Cruel and Unusual

3

That night I built a fire and ate vegetable soup in front of it as freezing rain mixed with snow. I had switched off lamps and drawn draperies back from the sliding glass doors. Grass was frosted white, rhododendron leaves curled tight, winter-bare trees backlit by the moon.

The day had drained me, as if a greedy, dark force had sucked the light right out of my being. I felt the invasive hands of a prison guard named Helen, and smelled the stale stench of hovels that once had housed remorseless, hateful men. I remembered holding slides up to lamplight in a hotel bar in New Orleans at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences' annual meeting. Robyn Naismith's homicide was then unsolved, and to discuss what had been done to her as Mardi Gras revelers loudly drifted past had somehow seemed ghastly.

She had been beaten and bullied, and stabbed to death, it was believed, in her living room. But it was Waddell's postmortem acts that had shocked people most, his uncommon and creepy ritual. After she was dead, he undressed her. If he raped her, there was no evidence of it. His preference, it seemed, was to bite and repeatedly penetrate the fleshier parts of her body with a knife. When her friend from work stopped by to check on her, she found Robyn's battered body propped against the television, head drooping forward, arms by her sides, legs straight out, and clothing piled nearby. She looked like a bloody, life-size doll returned to its place after a session of make-believe and play that had turned into a horror.

The court testimony of a psychiatrist was that after Waddell had murdered her, he was overcome by remorse and had sat talking to her body for perhaps hours. A forensic psychologist for the Commonwealth speculated quite the opposite, that Waddell knew Robyn was a television personality and his act of propping her body against the television set was symbolic. He was watching her on TV again and fantasizing. He was returning her to the medium that had brought about their introduction, and this, of course, implied premeditation. The nuances and twists in the endless analyses got only more complicated with time.

The grotesque display of that twenty-seven-Year-old anchorwoman's body was Waddell's special signature. Now a little boy was dead ten years later and someone had signed his work - on the eve of Waddell's execution - the same way.

I made coffee, poured it into a thermos, and carried it into my study. Sitting at my desk, I booted up my computer and dialed into the one downtown. I had yet to see the printout of the search Margaret had conducted for me, though I suspected it was one of the reports in the depressingly large stack of paperwork that had been in my box late Friday afternoon. The output file, however, would still be on the hard disk.

At the UNIX log-in I typed my user name and password and was greeted by the flashing word mail. Margaret, my computer analyst, had sent me a message.

“Check flesh file,” it read “That's really awful,” I muttered, as if Margaret could hear.

Changing to the directory called Chief, where Margaret routinely directed output and copied files I had requested, I brought up the file she had named Flesh.

It was quite large because Margaret had selected from all manners of death and then merged the data with what she had generated from the Trauma Registry. Unsurprisingly, most of the cases the computer had picked up were accidents in which limbs and tissue had been lost in vehicular crashes and misadventures with machines. Four cases were homicides in which the bodies bore bite marks. Two of those victims had been stabbed, the other two strangled. One of the victims was an adult male, two were adult females, and one was a female only six years old. I jotted down case numbers and ICD-9 codes.

Next I began scanning screen after screen of the Trauma Registry's records of victims who had survived long enough to be admitted to a hospital. I expected the information to be a problem, and it was. Hospitals released patient data only after it had been as sterilized and depersonalized as operating rooms. For purposes of confidentiality, names. Social Security numbers, and other identifiers were stripped away. There was no common link as the person traveled through the paperwork labyrinth of rescue squads, emergency rooms, various police departments, and other agencies. The sorry end of the story was that data about a victim might reside in six different agency data bases and never be matched, especially if there had been any entry errors along the way. It was possible, therefore, for me to discover a case that aroused my interest without having much hope of figuring out who the patient was or if he or she had eventually died.

Making a note of Trauma Registry records that might prove interesting, I exited the file. Finally, I ran a list command to see what old data reports, memos, or notes in my directory I could remove to free up space on the hard disk. That was when I spotted a file I did not understand.

