Cruel and Unusual

9

After much debate, we came up with what seemed a reasonable plan. Lucy would stay at the Homestead with the Wesleys until Wednesday, allowing me a brief period to grapple with my problems without worrying about her welfare. After breakfast, I drove off in a gentle snow that by the time I reached Richmond had turned to rain.

By late afternoon, I had been to the office and the labs. I had conferred with Fielding and several of the forensic scientists, and had avoided Ben Stevens. I returned not a single reporters call and ignored my electronic mail, for if the health commissioner had sent me a communication, I did not want to know what it said. At half past four I was filling my car with gas at an Exxon station on Grove Avenue when a white Ford LTD pulled in behind me. I watched Marino get out, hitch up his trousers, and head to the men's room. When he returned a moment later, he covertly glanced around as if worried that someone might have observed his trip to the toilet. Then he strolled over to me.

“I saw you as I was driving past,” he said; jamming his hands into the pockets of his blue blazer.

“Where's your coat?” I began cleaning the front windshield.

“In the car. It gets in my way.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold, raw air. “If you ain't thinking about stopping these rumors, then you'd better start thinking about it.”

I irritably returned the squeegee to its container of cleaning solution. “And just what do you suggest I do, Marino? Call Jason Story and tell him I'm sorry his wife and unborn child are dead but I would certainly appreciate it if he would vent his grief and rage elsewhere?”

“Doc, he blames you.”

“After reading his quotes in the Post, I suspect any number of people are blaming me. He's managed to portray me as a Machiavellian bitch.”

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“Well, you look hungry.”

I looked at him as if he'd lost his mind.

“And if something looks a certain way to me, it's my duty to check it out. So I'm giving you a choice, Doc. I can get us some Nabs and sodas from the machines over there, and we can stand out here freezing our asses off and inhaling fumes while we prevent other poor bastards from using the self-service pumps. Or we can zip over to Phil's. I'm buying either way.”

Ten minutes later we were sitting in a corner booth perusing glossy illustrated menus offering everything from spaghetti to fried fish. Marino faced the dark-tinted front door and I had a perfect view of the rest rooms. He was smoking, as were most of the people around us, and I was reminded that it is hell to quit. He actually could not have selected a more ideal restaurant, considering the circumstances. Philip's Continental Lounge was an old, neighborhood establishment where patrons who had known each other all their lives continued to meet regularly for hearty food and bottled beer. The typical customer was good-natured and gregarious, and unlikely to recognize me or care unless my picture regularly appeared in the sports section of the newspaper.

“It's like this,” Marino said as he closed his menu. “Jason Story believes Susan would still be alive if she'd had another job. And he's probably right. Plus, he's a loser - one of these self-centered assholes who believes everything is everybody else's fault. The truth is, he's probably more to blame for Susan's death than anyone.”

“You're not suggesting that he killed her?”

The waitress appeared and we ordered. Grilled chicken and rice for Marino and a kosher chili dog for me, plus two diet sodas.

“I'm not suggesting that Jason shot his wife,” Marino said quietly. “But he set her up for getting involved in whatever it was that precipitated her homicide. Paying the bills was Susan's responsibility, and she was under big-time financial stress.”

“Unsurprisingly,” I said. “Her husband had just lost his job.”

“It's too bad he didn't lose his high dollar taste. We're talking Polo shirts and Britches of Georgetown slacks and silk ties. A couple weeks after he gets laid off, the jerk goes out and buys seven hundred bucks' worth of ski equipment and then heads off to Wintergreen for the weekend. Before that it was a two-hundred-dollar leather jacket and a four-hundred-dollar bicycle. So Susan's down at the morgue working like a dog and then coming home to face-bills her salary won't put a dew it”

“I had no idea,” I said pained by a sudden vision of Susan sitting at her desk. Her dally ritual was to spend her lunch hour in her office, and on occasion I would join her thereto chat. I remembered her generic-brand corn chips and the sale stickers on her sodas. I don't think she ever ate or drank anything she had not brought from home.

“Jason's spending habits,” Marino went on, “leads to the shit he's causing you. He's badmouthing you like hell to anybody who will listen because you're a doctor-lawyer-Indian chief who drives a Mercedes and lives in a big house bi Windsor Farms. I think the dumbass believes if he can somehow blame you for what happened to his wife, maybe he can get a little compensation.”

“He can try until he's blue in the face.”

“And he will.”

Our diet drinks arrived, and I changed the subject.

“I'm meeting with Downey in the morning.” Marino's eyes wandered to the television over the bar. “Lucy's getting started on AFIS. And then I've got to do something about Ben Steven,”

”What you ought to do is get rid of him.”

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to fire a state employee?”

“They say it's easier to fire Jesus Christ,” Marino said. “Unless the employee is appointed and got a grade off the charts, like you. You still ought to find some way to run the bastard off.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Oh, yeah. According to him, you're arrogant, ambitious, and strange. A real pain in the ass to work for.”

“He actually said something like that?”I asked in disbelief.

“That was the drift.”

“I hope someone is checking into his finances. I'd be interested to know if he's made any large deposits lately. Susan didn't get into trouble alone.”

”I agree with you. I think Stevens knows a lot and is covering his tracks like crazy. By the way, I checked with Susan's bank. One of the tellers remembers her making the thirty-five-hundred-dollar deposit in cash. Twenties, fifties, and hundred-dollar bills that she was carrying in her purse.”

“What did Stevens have to say about Susan?”

“He's saying that he really didn't know her, but that it was his impression there was some problem between you and her. In other words, he's reinforcing what's been in the news.”

Our food arrived, and it was all I could do to swallow a single bite because I was so angry.

“And what about Fielding?” I said. “Does he think I'm horrible to work for?”

Marino stared off again. “He says you're very driven and he's never been able to figure you out.”

“I didn't hire him to figure me out, and compared to him, I am certainly driven. Fielding is disenchanted with forensic medicine and has been for several years. He expends most of his energy in the gym.”

“Doc” - Marino met my eyes- “you are driven compared to anyone, and most people can't figure you out. You don't exactly walk around with your heart on your sleeve. In fact, you can come across as someone who don't have feelings. You're so damn hard to read that to others who don't know you, it sometimes appears that nothing gets to you. Other cops, lawyers, they ask me about you. They want to know what you're really like, how you can do what you do every day - what the deal is. They see you as somebody who don't get close to anyone.”

“And what do you tell them when they ask?” I said.

“I don't tell them a damn thing.”

“Are you finished psychoanalyzing me yet, Marino?”

