I asked, and then Marino walked back in with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on toast, a dish towel, and a bottle of chablis.

"The man who killed the little boy. Did you ever talk to Temple Gault?" she asked as Marino set her glass upright and refilled it, and placed the sandwich nearby.

"Here, let me help with that." I took the dish towel from him and wiped up spilled wine.

"Tell me what he looks like." She shut her eyes again.

I saw Gault in my mind, his piercing eyes and light blond hair. He was sharp featured, small and quick. But it was the eyes. I would never forget them.

I knew he could slit a throat without flinching. I knew he had killed all of them with that same blue stare.

"Excuse me," I said, realizing Mrs. Steiner was still talking to me.

"Why did you let him get away?" she repeated her question as if it were an accusation, and began crying again. Marino told her to get some rest, that we were leaving. When we got into the car, his mood was horrible.

"Gault killed her cat," he said.

"We don't know that for a fact."

"I ain't interested in hearing you talk like a lawyer right now."

"I am a lawyer," I said.

"Oh yeah. Excuse me for forgetting you got that degree, too. It just slips my mind that you really are a doctor-lawyer-Indian chief."

"Do you know if Ferguson called Mrs. Steiner after he left Quantico?"

"Hell, no, I don't know."

"He mentioned in the consultation he intended to ask her several medical questions. Based on what Mrs. Steiner said to me, it sounds like he did, meaning he must have talked to her shortly before his death."

"So maybe he called her as soon as he got home from the airport."

"And then he goes straight upstairs and puts a noose around his neck?"

"No, Doc. He goes straight upstairs to beat off. Maybe talking to her on the phone put him in the mood." That was possible.

"Marino, what's the last name of the little boy Emily liked? I know his first name was Wren."

"Why?"

"I want to go see him."

"In case you don't know much about kids, it's almost nine o'clock on a school night."

"Marino," I said evenly, "answer my question."

"I know he don't live too far from the Steiners' crib." He pulled off on the side of the road and turned on his interior light.

"His last name's Maxwell."

"I want to go to his house." He flipped through his notepad, then glanced over at me. Behind his tired eyes I saw more than resentment. Marino was in terrific pain. The Maxwells lived in a modern log cabin that was probably prefabricated and had been built on a wooded lot in view of the lake. We pulled into a gravel drive lit by floodlights the color of pollen. It was cool enough for rhododendron leaves to begin to curl, and our breath turned to smoke as we waited on the porch for someone to answer the bell. When the door opened, we faced a young, lean man with a thin face and black-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a dark wool robe and slippers. I wondered if anyone stayed up past ten o'clock in this town.

"I'm Captain Marino and this is Dr. Scarpetta," Marino said in a serious police tone that would fill any citizen with dread.

"We're working with the local authorities on the Emily Steiner case."

"You're the ones from out of town," the man said.

"Are you Mr. Maxwell?" Marino asked.

"Lee Maxwell. Please come-in. I guess you want to talk about Wren." We entered the house as an overweight woman in a pink sweatsuit came downstairs. She looked at us as if she knew exactly why we were there.

"He's up in his room. I was reading to him," she said.

"I wonder if I might speak to him," I said in as nonthreatening a voice as possible, for I could tell the Maxwells were upset.

"I can get him," the father said.

"I'd rather go on up, if I might," I said. Mrs. Maxwell absently fiddled with a seam coming loose on a cuff of her sweatshirt. She was wearing small silver earrings shaped like crosses that matched a necklace she had on.

"Maybe while the doc does that," Marino spoke up, "I can talk to the two of you?"

"That policeman who died already talked to Wren," said the father.

"I know." Marino spoke in a manner that told them he didn't care who had talked to their son.

"We promise not to take up too much of your time," he added.

"Well, all right," Mrs. Maxwell said to me.

I followed her slow, heavy progress up uncarpeted stairs to a second floor that had few rooms but was so well lit my eyes hurt. There didn't seem to be a corner inside or out of the Maxwells' property that wasn't flooded with light. We walked into Wren's bedroom and the boy was in pajamas and standing in the middle of the floor. He stared at us as if we'd caught him in the middle of something we weren't supposed to see.

"Why aren't you in bed, son?" Mrs. Maxwell sounded more weary than stern.

"} was thirsty."

"Would you like me to get you another glass of water?"

"No, that's okay."

I could see why Emily would have found Wren Maxwell cute. He had been growing in height faster than his muscles could keep up, and his sunny blond hair wouldn't stay out of his dark blue eyes. Lanky and shaggy, with a perfect complexion and mouth, he ha chewed his fingernails to the quick. He wore several bracelets of woven rawhide that could not be taken off without cutting, and they somehow told me he was very popular in school, especially with girls, whom I expected he treated quite rudely.

"Wren, this is Dr." --she looked at me"--I'm sorry, but you're going to have say your last name again."

"I'm Dr. Scarpetta." I smiled at Wren, whose expression turned to bewilderment.

"I'm not sick," he quickly said.

"She's not that kind of doctor," Mrs. Maxwell told her son.

"What kind are you?" By now his curiosity had overcome his shyness.

"Well, she's a doctor sort of like Lucias Ray is one."

"He ain't a doctor." Wren scowled at his mother.

"He's an undertaker."

"Now you go on and get in bed, son, so you don't catch cold. Dr. Scarletti, you can pull up that chair and I'll be downstairs."