He lit a cigarette. “Look, I'm going to say something to you, and you ain't gonna like it. You've always been this reserved, professional lady - someone real slow to let you in, but once the person's there, he's there. He's got a damn friend for life and you'd do anything for But you've been different this past year. You've had about a hundred walls up ever since Mark got killed. For those of us around you, it's like being in a room that was once seventy degrees and suddenly the temperature's down to about fifty five. I don't think you're even aware of it.”

“So nobody's feeling all that attached to you right now. Maybe they even resent you a little bit because they feel ignored or snubbed by you. Maybe they never liked you anyway. Maybe they're just indifferent. The thing about people is, whether you're sitting on a throne or a hot seat, they're going to use your position to their advantage. And if there's no bond between you and them, that just makes it all the easier for them to try to get what they want without giving a rat's ass about what happens to you. And that's where you are. There's a lot of people who've been waiting for years to see you bleed.”

“I don't intend to bleed.” I pushed my plate away.

“Doc” - he blew out smoke - “you're already bleeding. And common sense tells me that if you're swimming with sharks and start bleeding, you ought to get the hell out of the water.”

“Might we converse without speaking in cliches, at least for a minute or two?”

“Hey I can say it in Portuguese or Chinese and you're not going to listen to me.”

“If you speak Portuguese or Chinese, I promise I'll listen. In fact, if you ever decide to speak English I promise I'll listen.”

“Comments like that don't win you any fans. That's just what I'm talking about.”

“I said it with a smile.”

“I've seen you cut open bodies with a smile.”

“Never. I always use a scalpel.”

“Sometimes there isn't a difference between the two. I've seen your smile make defense attorneys bleed.”

“If I'm such a dreadful person, why are we friends?”

“'Because I've got more walls up than you do. The fact is, there's a squirrel in every tree and the water's full of sharks. All of them want a piece of us.”

“Marino, you're paranoid.”

“You're damn right, which is why I wish you'd lay low for a while, Doc. Really,” he said.

“I can't.”

“You want to know the truth, it's going to start looking like a conflict of interests for you to have anything to do with these cases. It's going to make you come off looking worse.”

I said, “Susan is dead. Eddie Heath is dead. Jennifer Deighton is dead. There is corruption in my office, and we aren't certain who went to the electric chair the other week. You're suggesting I just walk away until everything somehow magically self-corrects?”

Marino reached for the salt but I got it first.

”Nope. But you can have all the pepper you want,” I said, sliding me pepper shaker closer.

“This health crap is going to kill me,” he warned.

“Because one of these days I'm going to get so pissed I'm going to do everything at once. Five cigarettes going, a bourbon in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, baked potato loaded with butter, sour cream, salt and then I'm going to blow every circuit in the box.”

“No, you're not going to do any of those things,” I said. “You're going to be kind to yourself and live at least as long as I do.”

We were silent for a while, picking at our food.

“Doc, no offense, but just what do you think you're going to find out about damn feather parts?”

“Hopefully, their origin.”

“I can save you the trouble. They came from birds, “he said.

I left Marino at close to seven P.M. and returned downtown The temperature had risen above forty, the night dark and lashing out in fits of rain violent enough to stop traffic. Sodium vapor lamps were pollen-yellow fudges behind the morgue, where the bay door was shut, every parking space vacant. Inside the building, my pulse quickened as I followed the brightly lit corridor past the autopsy suite to Susan's small office.

As I unlocked the door, I did not know what I expected to find, but I was drawn to her filing cabinet and desk drawers, to every book and old telephone message Everything looked the same as it had before she died. Marino was quite skilled at going through someone's private space without disturbing the natural disorder of things. The telephone was still askew on the right corner of the desk, the cord twisted like a corkscrew. Scissors and two pencils with broken points were on the green paper blotter, her lab coat draped over the back of her chair.

A reminder of a doctor's appointment was still taped to her computer monitor, and as I stared at the shy curves and gentle slant of her neat script, I trembled inside. Where had she gone adrift? Was it when she married Jason Story? Or was her destruction setup much earlier than that, when she was the young daughter of a scrupulous minister, the twin left behind when her sister was killed? Sitting in her chair, I rolled it closet to the filing cabinet and began slipping out one file after another and glancing through the contents. Most of what I perused was brochures and other printed information pertaining to surgical supplies and miscellaneous items used in the morgue. Nothing struck me as curious until I discovered that she had saved virtually every memo she had ever gotten from Fielding, but not one from Ben Stevens or me, when I knew that both of us had sent her plenty. Further searching through drawers and bookshelves produced no files for Stevens or me, and that's when I concluded that someone had taken them.

My first thought was that Marino might have carried them off. Then something else occurred to me with a jolt, and I hurried upstairs. Unlocking the door to my office, I went straight to the file drawer where I kept mundane administrative paperwork such as telephone call sheets, memos, printouts of electronic mail communications I had received, and drafts of budget proposals and long-term plans. Frantically, I rifled through folders 'drawers. The thick file I was looking for was simply labeled “Memos,” and in it were copies of every memo I'd sent to my staff and various other agency personnel over the past several years. I searched Rose's office and carefully checked my office again. The file was gone.

“You son of a bitch,” I said under my breath as I headed furiously down the hall. “You goddam son of a bitch.”

Ben Stevens's office was impeccably neat and so carefully appointed that it looked like a display in a discount furniture store. His desk was a Williamsburg reproduction with bright brass pulls and a mahogany veneer, and he had brass floor lamps with dark green shades. The door was covered with a machine-made Persian rug, the walls arranged with large prints of alpine skiers and men on thundering horses swinging polo sticks and sailors racing through snarling seas. I began by pulling Susan's personnel file. The expected job description, resume, and other documents were inside. Absent were several memos of commendation I had written since hiring her and had added to her file myself. I began opening desk drawers, and discovered in one of them a brown vinyl kit containing toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, and a small bottle of cologne.

Perhaps it was the barely perceptible shift of air when the door was silently pulled open wider, or perhaps I simply sensed a presence the way an animal would. I happened to look up to find Ben Stevens standing in the doorway as I sat at his desk screwing the cap back on a bottle of Red cologne. For a long, icy moment, our eyes held and neither of us spoke. I did not feel fear. I did not feel the least bit concerned by what he had caught me doing I felt rage “You're keeping unusually late hours, Ben.”

Zipping up his toilet kit, I returned it to its drawer. I laced my fingers on top of the blotter, my movements, my speech, deliberate and slow.

“The thing I've always liked about working after hours is there is no one else around,” I said. “No distractions. No risk of someone walking in and interrupting whatever it is you are doing. No eyes or ears. Not a sound, except on rare occasion when the security guard happens to wander through. And we all know that doesn't happen often unless his attention is solicited, because he hates coming into the morgue at any time. I've never known a security guard who didn't hate that. Same goes for the cleaning crew. They won't even go downstairs, and they do as little up here as they can get away with. But that point is moot, isn't it? It's close to nine o'clock. The cleaning crew is always gone by seven-thirty.

“What intrigues me is that I did not guess before now. It never crossed my mind. Maybe that is a sad comment about how preoccupied I've been. You told the police you did not know Susan personally, yet you frequently gave her rides to and from work, such as on the snowy morning I autopsied Jennifer Deighton. I remember that man was very distracted on that occasion. She left the body in the middle of the corridor, and she was dialing a number on the phone and quickly hung up when I walked into the autopsy suite. I doubt she was placing a business call at seven-thirty in the morning on a day when most people weren't going to venture out of their homes because of the weather. And there was no one in the office to call - no one had gotten in yet, except you. If she were dialing your number, why would her impulse be to hide that from me? Unless you were more than her direct supervisor.

“Of course, your relationship with me is equally intriguing. We seem to get along fine, then suddenly you claim that I am the worst boss in Christendom. It makes me wonder if Jason Story is the only person talking to reporters. It's amazing, this persona I suddenly have. This image. The tyrant. The neurotic. The person who is somehow responsible for the violent death of my morgue supervision. Susan and I had a very cordial working relationship, and until recently, Ben, so did we. But it's my word against yours, especially now, since any scrap of paper that might document what I'm saying has conveniently disappeared. And my prediction is that you have already leaked to someone that important personnel files and memoranda have vanished from the office, thus implying that I'm the one who took them.

When files and memos disappear, you can say anything you want about the contents of them, can't you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Ben Stevens said. He moved away from the doorway but did not come close to the desk or take a chair. His face was flushed, his eyes hard with hate. “I don't know anything about any missing files or memos, but if it's true, then I can't hide that fact from the authorities, just as I can't hide the fact that I happened to stop by the office tonight to get something I'd left and discovered you rummaging through my desk.”

“What did you leave, Ben?”

“I don't have to answer your questions.”

“Actually, you do. You work for me, and if you come into the building late at night and I happen to know about it, I have the right to question you.”

“Go ahead and put me on leave. Try to fire me. That will certainly look good for you right now.”

“You are a squid, Ben.”

His eyes widened and he wet his lips.

“Your efforts to sabotage me are just a lot of ink you're squirting into the water because you're panicking and want to divert attention from yourself. Did you kill Susan?”

“You're losing your goddam mind.” His voice shook.

“She left her house early afternoon on Christmas Day, allegedly to meet a girlfriend. In truth, the person she was meeting was you, wasn't it? Did you know that when she was dead in her car, her coat collar and scarf smelled like men's cologne, like the Red cologne you keep in your desk so you can freshen up before you hit the bars in the Slip after work?”

“I don't know what you're talking about”

“Who was paying her?”

“Maybe you were.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said calmly. “You and Susan were involved in some money-making scheme, and my guess is that you are the one who initially got her involved because you knew her vulnerabilities. She probably had confided in you. You knew how to convince her to go along, and Lord knows you could use the money. Your bar tabs alone have got to blow your budget. Partying is very expensive, and I know what you get paid.”

“You don't know anything.”

“Ben.”

I lowered my voice. “Get out of it. Stop while there's still time to tell me who's behind It.”

He would not look me in the eye.

“The stakes are too high when people start dying. Do you think ft you killed Susan that you'll getaway with it?”

He said nothing.

“If someone else killed her, do you think you're immune, that the same thing can't happen to you?”

“You're threatening me.”

“Nonsense.”

“You can't prove that the cologne you smelled on Susan was mine. There's no test for something like that.

You can't put a smell in a test tube; you can't save it;' he said.

“I'm going to ask you to leave now, Ben.”

He turned and walked out of his office. When I heard the elevator doors shut, I went down the hall and peered out a window overlooking the parking lot in back. I did not venture out to my car until Stevens had driven away.

The FBI Building is a concrete fortification at 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of D.C., and when I arrived the following morning, it was in the wake of at least a hundred noisy schoolchildren. They brought to mind Lucy at their age as they stomped up steps, dashed to benches, and flocked restlessly about huge shrubs and potted trees. Lucy would have loved touring the laboratories, and I suddenly missed her intensely.

The babble of shrill young voices faded as if carried away from me by the wind, my step brisk and directed, for I had been here enough times to know the way. Heading toward the center of the building, I passed the courtyard, then a restricted parking area and a guard before reaching the single glass door. Inside was a lobby of tan furniture, mirrors, and flags. A photograph of the president smiled from one wall, while posted on another was a hit parade of the ten most wanted fugitives in the land.

At the escort desk, I presented my driver's license to a young agent whose demeanor was as grim as his gray suit.

“I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia.”

“Who are you here to see?” I told him.

He compared me to my photograph, ascertained that I was not armed, placed a phone call, and gave me a badge. Unlike the Academy at Quantico, Headquarters had an ambience that seemed to starch the soul and stiffen the spine.

I had never met Special Agent Minor Downey, though the irony of his name had conjured up unfair images. He would be an effete, frail man with pale blond hair covering every inch of his body except for his head. His eyes would be weak, his skin rarely touched by the sun, and of course he would drift in and out of places and never draw attention to himself. Naturally, I was wrong. When a fit man in shirtsleeves appeared and looked straight at me, I got up from my chair.

“You must be Mr. Downey,” I said.

“Dr. Scarpetta.”

He shook my hand. “Please call me Minor.”

He was at the most forty, and attractive in a scholarly sort of way, with his rimless glasses, neatly clipped brown hair, and maroon-and-navy-striped tie. He exuded a prepossession and intellectual intensity immediately noticeable to anyone who has suffered through arduous years of postgraduate education, for I could not recall a professor from Georgetown or Johns Hopkins who did not commune with the uncommon and find it impossible to connect with pedestrian human beings.

“Why feathers?” I asked as we boarded the elevator.