"Her name's Scarpetta," the boy fired at his mother, who was already out the door. He climbed into his twin bed and covered himself with a wool blanket the color of bubble gum. I noticed the baseball theme of the curtains drawn across his window, and the silhouettes of trophies behind them. On pine walls were posters of several sports heroes, and I recognized none of them except Michael Jordan, who was typically airborne in Nikes like some magnificent god. I pulled a chair close to the bed and suddenly felt old.

"What sport do you play?" I asked him.

"I play for the Yellow Jackets," he answered brightly, for he had found a co-conspirator in his quest to stay up past bedtime.

"The Yellow Jackets?"

"That's my Little League team. You know, we beat everybody around here. I'm surprised you haven't heard of us."

"I'm certain I would have heard of your team if I lived here. Wren. But I don't. " He regarded me as if I were some exotic creature behind glass in the zoo. "} play basketball, too. I can dribble between my legs. I bet you can't do that."

"You're absolutely right. I can't. I'd like you to tell me about your friendship with Emily Steiner." His eyes dropped to his hands, which were nervously fiddling with the edge of the blanket.

"Had you known her a long time?" I continued.

"I've seen her around. We're in the same youth group at church." He looked at me.

"Plus, we're both in the sixth grade but we have different homeroom teachers.

I have Mrs. Winters."

"Did you get to know Emily right after her family moved here?"

"I guess so. They came from California. Mom says they have earth shakes out there because the people don't believe in Jesus."

"It seems Emily liked you a great deal," I said.

"In fact, I'd say she had a big crush on you. Were you aware of that?" He nodded, eyes cast down again.

"Wren, can you tell me about the last time you saw her?"

"It was at church. She came in with her guitar because it was her turn."

"Her turn for what?"

"For music. Usually Owen or Phil plays the piano, but sometimes Emily would play guitar. She wasn't very good."

"Were you supposed to meet her at church that afternoon?" Color mounted his cheeks and he sucked in his lower lip to keep it from trembling.

"It's all right. Wren. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I asked her to meet me there early," he quietly said.

"What was her reaction?"

"She said she would but not to tell anybody."

"Why did you want her to meet you early?" I continued to probe.

"I wanted to see if she would."

"Why?" Now his face was very red and he was working hard to hold back tears.

"I don't know," he barely said.

"Wren, tell me what happened."

"I rode my bike to the church just to see if she was there."

"What time would this have been?"

"I don't know. But it was at least an hour before the meeting was supposed to start," he said.

"And I saw her through the window. She was inside sitting on the floor practicing guitar."

"Then what?"

"I left and came back with Paul and Will at five. They live over there." He pointed.

"Did you say anything to Emily?" I asked. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he impatiently wiped them away.

"I didn't say nothing. She kept staring at me but I pretended not to see her. She was upset. Jack asked her what was wrong. "

"Who's Jack?"

"The youth leader. He goes to Montreat Anderson College. He's real fat and's got a beard."

"What was her reply when Jack asked what was wrong?"

"She said she felt like she was getting the flu. Then she left."

"How long before the meeting was over?"

"When I was getting the basket off the top of the piano.

"Cause it was my turn to take up the collection."

"This would have been at the very end of the meeting?"

"That's when she ran out. She took the shortcut." He bit his lower lip and gripped the blanket so hard that the small bones of his hands were clearly defined.

"How do you know she took a shortcut?" I asked. He looked up at me and sniffed loudly. I handed him several tissues, and he blew his nose.

"Wren," I persisted, "did you actually see Emily take the shortcut?"

"No, ma'am," he meekly said.

"Did anybody see her take the shortcut?" He shrugged.

"Then why do you think she took it?"

"Everybody says so," he replied simply.

"Just as everybody has said where her body was found?" I was gentle. When he did not respond, I added more forcefully, "And you know exactly where that is, don't you. Wren?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said almost in a whisper.

"Will you tell me about that place?" Still staring at his hands, he answered, "It's just this place where lots of colored people fish. There's a bunch of weeds and slime, and huge bullfrogs and snakes hanging out of the trees, and that's where she was. A colored man found her, and all she had on was her socks, and it scared him so bad he turned white as you are. After that Dad put in all the lights."

"Lights?"

"He put all these lights in the trees and everywhere. It makes it harder for me to sleep, and then Mom gets mad. "

"Was it your father who told you about the place at the lake?" Wren shook his head.

"Then who did?" I asked.

"Creed."

"Creed?"

"He's one of the janitors at school. He makes toothpicks, and we buy them for a dollar. Ten for a dollar. He soaks them in peppermint and cinnamon.

I like the cinnamon best'cause they're real hot like Fireballs. Sometimes I trade him candy when I run out of lunch money. But you can't tell anybody. " He looked worried.

"What does Creed look like?" I asked as a quiet alarm began to sound in the back of my brain.

"I don't know," Wren said.

"He's a greaser'cause he's always wearing white socks with boots. I guess he's pretty old." He sighed.

"Do you know his last name?" Wren shook his head.

"Has he always worked at your school?" He shook his head again.

"He took Albert's place. Albert got sick from smoking, and they had to cut his lung out."

"Wren," I asked, "did Creed and Emily know each other?" He was talking faster and faster.

"We used to make her mad by saying Creed was her boyfriend'cause one time he gave her some flowers he picked. And he would give her candy'cause she didn't like toothpicks. You know, a lot of girls would rather have candy than toothpicks."

"Yes," I answered with a grim smile, "I suspect a lot of girls would."

The last thing I asked Wren was if he had visited the place at the lake where Emily's body had been found. He claimed he had not.