“I have a friend who's an ornithologist at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History,” he said. “When government aviation officials started getting her help with bird strikes, I got interested. You see, birds get ingested by aircraft engines and when you're going through the wreckage on the ground, you find these feather parts and want to figure out which bird caused the problem. In other words, whatever got sucked in was chewed up pretty good. A sea gull can crash a B-1 bomber, and you lose one engine to a bird strike with a wide-bodied plane full of people and you've got a problem. Or take the case of the loon that went through the windshield of a Lear jet and decapitated the pilot. So that's part of what I do. I work on bird ingestions. We test turbines and blades by throwing in chickens. You know, can the plane survive one chicken or two? But birds figure into all sorts of things. Pigeon down in poop on the bottom of a suspect's shoes - was the suspect in the alleyway where the body was found or not? Or the guy who stole a Double Yellow Amazon during the course of a burglary, and we find down pieces in the back of his car that are identified as coming from a Double Yellow Amazon. Or the down feather recovered from the body of a woman who was raped and murdered. She was found in a Panasonic stereo speaker box in a Dumpster. The down looked like a small white mallard feather to me, same type of feather in the down comforter on the suspect's bed. That case was made with a feather and two hairs.”

The third floor was a city block of laboratories where examiners analyzed the explosives, paint chips, pollens, tools, tires, and debris used in crimes or collected from scenes. Gas chromatography detectors, microspectrophotometers, and mainframes ran morning, noon, and night, and reference collections filled rooms with automotive paint types, duct tapes, and plastics. I followed Downey through white hallways past the DNA analysis labs, then into the Hairs and Fibers Unit where he worked. His office also functioned as a laboratory, with dark wood furniture and bookcases sharing space with countertops and microscopes. Walls and carpet were beige, and crayon drawings tacked to a bulletin board told me this internationally respected feather expert was a father.

Opening a manila envelope, I withdrew three smaller envelopes made of transparent plastic. Two contained the feathers collected from Jennifer Deighton's and Susan Story's homicides, while a third contained a slide of the gummy residue from Eddie Heath's wrists.

“This is the best one, it seems,” I said, pointing out the feather I had recovered from Jennifer Deighton's nightgown.

He took it out of its envelope and said, “This is down a breast or back feather. It's got a nice tuft on it. Good. The more feather you've got, the better.”

Using forceps, he stripped several of the branchlike projections or “barbs” from both sides of the shaft and, stationing himself at the stereoscopic microscope, placed them on a thin film of xylene that he had dropped on a slide. This served to separate the tiny structures, or float them out, and when he was satisfied that each barb was pristinely fanned, he touched a corner of green blotting paper to the xylene to absorb it. He added the mounting medium Flo-Texx, then a coverslip, and placed the slide under the comparison microscope, which was connected to a video camera.

“I'll start off by telling you that the feathers of all birds have basically the same structure,” he said. “You've got a central shaft, barbs, which in turn branch into hairlike barbules, and you've got a broadened base, at the top of which is a pore called the superior umbilicus. The barbs are the filaments that result in the feather's feathery appearance, and when they're magnified you'll find they're actually like minifeathers coming out of the shaft.”

He turned on the monitor. “Here's a barb.”

“It looks like a fern,” I said.

“In many instances, yes. Now we're going to magnify it some more so we can get a good look at the barbules, for it is the features of the barbules that allow for an identification. Specifically, what we're most interested in are the nodes.”

“Let me see if I've got this straight,” I said. “Nodes are features of barbules, barbules are features of barbs, barbs are features of feathers, and feathers are features of birds.”

“Right. And each family of birds has its own peculiar feather structure.”

What I saw on the monitor's screen looked, unremarkably, like a stick figure depiction of a weed or an insect leg. Lines were connected in segments by three dimensional triangular structures that Downey said were the nodes.

“It's the size, shape, number, and pigmentation of nodes and their placement along the barbule that are key,” he patiently explained. “For example, with starlike nodes you're dealing with pigeons, ring like nodes are chickens and turkeys, enlarged flanges with prenodal swelling are cuckoos. These” - he pointed to the screen - “are clearly triangular, so right away I know your feather is either duck or goose. Not that this should come as any great surprise. The typical origin of feathers collected in burglaries, rapes, and homicides are pillows, comforters, vests, jackets, gloves. And generally the filler in these items comprises chopped feathers and down from ducks and geese, and in cheap stuff, chickens.

“But we can definitely rule out chickens here. And I'm about to decide that your feather did not come from a goose, either.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, the distinction would be easy if we had a whole feather. Down is tough. But based on what I'm seeing here, there are, on average, just too few nodes. Plus; they aren't located throughout the barbule but are more distal, or located more toward the end of the barbule. And that's a characteristic of ducks.”

He opened a cabinet and slid out several drawers of slides.

“Let's see. I've got about sixty slides of ducks. To be on the safe side I'm going to run through all of them, eliminating as I go.”

One by one he placed slides under the comparison microscope, which is basically two compound microscopes combined into one binocular unit. On the video monitor was a circular field of light divided down the middle by a fine line, the known feather specimen on one side of the line and the one we hoped to identify on the other. Rapidly, we scanned mallard, Muscovy, harlequin, scoter, ruddy, and American widgeon, and then dozens more. Downey did not have to look long at any one of them to know that the duck we sought was being elusive.

“Am I just imagining it, or is this one more delicate than the others?” I said of the feather in question.

“You're not imagining it. It's more delicate, more streamlined. See how the triangular structures don't flare out quite as much?”

“Okay. Now that you've pointed it out.”

“And this is giving us an important hint about the bird. That's what's fascinating. Nature really does have a reason for things, and I'm suspicious that in this case the reason is insulation. The purpose of down is to trap air, and the finer the barbules, the more streamlined or tapered the nodes, and the more distal the location of the nodes, the more efficient the down is going to be at trapping air. When air's trapped or dead, it's like being in a small, insulated room with no ventilation. You're going to be warm.”

He placed another slide on the microscope's stage, and this time I could see that we were close. The barbules were delicate, the nodes tapered and distally located.

“What have we got?” I asked.

“I've saved the prime suspects for last.”

He looked pleased. “Sea ducks. And top in the lineup are the eiders. Let's bump the magnification up to four hundred.”

He switched the objective lens, adjusted the focus, and off we went through several more slides. “Not the king or the spectacle. And I don't think it's the stellar because of the brownish pigmentation at the base of the node. Your feather doesn't have that, see?”

“I see.”

“So we'll try the common eider. Okay. There's consistency in pigmentation,” he said, staring intensely at the screen. “And, let's see, an average of two nodes located distally along the barbules. Plus, the streamlining for extra good insulating quality - and that's important if you're swimming around in the Arctic Ocean. I think this is it, the Somateria mollissima, typically found in Iceland, Norway, Alaska, and the Siberian shores. I'll run another check with SEM, “ he added, referring to scanning electron microscopy.

“To scan for what?”