"I believe him," I said to Marino as we drove away from the Maxwells' well-lit house.

"Not me. I think he's lying his little ass off so his old man don't whip the shit out of him." He turned down the heat.

"This ride heats up better than any one I've ever had. All it's missing is heaters in the seats like you got in your Benz."

"The way he described the scene at the lake," I went on, "tells me he's never been there. I don't think he left the candy there, Marino."

"Then who did?"

"What do you know about a custodian named Creed?"

"Not a damn thing."

"Well," I said, "I think you'd better find him. And I'll tell you something else. I don't think Emily took the shortcut around the lake on her way home from the church."

"Shit," he complained.

"I hate it when you get like this. Just when pieces start to fall in place you shake the hell out of them like a damn puzzle in a box."

"Marino, I took the path around the lake myself. There's no way an eleven-year-old girl--or anybody else, for that matter--would do that when it's getting dark. And it would have been almost completely dark by six p.m." which was the time Emily headed home. "

"Then she lied to her mother," Marino said.

"It would appear so. But why?"

"Maybe because Emily was up to something."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. You got any Scotch in the room? I mean, there's no point in asking if you got bourbon."

"You're right," I said.

"I don't have bourbon."

I found five messages awaiting me when I returned to the Travel-Eze. Three were from Benton Wesley. The Bureau was sending the helicopter to pick me up at dawn. When I got hold of Wesley he cryptically said, "Among other things, we've got rather a crisis situation with your niece. We're bringing you straight back to Quantico."

"What's happened?" I asked as my stomach closed like a fist.

"Is Lucy all right?"

"Kay, this is not a secured line."

"But is she all right?"

"Physically," he said, "she's fine." The next morning I woke up to mist and could not see the mountains. My return north was postponed until afternoon, and I went out for a run in the brisk, moist air.

I wended my way through neighborhoods of cozy homes and modest cars, smiling as a miniature collie behind a chain link fence raced from one border of the yard to another, barking frantically at falling leaves.

The owner emerged from the house as I went past.

"Now, Shooter, hush up!" The woman wore a quilted robe, fuzzy slippers, and curlers, and didn't seem to mind a bit walking outside like that. She picked up the newspaper and smacked it against her palm as she yelled some more. I imagined that prior to Emily Steiner's death, the only crime anyone worried about in this part of the world was a neighbor stealing your newspaper or stringing toilet paper through your trees. Cicadas were sawing the same scratchy tune they had played last night, and locust, sweet peas, and morning glories were wet with dew. By eleven, a cold rain had begun to fall, and I felt as if I were at sea surrounded by brooding waters. I imagined the sun was a porthole, and if I could look through it to the other side I might find an end to this gray day. It was half past two before the weather improved enough for me to leave. I was instructed that the helicopter could not land at the high school because the Warhorses and majorettes would be in the midst of practice. Instead, Whit and I were to meet at a grassy field inside the rugged stone double-arched gate of a tiny town called Montreal, which was as Presbyterian as predestination and but a few miles from the Travel-Eze. The Black Mountain Police arrived with me before Whit appeared, and I sat in a cruiser parked on a dirt road, watching children play flag football. Boys ran after girls and girls ran after boys as everybody pursued the small glory of snatching a red rag from an opposing player's waistband. Young voices carried on a wind that sometimes caught the ball and passed it through the fingers of trees huddled at borders, and whenever it spiraled out of bounds into briars or the street, everybody paused. Equality was sent to the bench as girls waited for boys. When the ball was retrieved, play went on as usual.

I was sorry to interrupt this innocent frolicking when the distinctive chopping noise became audible. The children froze into a tableau of wonderment as the Bell Jetranger lowered itself with a roaring wind to the center of the field. I boarded and waved goodbye as we rose above trees. The sun settled into the horizon like Apollo lying down to sleep, and then the sky was as thick as octopus ink. I saw no stars when we arrived at the Academy. Benton Wesley, who had been kept informed of our progress by radio, was waiting when we landed. The instant I climbed out of the helicopter, he had my arm and was leading me away.

"Come on," he said.

"It's good to see you, Kay," he added under his breath, and the p essure of his fingers on my arm unsettled me more.

"The fingerprint recovered from Ferguson's panties was left by Denesa Steiner."

"What?" He propelled me swiftly through the dark.

"And the ABO grouping of the tissue we found in his freezer is 0-positive. Emily Steiner was 0-positive. We're still waiting for DNA, but it appears Ferguson stole the lingerie from the Steiner home when he broke in to abduct Emily."

"You mean, when someone broke in and abducted Emily."

"That's right. Gault could be playing games."

"Benton, for God's sake, what crisis? Where's Lucy?"

"I imagine she's in her dorm room," he replied as we walked into the lobby of Jefferson.

I squinted in the light and was not cheered by a digital sign behind the information desk announcing WELCOME TO THE FBI ACADEMY. I did not feel Welcome this night.

"What did she do?" I persisted as he used a magnetized card to unlock a set of glass doors with Department of Justice and National Academy seals.

"Wait until we get downstairs," he said.

"How's your hand? And your knee?" I remembered.

"Much better since I went to a doctor."

"Thanks," I said dryly.

"I'm referring to you. You're the only doctor I've been to recently."

"I might as well clean your stitches while I'm here."

"That won't be necessary."

"I need hydrogen peroxide and cotton swabs. Don't worry." I smelled Hoppes as we walked through the gun-cleaning room.