“Salt crystals.”

“Of course,” I said, fascinated. “Because eider ducks are saltwater birds.”

“Exactly. And interesting ones at that, a noteworthy example of exploitation. In Iceland and Norway, their breeding colonies are protected from predators and other disruptions so that people can collect the down with which the female lines her nest and covers her eggs. The down is then cleaned and sold to manufacturers.”

“Manufacturers of what?”

“Typically, sleeping bags and comforters.”

As he talked, he was mounting several downy barbs from the feather found inside Susan Story's car.

“Jennifer Deighton had nothing like that in her house,” I said. “Nothing filled with feathers at all.”

“Then we're probably dealing with a secondary or tertiary transfer in which the feather got transferred to the killer who in turn transferred it to his victim. You know, this is very interesting.”

The specimen was on the monitor now.

“Eider duck again,” I said.

“I think so. Let's try the slide. This is from the boy?”

“Yes,” I said. “From an adhesive residue on Eddie Heath's wrists.”

“I'll be damned.”

The microscopic debris showed up on the monitor as a fascinating variety of colors, shapes, fibers, and the familiar barbules and triangular nodes.

“Well, that puts a pretty big hole in my personal theory,” Downey said. “If we're talking about three homicides that occurred at different locations and at different times.”

“That's what we're talking about.”

“If just one of these feathers was eider duck, then I'd be tempted to consider the possibility that it was a contaminant. You know, you see these labels that say one hundred percent acrylic and it turns out to be ninety percent acrylic and ten percent nylon. Labels lie. If the run before your acrylic sweater, for example, was a lot of nylon jackets, then the very first sweaters that come off afterward will have nylon contaminants. As you run more sweaters through, the contaminant is dissipated.”

“In other words, “ I said, “if somebody is wearing a down-filled jacket or owns a comforter that got eider contaminants in it when it was manufactured, then the probability is almost nonexistent that this individual's jacket or comforter would be leaking only the eiderdown contaminants.”

“Precisely. So we'll assume the item in question is filled with pure eiderdown, and that is extremely curious. Usually what I'm going to see in cases that come through here are your Kmart-variety jackets, gloves, or comforters filled with chicken feathers or maybe goose. Eider is a specialty item, a very exclusive shop item. A vest, jacket, comforter, or sleeping bag filled with eiderdown is going to have very low leakage, be very well made - and prohibitively expensive.”

“Have you ever had eiderdown submitted as evidence before?”

“This is the first.”

“Why is it so valuable?”

“The insulating qualities I've already described. But aesthetic appeal also has a lot to do with it. The common eider's down is snow-white. Most down is dingy.”

“And if I purchased a specialty item filled with eiderdown, would I be aware that it's filled with this snow-white down or would the label simply say 'duck down'?’

“I'm quite sure you'd be aware of it,” he said. “The label would probably say something like 'one hundred percent eiderdown.’

There would have to be something that would justify the price.”

“Can you run a computer check on down distributors?”

“Sure. But to state the obvious, no distributor is going to be able to tell you the eiderdown you've collected is theirs, not without the accompanying garment or item. Unfortunately, a feather isn't enough.”

“I don't know,” I said. “It might be.”

By noon I had walked two blocks to where I had parked my car, and was inside with the heater blasting. I was so close to New Jersey Avenue that I felt like the tide being pulled by the moon. I fastened my seat belt, fiddled with the radio, and twice reached for the phone and changed my mind. It was crazy to even consider contacting Nicholas Grueman.

He won't be in anyway, I thought, reaching for the phone again and dialing.

“Grueman,” the voice said.

“This is Dr. Scarpetta.”

I raised my voice above the heater's fan.

“Well, hello. I was just reading about you the other day. You sound like you're calling from a car phone.”

“That's because I am. I happen to be in Washington.”

“I'm truly flattered that you would think of me while you're passing through my humble town.”

“There is nothing humble about your town, Mr. Grueman, and there is nothing social about this call. I thought you and I should discuss Ronnie Joe Waddell.”

“I see. How far are you from the Law Center?”

“Ten minutes.”

“I haven't eaten lunch and I don't suppose you have, either. Does it suit you if I have sandwiches sent in?”

“That would be fine,” I said.

The Law Center was located some thirty-five blocks from the university's main campus, and I remembered my dismay many years before when I realized that my education would not include walking the old, shaded streets of the Heights and attending classes in fine eighteenth-century brick buildings. Instead, I was to spend three long years in a brand-new facility devoid of charm in a noisy, frantic section of D.C. My disappointment, however, did not last long. There was a certain excitement, not to mention convenience, in studying law in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. But perhaps more significant was that.I had not been a student long when I met Mark.

What I remembered most about my early encounters with Mark James during the first semester of our first year was his physical effect on me. At first I found the very sight of him unsettling, though I had no idea why. Then, as we became acquainted, his presence sent adrenaline charging through my blood. My heart would gallop and I would suddenly find myself acutely aware of his every gesture, no matter how common. For weeks, our conversations were entranced as they stretched into the early-morning hours. Our words were not elements of speech as much as they were notes to some secret inevitable crescendo, which happened one night with the dazzling unpredictability and force of an accident.

Since those days, the Law Center's physical plant had significantly grown and changed. The Criminal Justice Clinic was on the fourth floor, and when I got off the elevator there was no one in sight and offices I passed looked unoccupied. It was, after all, still the holidays, and only the relentless or desperate would be inclined to work. The door to room 418 was open, the secretary's desk vacant, the door to Grueman's inner office ajar.

Not wanting to startle him, I called out his name as I approached his door. He did not answer.

“Hello, Mr. Grueman? Are you here?” I tried again as I pushed his door open farther.

His desk was inches deep in clutter that pooled around a computer, and case files and transcripts were stacked on the floor along the base of the crowded bookcases. Left of his desk was a table bearing a printer and a fax machine that was busily sending something to some- one. As I stood quietly staring around, the telephone rang three times and then stopped. Blinds were drawn in the window behind the desk, perhaps to reduce the glare on the computer screen, and leaning against the sill was a scarred and battered brown leather briefcase.

“Sorry about that.” A voice behind me nearly sent me out of my shoes. “I stepped out for just a moment and was hoping I'd get back before you arrived.”

Nicholas Grueman did not offer me his hand or a personal greeting of any kind. His preoccupation seemed to be returning to his chair, which he did very slowly and with the aid of a silver-topped cane.

“I would offer you coffee, but none is made when Evelyn isn't here,” he said, seating himself in his judge's chair. “But the deli that will be delivering lunch shortly is bringing something to drink. I hope you can wait, and please take a chair, Dr. Scarpetta. It makes me nervous when a woman is looking down on me.”