"It shouldn't hurt very much." We took the elevator to the lower level, where the Investigative Support Unit was the fire in the belly of the FBI. Wesley reigned over eleven other profilers, and at this hour, every one of them had left for the day. I had always liked the space where Wesley worked, for he was a man of sentiment and understatement, and one could not possibly know this without knowing him.

While most people in law enforcement filled walls and shelves with commendations and souvenirs from their war against base human nature, Wesley chose paintings, and he had several very fine ones. My favorite was an expansive landscape by Valoy Baton, who I believed was as good as Remington and one day would cost as much. I had several Baton oil paintings in my home, and what was odd was that Wesley and I had discovered the Utahan artist independent of each other. This is not to say that Wesley did not have his occasional exotic trophy, but he displayed only those that held meaning. The Viennese white police cap, the bearskin cap from a Cold Stream Guard, and silver gaucho spurs from Argentina, for example, had nothing to do with serial killers or any other atrocity Wesley worked as a matter of course. They were gifts from well-traveled friends like me. In fact, Wesley had many mementos of our relationship because when words failed I spoke in symbols. So he had an Italian scabbard, a pistol with scrims hawed ivory grips, and a Mont Blanc pen that he kept in a pocket over his heart.

"Talk to me," I said, taking a chair.

"What else is going on? You look awful."

"I feel awful." He loosened his tie and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Kay" --he looked at me"--I don't know how to tell you this. Christ! "

"Just say it," I said very quietly as my blood went cold.

"It appears that Lucy broke into ERF, that she violated security."

"How could she break in?" I asked incredulously.

"She has clearance to be there, Benton."

"She does not have clearance to be there at three o'clock in the morning, which was when her thumbprint was scanned into the biometric lock system."

I stared at him in disbelief.

"And your niece certainly does not have clearance to go into classified files pertaining to classified projects being worked on over there."

"What projects?" I dared to ask.

"It appears she went into files pertaining to electro- optics, thermal imaging, video and audio enhancement. And she apparently printed programs from the electronic version of case management that she's been working on for us."

"You mean from CAIN?"

"Yes, that's right."

"What wasn't gotten into?" I asked, stunned.

"Well, that's really the point. She got into virtually everything, meaning it's difficult for us to know what she was really after and for whom."

"Are the devices the engineers are working on really so secret?"

"Some of them are, and all of the techniques are, from a security standpoint. We don't want it known that we use this device in this situation and use something else in another."

"She couldn't have," I said.

"We know she did. The question is why."

"All right, then, why?" I blinked back tears.

"Money. That would be my guess."

"That's ridiculous. If she needs money she knows she can come to me."

"Kay" --Wesley leaned forward and folded his hands on top of his desk"--do you have any idea how valuable some of this information is?"

I did not reply.

"Imagine, for example, if ERF developed a surveillance device that could filter out background noise so we could be privy to virtually any conversation of interest to us anywhere in the world. Imagine who out there would love to know the details of our rapid prototyping or tactical satellite systems, or for that matter, the artificial intelligence software Lucy is developing..."

I held up my hand to stop him.

"Enough," I said as I took a deep, shaky breath.

"Then you tell me why," Wesley said.

"You know Lucy better than I do."

"I'm no longer so sure I know her at all. And I don't know how she could do such a thing, Benton." He paused, staring off for a moment before meeting my eyes again.

"You've indicated to me that you're worried about her drinking. Can you elaborate on that?"

"My guess is she drinks like she does everything else--in extreme. Lucy is either very good or very bad, and alcohol is just one example. "I knew even as I said the words I was darkening Wesley's suspicions.

"I see," he said.

"Is there alcoholism in her family?"

"I'm beginning to think there's alcoholism in everybody's family," I said bitterly.

"But yes. Her father was an alcoholic."

"This would be your brother-in-law?"

"He was very briefly. As you know, Dorothy's been married four times."

"Are you aware that there have been nights when Lucy didn't return to her dormitory room?"

"I know nothing about that. Was she in her bed the night of the break-in? She has suite mates and a roommate."

"She could have snuck out when everyone was asleep. So we don't know.

Are you and your niece getting along well? " he then asked.

"Not especially."

"Kay, could she have done something like this to punish you?"

"No," I said, and I was getting angry with him.

"And what I'm not interested in at the moment is your using me to profile my niece."

"Kay" --his voice softened"--I don't want this to be true any more than you do. I'm the one who recommended her to ERF. I'm the one who's been working on our hiring her after she graduates from UVA. Do you think I'm feeling very good?"

"There must be some other way this could have happened." He slowly shook his head.

"Even if someone had discovered Lucy's PIN, they still couldn't have gotten in because the biometric system would also require a scan of her actual finger."

"Then she wanted to be caught," I replied.

"Lucy more than anyone would know that if she went into classified automated files, she would leave log-in and log-out times, activity logs, and other tracks."

"I agree. She would know this better than anyone. And that's why I'm more interested in possible motive. In other words, what was she trying to prove? Who was she trying to hurt?"

"Benton," I said.

"What will happen?"

"OPR will conduct an official investigation," he answered, referring to the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility, which was the equivalent of a police department's Internal Affairs.

"If she's guilty?"

"It depends on whether we can prove she stole anything. If she did, she's committed a felony."

"And if she didn't?"

"Again, it depends on what OPR finds. But I think it's safe to say that at the very least Lucy has violated our security codes and no longer has a future with the FBI," he said. My mouth was so dry I almost couldn't talk.