I pulled a chair closer to his desk and was amazed to realize that in the flesh Grueman was not the monster I recalled from my student days. For one thing, he seemed to have shrunk, though I suspected the more likely explanation was that I had inflated him to Mount Rushmore proportions in my imagination. I saw him now as a slight, white-haired man whose face had been carved by the years into a compelling caricature. He still wore bow ties and vests and smoked a pipe, and when he looked at me, his gray eyes were as capable of dissection as any scalpel. But I did not find them cold. They were simply unrevealing, as were mine most of the time.

“Why are you limping?” I boldly asked him.

“Gout. The disease of despots,” he said without a smile.

“It acts up from time to time, and please spare me any good advice or remedies. You doctors drive me to distraction with your unsolicited opinions on every subject from malfunctioning electric chairs to the food and drink I should exclude from my miserable diet.”

“The electric chair did not malfunction,” I said. “Not in the case I'm sure you're alluding to.”

“You cannot possibly know what I am alluding to, and it seems to me that during your brief tenure here I had to admonish you more than once about your great facility for making assumptions. I regret that you did not listen to me. You are still making assumptions, though in this instance your assumption was, in fact, correct.”

“Mr. Grueman, I am flattered that you remember me as a student, but I did not come here to reminisce about the wretched hours I spent in your classroom. Nor am I here to engage, again, in the mental martial arts you seem to thrive on. For the record, I will tell you that you have the distinction of being the most misogynistic and arrogant professor I encountered during my thirty-some years of formal education. And I must thank you for schooling me so well in the art of dealing with bastards, for the world is full of them and I must deal with them every day.”

“I'm sure you do deal with them every day, and I haven't decided yet whether you're good at it.”

“I'm not interested in your opinion on that subject. I would like you to tell me more about Ronnie Joe Waddell.”

“What would you like to know beyond the obvious fact that the ultimate outcome was incorrect? How would you like politics to determine whether you are put to death, Dr. Scarpetta? Why, just look at what's happening to you now. Isn't your recent bad press politically motivated, at least in part? Every party involved has his own agenda, something to gain from disparaging you publicly. It has nothing to do with fairness or truth. So just imagine what it would be like if these same people possessed the power to deprive you of your liberty or even of your life.

“Ronnie was torn to pieces by a system that is irrational and unfair. It made no difference what earlier precedents were applied or whether claims were addressed on direct or collateral review. It made no difference what issue I raised because in this instance in your lovely Commonwealth, habeas did not serve as a deterrent designed to ensure that state trial and appellate judges conscientiously sought to conduct their proceedings in a manner consistent with established constitutional principles. God forbid that there should have been the slightest interest in constitutional violations on furthering the evolution of our thinking in some area of the law. In the three years that I fought for Ronnie, I might as well have been dancing a jig.”

“What constitutional violations are you referring to?” I asked.

“How much time do you have? But let's begin with the prosecution's obvious use of peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner. Ronnie's rights under the equal protection clause were violated from hell to breakfast, and prosecutorial misconduct blatantly infringed his Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. I don't suppose you saw Ronnie's trial or even know much about it since it was more than nine years ago and you were not in Virginia. The local publicity was overwhelming, and yet there was no change of venue. The jury was comprised of eight women and four men. Six of the women and two of the men were white. The four black jurors were a car salesman, a bank teller, a nurse, and a college professor. The professions of the white jurors ranged from a retired railroad switchman who still called blacks 'niggers' to a rich housewife whose only exposure to blacks was when she watched the news and saw that another one of them had shot someone in the projects. The demographics of the jury made it impossible for Ronnie to be sentenced fairly.”

“And you're saying that such a constitutional impropriety or any other in Waddell's case was politically motivated? What possible political motivation could there have been for putting Ronnie Waddell to death?”

Grueman suddenly glanced toward the door. “Unless my ears deceive me, I believe lunch has arrived.”

I heard rapid footsteps and paper crinkle, then a voice called out, “Yo, Nick. You in here?”

“Come on in, Joe,” Grueman said without getting up from his desk.

An energetic young black man in blue jeans and tennis shoes appeared and placed two bags in front of Grueman.

“This one's got the drinks, and in here we got two sailor sandwiches, potato salad, and pickles. That's fifteen-forty.”

“Keep the change. And look, Joe, I appreciate it. Don't they ever give you a vacation?”

“People don't quit eating, man. Gotta run.”

Grueman distributed the food and napkins while I desperately tried to figure out what to do. I was finding myself increasingly swayed by his demeanor and words, for there was nothing shifty about him, nothing that struck me as condescending or insincere.

“What political motivation?” I asked him again as I unwrapped my sandwich.

He popped open a ginger ale and removed the top from his container of potato salad.

“Several weeks ago I thought I might just get an answer to that question,” he said. “But then the person who could have helped me was suddenly found dead inside her car. And I'm quite certain you know who I'm talking about, Dr. Scarpetta. Jennifer Deighton is one of your cases, and although it has yet to be publicly stated that her death is a suicide, that is what one has been led to believe. I find the timing of her death rather remarkable, if not chilling.”

“Am I to understand that you knew Jennifer Deighton?” I asked as blandly as possible.

“Yes and no. I'd never met her, and our telephone conversations, what few we had, were very brief. You see, I never contacted her until after Ronnie was dead.”

“From which I am also to understand that she knew Waddell.”

Grueman took a bite of his sandwich and reached for his ginger ale. “She and Ronnie definitely knew each other,” he said. “As you must know, Miss Deighton had a horoscope service, was into parapsychology and that sort of thing. Well, eight years ago, when Ronnie was on death row in Mecklenburg, he happened to see an advertisement for her services in some magazine. He wrote to her, initially in hopes that she could look into her crystal ball, so to speak, and tell him his future. Specifically, I think he wanted to know if he was going to die in the electric chair, and this is not an uncommon phenomenon - inmates writing psychics, palm readers, and asking about their futures, or contacting the clergy and asking for prayers. What was a little more unusual in Ronnie's case was that he and Miss Deighton apparently began an intimate correspondence that lasted until several months before his death. Then her letters to him suddenly stopped.”

“Are you considering that her letters to him might have been intercepted?”

“There is no question about that. When I talked to Jennifer Deighton on the telephone, she claimed that she had continued to write to Ronnie. She also said that she had received no letters from him over the past several months, and I'm very suspicious that this is because his letters were intercepted as well.”