"She will be devastated." Wesley's eyes were shadowed by fatigue and disappointment. I knew how much he liked my niece.

"In the meantime," he went on in the same flat tone he used when reviewing cases, "she can't stay at Quantico. She's already been told to pack her things. Maybe she can stay in Richmond with you until our investigation is concluded."

"Of course, but you know I won't be there all the time."

"We're not placing her under house arrest, Kay," he said, and his eyes got warmer for an instant. Very briefly I caught a glimpse of what stirred silently in his cool, dark waters. He got up.

"I'll drive her to Richmond tonight." I got up, too.

"I hope you're all right," he said, and I knew what he meant, and I knew I could not think about that now.

"Thank you," I replied, and impulses fired crazily between neurons, as if a fierce battle were being fought in my mind. Lucy was stripping her bed when I found her in her room not much later, and she turned her back to me when I walked in.

"What can I help you with?" I asked. She stuffed sheets into a pillowcase.

"Nothing," she said.

"I've got it under control." Her quarters were plainly furnished with institutional twin beds, desks, and chairs of oak veneer. By Yuppie apartment standards, the rooms in Washington dormitory were dreary, but if viewed as barracks they weren't half bad. I wondered where Lucy's suite mates and roommate were and if they had any idea what had happened.

"If you'll just check the wardrobe to make sure I've gotten everything," Lucy said.

"It's the one on the right. And check the drawers."

"Everything is empty unless the coat hangers are yours. These nice padded ones."

"They're Mother's."

"Then I assume you want them."

"Nope. Leave them for the next idiot who ends up in this pit."

"Lucy," I said, "it's not the Bureau's fault."

"It's not fair." She knelt on her suitcase to fasten the clasps.

"Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"

"Legally, you are innocent until proven guilty. But until this breach of security is sorted out, you can't blame the Academy for not wanting you to continue working in classified areas. Besides, you haven't been arrested. You've simply been asked to go on leave for a while. " She turned to face me, her eyes exhausted and red.

"For a while means forever." As I questioned her closely in the car, she vacillated from pitiful tears to volatile flares that scorched everything within reach. Then she fell asleep, and I knew nothing more than I had before. As a cold rain began to fall, I turned on fog lamps and followed the trail of bright red taillights streaking the blacktop ahead. At unwelcome intervals rain and clouds gathered densely in dips and turns, making it almost impossible to see. But instead of pulling over and waiting for the weather to pass, I shifted to a lower gear and drove on in my machine of hurled walnut, soft leather, and steel.

I still wasn't certain why I had bought my charcoal Mercedes 500E, except that after Mark died, it had seemed important to drive something new. It might have been the memories, for we had loved and fought with each other desperately in my previous car. Or perhaps it was simply that life got harder as I got older and I needed more power to get by.

I heard Lucy stir as I turned into Windsor Farms, the old Richmond neighborhood where I lived amid stately Georgian and Tudor homes not far from the banks of the James. My headlights caught tiny reflectors on ankles of an unfamiliar boy riding a bicycle just ahead, and I passed a couple I did not recognize who were holding hands and walking their dog. Gum trees had dropped another load of prickly seeds over my yard, several rolled newspapers were on the porch, and the super cans were still parked by the street. It did not require long absences for me to feel like an outsider and for my house to look like no one was home. While Lucy carried in luggage, I started the gas logs in the living room and put on a pot of Darjeeling tea. For a while I sat alone in front of the fire, listening to the sounds of my niece a she got settled, took a shower, and in general took her time. We were about to have a discussion that filled both of us with dread.

"Are you hungry?" I asked when I heard her walk in.

"No. Do you have any beer?"

I hesitated, then replied, "In the refrigerator in the bar."

I listened a little longer without turning around, because when I looked at Lucy I saw her the way I wanted her to be. Sipping tea, I mustered up the strength to face this frighteningly beautiful and brilliant woman with whom I shared snippets of genetic code. After all these years, it was time we met. She came to the fire and sat on the floor, leaning against the stone hearth as she drank Icehouse beer out of the bottle. She had helped herself to a boldly colorful warm-up suit I wore on the infrequent occasions when I played tennis these days, and her feet were bare, her wet hair combed back. I realized that if I didn't know her and she walked past, I would turn to look again, and this wasn't solely due to her fine figure and face. One sensed the facility with which Lucy spoke, walked, and in the smallest ways guided her body and her eyes. She made everything seem easy, which was partially why she did not have many friends.

"Lucy," I began, "help me understand."

"I've been fucked," she said, taking a swallow of beer.

"If that's true, then how?"

"What do you mean'if'?" She stared hard at me, her eyes filling with tears.

"How can you think for even a minute... Oh, shit. What's the point?" She looked away.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth," I said, getting up as I decided that I wasn't hungry, either. I went to the bar and poured Scotch over crushed ice.

"Let's start with the facts," I suggested as I returned to my chair.

"We know someone entered ERF at around three a.m. on this past Tuesday. We know your PIN was used and your thumb was scanned. It is further documented by the system that this person--again, who has your PIN and print--went into numerous files. The log-out time was at precisely four thirty-eight A. M. "

"I've been set up and sabotaged," Lucy said.

"Where were you while all this was going on?"

"I was asleep." She angrily gulped down the rest of her beer and got up for another one. I sipped my Scotch slowly because it was not possible to drink a Dewar's Mist fast.

"It has been alleged that there have been nights when your bed was empty," I quietly said.

"And you know what? It's nobody's business."

"Well, it is, and you know that. Were you in your bed the night of the break-in?"

"It's my business what bed I'm in, when, and where, and nobody else's," she said. We were silent as I thought of Lucy sitting on top of the picnic table in the dark, her face illuminated by the match cupped in another woman's hands. I heard her speaking to her friend and understood the emotions carrying her words, for I knew the language of intimacy well.

I knew when love was in someone's voice, and I knew when it was not.

"Exactly where were you when ERF was broken into?" I asked her again.

"Or should I ask you instead who you were with?"

"} don't ask you who you're with."

"You would if it might save me from being in a lot of trouble."

"My private life is irrelevant," she went on.

"No, I think it is rejection you fear," I said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I saw you in the picnic area the other night. You were with a friend." She looked away.

"So now you're spying on me, too." Her voice trembled.

"Well, don't waste any sermons on me, and you can forget Catholic guilt because I don't believe in Catholic guilt."

"Lucy, I'm not judging you," I said, but in a way I was.

"Help me understand."

"You imply I'm unnatural or abnormal, otherwise I would not need understanding. I would simply be accepted without a second thought. "

"Can your friend vouch for your whereabouts at three o'clock Tuesday morning?" I asked.

"No," she answered.

"I see" was all I said, and my acceptance of her position was a concession that the girl I knew was gone. I did not know this Lucy, and I wondered what I had done wrong.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked me as the evening tensely wore on.

"I've got this case in North Carolina. I have a feeling I'm going to be there a lot for a while," I said.

"What about your office here?"

"Fielding's holding down the fort. I do have court in the morning, I think. In fact, I need to call Rose to verify the time."

"What kind of case?"

"A homicide."

"I figured that much. Can I come with you?"

"If you'd like."

"Well, maybe I'll just go back to Charlottesville."

"And do what?" I asked. Lucy looked frightened.

"I don't know. I don't know how I'd get there, either."

"You're welcome to my car when I'm not using it. Or you could go to Miami until the semester's over, then back to UVA." She downed the last mouthful of beer and got up, her eyes bright with tears again.

"Go ahead and admit it. Aunt Kay. You think I did it, don't you?"

"Lucy," I said honestly, "I don't know what to think. You and the evidence are saying two different things."

"I have never doubted you." She looked at me as if I had broken her heart.

"You're welcome to stay here through Christmas," I said.

The member of the North Richmond Gang on trial the next morning wore a double-breasted navy suit and an Italian silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. His white shirt looked crisp; he was cleanly shaven and minus his earring. Trial lawyer Tod Coldwell had dressed his client well because he knew that jurors have an exceedingly difficult time resisting the notion that what you see is what you get. Of course, I believed that axiom, too, which was why I introduced into evidence as many color photographs from the victim's autopsy as possible. It was safe to say that Coldwell, who drove a red Ferrari, did not like me much.

"Isn't it true, Mrs. Scarpetta," Coldwell pontificated in court this cool autumn day, "that people under the influence of cocaine can become very violent and even demonstrate superhuman strength?"

"Certainly cocaine can cause the user to become delusional and excited," I continued directing my answers to the jury.

"Superhuman strength, as you call it, is often associated with cocaine or PCP--which is a horse tranquilizer."

"And the victim had both cocaine and benzoylecgonine in his blood," Coldwell went on as if I had just agreed with him.

"Yes, he did."

"Mrs. Scarpetta, I wonder if you would explain to the jury what that means?"

"I would first like to explain to the jury that I am a medical doctor with a law degree. I have a specialty in pathology and a subspecialty in forensic pathology, as you've already stipulated, Mr. Coldwell. Therefore, I would appreciate being addressed as Dr. Scarpetta instead of Mrs. Scarpetta. "

"Yes, ma'am."

"Would you please repeat the question?"

"Would you explain to the jury what it means if someone has cocaine" --he glanced at his notes"--and benzoylecgonine in his blood?"

"Benzoylecgonine is the metabolite of cocaine. To say that someone had both on board means some of the cocaine the victim had taken had already metabolized and some had not," I replied, aware of Lucy in a back corner, her face partially hidden by a column. She looked miserable.

"Which would indicate he was a chronic abuser, especially since he had many old needle tracks. And this may also suggest that when my client was confronted by him on the night of July third, my client had a very excited, agitated, and violent person on his hands, and had no choice but to defend himself." Coldwell was pacing, his dapper client watching me like a twitchy cat.

"Mr. Coldwell," I said, "the victim--Jonah Jones--was shot sixteen times with a Tee-Nine nine-millimeter gun that holds thirty-six rounds. Seven of those shots were to his back, and three of them were close or contact shots to the back of Mr. Jones's head.

"In my opinion, this is inconsistent with a shooting in which the shooter was defending himself, especially since Mr. Jones had a blood alcohol of point two-nine, which is almost three times the legal limit in Virginia. In other words, the victim's motor skills and judgment were substantially impaired when he was assaulted. Frankly, I'm amazed that Mr. Jones could even stand up." Coldwell swung around to face Judge Poe, who had been nicknamed "the Raven" for as long as I had been in Richmond. He was weary to his ancient soul of drug dealers killing each other, of children carrying guns to school and shooting each other on the bus.

"Your Honor," Coldwell said dramatically, "I would ask that Mrs. Scarpetta's last statement be struck from the record since it is both speculative and inflammatory, and without a doubt beyond her area of expertise. "

"Well, now, I don't know that what the doctor has to say is beyond her expertise, Mr. Coldwell, and she's already asked you politely to refer to her properly as Dr. Scarpetta, and I'm losing patience with your antics and ploys..."