“Why did you wait to contact her until after the execution?” I puzzled.

“I did not know about her before then. Ronnie said nothing about her to me until our last conversation, which was, perhaps, the strangest conversation I've ever had with any inmate I've represented.”

Grueman toyed with his sandwich and then pushed it away from him. He reached for his pipe. “I'm not sure if you're aware of this, Dr. Scarpetta, but Ronnie quit on me.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“The last time I talked with Ronnie was one week before he was to be transported from Mecklenburg to Richmond. At that time, he stated that he knew he was going to be executed and that nothing I did was going to make a difference. He said that what was going to happen to him had been set into motion since the beginning and he had accepted the inevitability of his death. He said that he was looking foward to dying and preferred that I cease pursuing federal habeas corpus relief. Then he requested that I not call him or come see him again.”

“But he didn't fire you.”

Grueman shot flame into the bowl of his briar pipe and sucked on the stem. “No, he did not. He simply refused to see me or talk to me on the phone.”

“It would seem that this alone would have warranted a stay of execution pending a competency determination,” I said.

“I tried that. I tried citing everything from Hays versus Murphy to the Lord's Prayer. The court rendered the brilliant decision that Ronnie had not asked to be executed. He'd simply stated that he looked forward to death, and the petition was denied.”

“If you had no contact with Waddell in the several weeks before his execution, then how did you learn of Jennifer Deighton?”

“During my last conversation with Ronnie he made three last requests of me. The first was that I see to it that a meditation he had written was published in the newspaper days before his death. He gave this to me and I worked it out with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.”

“I read it,” I said.

“His second request - and I quote - was 'Don't let nothing happen to my friend.’

And I asked him what friend he referred to, and he said, and again I quote, 'If you're a good man, look out for her. She never hurt no one.’

He gave me her name and asked me not to contact her until after his death. Then I was to call and tell her how much she had meant to him. Well, of course I did not abide by that wish to the letter. I tried to contact her immediately because I knew I was losing Ronnie and I felt that something was terribly wrong. My hope was that this friend might be able to help. If they had corresponded with each other, for example, then maybe she could enlighten me.”

“And did you reach her?”

I asked, recalling Marino's telling me that Jennifer Deighton had been in Florida for two weeks around Thanksgiving.

“No one ever answered the phone,” Grueman replied. “I tried on and off for several weeks, and then, to be frank, because of timing and health fortuities relating to the pace of litigation, the holidays, and a god-awful ambush of gout, my attention was diverted. I did not think to call Jennifer Deighton again until Ronnie was dead and I needed to contact her and convey, per Ronnie's request, that she had meant a lot to him, et cetera.”

“When you had attempted to reach her earlier,” I said, “did you leave messages on her answering machine?”

“It wasn't turned on. Which makes sense, in retrospect. She didn't need to return from vacation to face five hundred messages from people who can't make a decision until their horoscopes have been read. And if she left a message on her machine saying that she was out of town for two weeks, that would have been a perfect invitation for burglars.”

“Then what happened when you finally reached her?”

“That was when she divulged that they had corresponded for eight years and that they loved each other. She claimed that the truth would never be known. I asked her what she meant but she would not tell me and got off the phone. Finally, I wrote her a letter imploring her to speak with me.”

“When did you write this letter?” I asked.

“Let me see. The day after the execution. I suppose that would have been December fourteenth.”

“And did she respond?”

“She did, by fax, interestingly enough. I did not know she had a fax machine, but my fax number was on my stationery. I have a copy of her fax if you would like to see it.”

He shuffled through thick file folders and other paperwork on his desk. Finding the file he was looking for, he flipped through it and withdrew the fax, which I recognized instantly. “Yes, I'll cooperate,” it read, “but it's too late, too late, too late. Better you should come here. This is all so wrong!”

I wondered how Grueman would react if he knew that her communication with him had been recreated through image enhancement in Neils Vander's laboratory.

“Do you know what she meant? What was too late and what was so wrong?” I asked.

“Obviously, it was too late to do anything to stop Ronnie's execution since that had already occurred four days earlier. I'm not certain what she thought was so wrong, Dr. Scarpetta. You see, I have sensed for quite some time that there was something malignant about Ronnie's case. He and I never developed much of a rapport and that alone is odd. Generally, you get very close. I'm the only advocate in a system that wants you dead the only one working for you in a system that doesn't work for you. But Ronnie was so aloof with his first attorney that this individual decided the case was hope- less and quit. Later, when I took on the case, Ronnie was just as distant. It was extraordinarily frustrating. Just when I would think he was beginning to trust me, a wall would go up. He would suddenly retreat into silence and literally begin to perspire.”

“Did he seem frightened?”

“Frightened, depressed, sometimes angry.”

“Are you suggesting that there was some conspiracy involved in his case and he might have told his friend about it, perhaps in one of his earlier letters to her?”

“I don't know what Jenny Deighton knew, but I suspect she knew something.”

“Did Waddell refer to her as 'Jenny'?”

Grueman reached for his lighter again. “Yes.”

“Did he ever mention to you a novel called Paris Trout?”

“That's interesting” - he looked surprised. “I haven't thought of this in quite sometime, but during one of my early sessions with Ronnie several years ago, we talked about books and his poetry. He liked to read, and suggested I should read Paris Trout. I told him I had already read the novel, but was curious as to why he would recommend it. He said, very quietly, 'Because that's the way it works, Mr. Grueman. And there's no way you're gonna change nothing.’

At the time I interpreted this to mean that he was a southern black pitted against the white man's system, and no federal habeas remedy or any other magic I might invoke during the judicial review process was going to alter his fate.”

“Is this still your interpretation?”

He stared thoughtfully through a cloud of fragrant smoke. “I believe so. Why are you interested in Ronnie's recommended reading list?”

He met my eyes.

“Jennifer Deighton had a copy of Paris Trout by her bed. Inside it was a poem that I suspect Waddell wrote for her. It's not important. I was just curious.”

“But it is important or you wouldn't have inquired about it. What you're contemplating is that perhaps Ronnie recommended the novel to her for the same reason that he recommended it to me. The story, in his mind, was somehow his story. And that leads us back to the question of how much he had divulged to Miss Deighton. In other words, what secret of his did she carry with her to the grave?”

“What do you think it was, Mr. Grueman?”

“I think a very nasty indiscretion has been covered up, and for some reason Ronnie was privy to it. Maybe this relates to what goes on behind bars, that is, corruption within the prison system. I don't know but I wish I did.”

“But why hide anything when you're facing death? Why not just go ahead and take your chances and talk?”