"But, Your Honor"

"The fact is that I've had Dr. Scarpetta in my courtroom on many occasions and I'm well aware of her level of expertise," the judge went on in his Southern way of speaking that reminded me of pulling warm taffy.

"Your Honor... ?"

"Seems to me she deals with this sort of thing every day..."

"Your Honor?"

"Mr. Coldwell," the Raven thundered, his balding pate turning red, "if you interrupt me one more goddam time I'm going to hold you in contempt of court and let you spend a few nights in the goddam city jail! Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir." Lucy was craning her neck to see, and every juror was alert.

"I'm going to allow the record to reflect exactly what Dr. Scarpetta said," the judge went on.

"No further questions," Coldwell said tersely. Judge Poe concluded with a violent bang of the gavel that woke up an old woman toward the back who had been fast asleep beneath a black straw hat for most of the morning. Startled, she sat straight up and blurted, "Who is it?" Then she remembered where she was and began to cry.

"It's all right. Mama," I heard another woman say as we adjourned for lunch. Before leaving downtown, I stopped by the Health Department's Division of Vital Records, where an old friend and colleague of mine was the state registrar. In Virginia, one could not legally be born or buried without Gloria Loving's signature, and though she was as local as shad roe, she knew her counterpart in every state in the union. Over the years, I had relied on Gloria many times to verify that people had been on this planet or had not, that they had been married, divorced, or were adopted.

I was told she was on her lunch break in the Madison Building cafeteria. At quarter past one, I found Gloria alone at a table, eating vanilla yogurt and canned fruit cocktail. Mostly, she was reading a thick paperback thriller that was a New York Times bestseller, according to the cover.

"If I had to eat lunches like yours, I wouldn't bother," I said, pulling out a chair. She looked up at me, her blank expression followed by joy.

"Goodness gracious! Why, my Lord. What on earth are you doing here, Kay?"

"I work across the street, in case you've forgotten." Delighted, she laughed.

"Can I get you a coffee? Honey, you look tired." Gloria Loving's name had defined her at birth, and she had grown up true to her calling. She was a big, generous woman of some fifty years who deeply cared about every certificate that crossed her desk. Records were more than paper and nosology codes to her, and she would hire, fire, or blast General Assembly in the name of one. It did not matter whose.

"No coffee, thanks," I said.

"Well, I heard you didn't work across the street anymore."

"I love the way people resign me when I've not been here for a couple of weeks. I'm a consultant with the FBI now. I'm in and out a lot."

"In and out of North Carolina, I guess, based on what I've been following in the news. Even Clan Rather was talking about the Steiner girl's case the other night. It was on CNN, too. Lord, it's cold in here."

I looked around at the bleak state government cafeteria where few people seemed thrilled with their lives. Many were huddled over trays, jackets and sweaters buttoned to their chi s.

"They've got all the thermostats reset to sixty degrees to conserve energy, if that isn't the joke of all time," Gloria went on.

"We have steam heat that comes out of the Medical College of Virginia, so cutting the thermostats doesn't save one watt of electricity."

"It feels colder in here than sixty degrees," I commented.

"That's because it's fifty-three, which is about what it is outside."

"You're welcome to come across the street and use my office," I said with a sly smile.

"Well, now, that's got to be the warmest spot in town. What can I do to help you, Kay?"

"I need to track down a SIDS that allegedly occurred in California around twelve years ago. The infant's name is Mary Jo Steiner, the parents' names Denesa and Charles."

She made the connection immediately but was too professional to probe.

"Do you know Denesa Steiner's maiden name?"

"Where in California?"

"I don't know that, either," I said.

"Any possibility you can find out? The more information, the better."

"I'd rather you try running what I've got. If that fails, I'll see what else I can find out."

"You said an alleged SIDS. There's some suspicion that maybe it wasn't a SIDS? I need to know in case it might have been coded another way."

"Supposedly, the child was a year old when she died. And that bothers me considerably. As you know, the peak age for SIDS is three to four months old. Over six months old, and SIDS is unlikely. After a year, you're almost always talking about some other subtle form of sudden death. So yes, the death could have been coded a different way." She played with her tea bag.

"If this was Idaho, I'd just call Jane and she could run the nosology code for SIDS and have an answer for me in ninety seconds. But California's got thirty-two million people. It's one of the hardest states. It might take a special run. Come on, I'll walk you out. That will be my exercise for the day. "

"Is the registrar in Sacramento?" We followed a depressing corridor busy with desperate citizens in need of social services.

"Yes. I'm going to call him as soon as I go back upstairs."

"I assume you know him, then."

"Oh, sure." She laughed.

"There are only fifty of us. We have no one to talk to but each other." That night I took Lucy to La Petite France, where I surrendered to Chef Paul, who sentenced us to languid hours of fruit-marinated lamb kabobs and a bottle of 1986 Chateau Gruaud Larose. I promised her crema di cioccolata eletta when we got home, a lovely chocolate mousse with pistachio and mars ala that I kept in the freezer for culinary emergencies. But before that we drove to Shocko Bottom and walked along cobblestones beneath lamplight in a part of the city that not so long ago I would not have ventured near. We were close to the river, and the sky was midnight blue with stars flung wide. I thought of Benton and then I thought of Marino for very different reasons.

"Aunt Kay," Lucy said as we entered Chetti's for cappuccino, "can I get a lawyer?"

"For what purpose?" I asked, although I knew.

"Even if the FBI can't prove what they're saying I did, they'll still slam me for the rest of my life." Pain could not hide behind her steady voice.

"Tell me what you want."

"A big gun."

"I'll find you one," I said.

I did not return to North Carolina on Monday as I had planned but flew to Washington instead. There were rounds to make at FBI headquarters, but more than anything I needed to see an old friend. Senator Frank Lord and I had attended the same Catholic high school in Miami, although not at the same time. He was quite a lot older than I, and our friendship did not begin until I was working for the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office and he was the district attorney. When he became governor, then senator, I was long gone from the southern city of my birth. He and I did not become reconnected until he was appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lord had asked me to be an adviser as he fought to pass the most formidable crime bill in the history of the nation, and I had solicited his help, too. Unbeknownst to Lucy, he had been her patron saint, for without his intervention, she probably would not have been granted either permission or academic credit for her internship this fall. I wasn't certain how to tell him the news. At almost noon, I waited for him on a polished cotton couch in a parlor with rich red walls and Persian rugs and a splendid crystal chandelier. Outside, voices carried along the marble corridor, and an occasional tourist peeked through the doorway in hopes of catching a glimpse of a politician or some other important person inside the Senate dining room. Lord arrived on time and full of energy, and gave me a quick, stiff hug. He was a kind, unassuming man shy about showing affection.

"} got lipstick on your face." I wiped a smudge off his jaw.

"Oh, you should leave it so my colleagues have something to talk about."

"} suspect they have plenty to talk about anyway."

"Kay, it's wonderful to see you," he said, escorting me into the dining room.

"You may not think it's so wonderful," I said.

"Of course I will." We picked a table before a stained-glass window of George Washington on a horse, and I did not look at the menu because it never changed.

Senator Lord was a distinguished man with thick gray hair and deep blue eyes. He was quite tall and lean, and had a penchant for elegant silk ties and old-fashioned finery such as vests, cuff links, pocket watches and stickpins.

"What brings you to D. C.?" he asked, placing his linen napkin in his lap.

"I have evidence to discuss at the FBI labs," I said. He nodded.

"You're working on that awful case in North Carolina."

"Yes."

"That psycho must be stopped. Do you think he's there?"

"I don't know."

"Because I'm just wondering why he would be," Lord went on.

"It would seem he would have moved on to another place where he could lay low for a while. Well, I suppose logic has little to do with the decisions these evil people make."

"Frank," I said, "Lucy's in a lot of trouble."

"I can tell something's wrong," he said matter-of factly

"I see it in your face." He listened to me for half an hour as I told him everything, and I was so grateful for his patience. I knew he had to vote several times that day and that many people wanted slivers of his time.

"You're a good man," I said with feeling.

"And I have let you down. I asked you for a favor, which is something I almost never do, and the situation has ended in disgrace. "

"Did she do it?" he asked, and he had scarcely touched his grilled vegetables.

"I don't know," I replied.

"The evidence is incriminating." I cleared my throat.

"She says she didn't do it."

"Has she always told you the truth?"

"I thought so. But I've also been discovering of late that there are many important facets to her that she has not told me."

"Have you asked?"

"She's made it clear that some things aren't my business. And I shouldn't judge."

"If you're afraid of being judgmental, Kay, then you probably already are. And Lucy would sense this no matter what you say or don't say."

"I've never enjoyed being the one who criticizes and corrects her," I said, depressed.

"But her mother, Dorothy, who is my only sibling, is too male dependent and self-centered to deal with the reality of a daughter."

"And now Lucy is in trouble, and you are wondering how much of it is your fault."

"I'm not conscious of wondering that."

"We rarely are conscious of those primitive anxieties that creep out from under reason. And the only way to banish them is to rum on all the lights. Do you think you're strong enough to do that?"

"Yes."

"Let me remind you that if you ask, you also must be able to live with the answers."

"I know."

"Let's just suppose for a moment that Lucy's innocent," said Senator Lord.

"Then what?" I asked.

"If Lucy didn't violate security, obviously someone else did. My question is why?"

"My question is how," I said. He gestured for the waitress to bring coffee.

"What we really must determine is motive. And what would Lucy's motive be? What would anybody's motive be?" Money was the easy answer, but I did not think that was it and told him so.

"Money is power, Kay, and everything is about power. We fallen creatures can never get enough of it."

"Yes, the forbidden fruit."

"Of course. All crime stems from it," he said.

"Every day that tragic truth is carried in on a stretcher," I agreed.

"Which tells you what about the problem at hand?" He stirred sugar into his coffee.

"It tells me motive."

"Well, of course. Power, that's it. Please, what would you like me to do?" my old friend asked.

"Lucy will not be charged with any crime unless it is proven that she stole from ERF. But as we speak, her future is ruined--at least in terms of a career in law enforcement or any other one that might involve a background investigation."

"Have they proven that she was the one who got in at three in the morning?"

"They have as much proof as they need, Frank. And that's the problem.

I'm not certain how hard they'll work to clear her name, if she is innocent.

"If?"

"I'm trying to keep an open mind." I reached for my coffee and decided that the last thing I needed was more physical stimulation. My heart was racing and I could not keep my hands still.

"I can talk to the director," Lord said.

"All I want is someone behind the scenes making sure this thing is thoroughly investigated. With Lucy gone, they may not think it matters, especially since there is so much else to cope with. And she's just a college student, for God's sake. So why should they care?"

"I would hope the Bureau would care more than that," he said, his mouth grim.