“That would be the rational thing to do, now, wouldn't it? And now that I have so patiently and generously answered your probing questions, Dr. Scarpetta, perhaps you can better understand why I have been more than a little concerned about any abuse Ronnie may have received prior to his execution. You can understand better, perhaps, my passionate opposition to capital punishment, which is cruel and unusual. You don't have to have bruises or abrasions or bleed from your nose to make it so.”

“There was no evidence of physical abuse,” I said. “Nor did we find drugs present. You have gotten my report.”

“You are being evasive,” Grueman said, knocking tobacco out of his pipe. “You are here today because you want something from me. I have given you a lot through a dialogue that I did not have to engage in. But I have been willing because I am forever in pursuit of fairness and truth, despite how I may appear to you. And there is another reason. A former student of mine is in trouble.”

“If you are referring to me, then let me remind you of your own dictum. Don't make assumptions.”

“I don't believe I am.”

“Then I must convey acute curiosity over this sudden charitable attitude you're allegedly displaying toward a former student. In fact, Mr. Grueman, the word charity has never entered my mind in connection with you.”

“Perhaps, then, you don't know the true meaning of the word. An act or feeling of goodwill, giving alms to the needy. Charity is giving to someone what he needs versus what you want to give him. I have always given you what you need. I gave you what you needed while you were my student, and I'm giving you what you need today, though the acts are expressed very differently because the needs are very different.

“Now I am an old man, Dr. Scarpetta, and perhaps you think I don't remember much about your days at Georgetown. But you might be surprised to hear that I remember you vividly because you were one of the most promising students I ever taught. What you did not need from me was strokes and applause. The danger for you was not that you would lose faith in yourself and your excellent mind but that you would lose yourself, period. Do you think when you looked exhausted and distracted in my class that I did not know the reason? Do you think I was unaware of your complete preoccupation with Mark James, who was mediocre by your standards, by the way? And if I appeared angry with you and very hard on you, it was because I wanted to get your attention. I wanted you to get mad. I wanted you to feel alive in the law instead of feeling only in love. I feared you would throw away a magnificent opportunity because your hormones and emotions were in overdrive. You see, we wake up one day to regret such decisions. We wake up in an empty bed with an empty day stretching before us and nothing to look forward to but empty weeks, months, and years. I was determined that you would not waste your gifts and give away your power.”

I stared at him in astonishment as my face began to burn.

“I have never been sincere in my insults and lack of chivalry toward you,” he went on with the same quiet intensity and precision that made him frightening in the courtroom. “These are tactics. We lawyers are famous for our tactics. They are the slices and spins we put on the ball, the angles and speed we use to bring about a certain necessary effect. At the foundation of all that I am is a sincere and passionate desire to make my students tough and pray that they make a difference in this botched-up world we live in. And I feel no disappointment in you. You are, perhaps, one of my brightest stars.”

“Why are you saying all this to me?” I asked.

“Because at this time in your life, you need to know it. You are in trouble, as I've already stated. You are simply too proud to admit it.”

I was silent, my thoughts engaged in a fierce debate.

“I will help you if you will allow it.”

If he was telling me the truth, then it was vital that I respond in kind. I glanced toward his open door and imagined how easy it would be for anyone to walk in here. I imagined how easy it would be for someone to confront him as he hobbled to his car.

“If these incriminating stories continue to be printed in the newspaper, for example, it would behoove you to develop a few strategies -”

I interrupted him. “Mr. Grueman, when was the last time you saw Ronnie Joe Waddell?”

He paused and stared up at the ceiling. “The last time I was in his physical presence would have been at least a year ago. Typically, most of our conversations were over the phone. I would have been with him in the end had he permitted it, as I've already mentioned.”

“Then you never saw him or spoke with him when he was supposedly at Spring Street awaiting execution.”

“Supposedly? That's a curious choice of words, Dr. Scarpetta.”

“We can't prove it was Waddell who was executed the night of December thirteenth.”

“Certainly you're not serious.” He looked amazed.

I explained all that had transpired, including that Jennifer Deighton was a homicide and Waddell's fingerprint had turned up on a dining room chair inside her home. I told him about Eddie Heath and Susan Story, and the evidence that someone had tampered with AFIS. When I was finished, Grueman was sitting very still, his eyes riveted on me.

“My Lord,” he muttered.

“Your letter to Jennifer Deighton never turned up,” I went on. “The police found neither that nor her original fax to you when they searched her house. Maybe someone took them. Maybe her killer burned them in her fireplace the night of her death. Or maybe she disposed of them herself because she was afraid. I do believe she was killed because of something she knew.”

“And this would be why Susan Story was killed, too? Because she knew something?”

“Certainly that's possible,” I said. “My point is that so far two people linked to Ronnie Waddell have been murdered. In terms of someone who might know a lot about Waddell, you would be considered high on the list.”

“So you think I may be next,” he said with a wry smile. “You know, perhaps my biggest grievance against the Almighty is that the difference between life and death should so often turn on timing. I consider myself forewarned, Dr. Scarpetta. But I am not foolish enough to think that if someone intends to shoot me I can successfully elude him.”

“You could at least try,” I said. “You could at least take precautions.”

“And I shall.”

“Maybe you and your wife could go on a vacation, get out of town for a while.”

“Beverly has been dead for three years,” he said.

“I'm very sorry, Mr. Grueman.”

“She had not been well for many years - in fact, not for most of the years we were together. Now that I have no one to depend on me, I have given myself up to my proclivities. I am an incurable workaholic who wants to change the world.”

“I suspect that if anyone could come close to changing it, you could.”

“That is an opinion not based on any sort of fact, but I appreciate it nonetheless. And I also want to express to you my great sadness over Mark's death. I did not know him well when he was here, but he seemed to be a decent-enough fellow.”

“Thank you.”

I got up and put on my coat. It took me a moment to find my car keys.

He got up, too. “What do we do next, Dr. Scarpetta?”

“I don't suppose you have any letters or other items from Ronnie Waddell that might be worth processing for his latent prints?”

“I have no letters, and any documents that he might have signed would have been handled by a number of people. You're welcome to try.”

“I'll let you know if we have no other alternative. But there is one final thing I've been meaning to ask.”

We paused in the doorway. Grueman was leaning on his cane. “You mentioned that during your last conversation with Waddell, he made three last requests. One was to publish his meditation, another to call Jennifer Deighton. What was the third?”

“He wanted me to invite Norring to the execution.”

“And did you?”

“Well, of course,” Grueman said. “And your fine governor didn't even have the manners to RSVP.”