The name of it was tty07. It was only sixteen bytes in size and the date and time were December 16, this past Thursday, at 4:26 in the afternoon. The file's contents was one alarming sentence:

I can't find it.

Reaching for the phone, I started to call Margaret at home and then stopped. The directory Chief and its files were secure. Though anyone could change to my directory, unless he logged in with my user name and password, he should not be able to list the files in Chief or read them. Margaret should be the only person besides me who knew my password. If she had gone into my directory, what was it she could not find and who was she saying this to? Margaret wouldn't, I thought, staring intensely at that one brief sentence on the screen.

Yet I was unsure, and I thought of my niece. Perhaps Lucy knew UNDO. I glanced at my watch. It was past eight on a Saturday night and in a way I was going to be heartbroken if I found Lucy at home. She should be out on a date or with friends. She wasn't.

“Hi, Aunt Kay.” She sounded surprised, reminding me that I had not called in a while.

“How's my favorite niece?”

“I'm your only niece. I'm fine.”

“What are you doing at home on a Saturday night?” I asked.

“Finishing a term paper. What are you doing at home on a Saturday night?”

For an instant, I did not know what to say. My seventeen-year-old niece was more adept at putting me in my place than anyone I knew.

“I'm mulling over a computer problem,” I finally said.

“Then you've certainty called the right department,” said Lucy, who was not given to fits of modesty. “Hold on. Let me move these books and stuff out of the way so I can get to my keyboard.”

“It's not a PC problem,” I said. “I don't guess you know anything about the operating system called UNIX, do you?”

'I wouldn't call UNIX an operating system, Aunt Kay. It's like calling it the weather when it's really the environment, which is comprised of the weather and all the elements and the edifices. Are you using A-T an' T?”

“Good God, Lucy. I don't know.”

“Well, what are you running it on?”

“An NCR mini.` “Then it's A-T an' T.”

“I think someone might have broken security,” I said.

“It happens. But what makes you think it?”

“I found a strange file in my directory, Lucy. My directory and its files are secure - you shouldn't be able to read anything unless you have my password.”

“Wrong. If you have root privileges, you're the super user and can do anything you want and read anything you want.”

“My computer analyst is the only super user.”

“That may be true. But there may be a number of users who have root privileges, users you don't even know about that came with the software. We can check that easily, but first tell me about the strange file. What's it called and what's in it?”

“It's called t-t-y-oh-seven and there's a sentence in it that reads: 'I can't find it.'

“I heard keys clicking.

“What are you doing?”

I asked.

“Making notes as we talk. Okay. Let's start with the obvious. A big clue is the file's name, t-t-y-oh-seven. That's a device. In other words, t-t-y-oh-seven is probably somebody's terminal in your office. It's possible it could be a printer, but my guess is that whoever was in your directory decided to send a note to the device called t-t-y-oh-seven. But this person screwed up and instead of sending a note, he created a file.”

“When you write a note, aren't you creating a file?” I puzzled.

“Not if you're just sending keystrokes.”

“How?”

“Easy. Are you in UNIX now?”

“Yes.”

“Type cat redirect t-t-y-q -” “Wait a minute.”

“And don't worry about the slash-dev ' “Lucy, slow down.”

“We're deliberately leaving out the dev directory, which is what I'm betting this person did.”

“What comes after cat?”

“Okay. Cat redirect and the device “

“Please slow down.”

“You should have a four-eighty-six chip in that thing, Aunt Kay. Why's it so slow?”

“It's not the damn chip that's slow!”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Lucy said sincerely. “I forgot.”

Forgot what? “Back to the problem,” she went on. “I'm assuming you don't have a device called t-t-y-q, by the way. Where are you?”

“I'm still on cat,” I said, frustrated. “Then it's redirect… Damn. That's the caret pointing right?”

“Yes. Now hit return and your cursor will be bumped down to the next line, which is blank. Then you type the message you want echoed to t-t-y-q's screen.”

“See Spot run,” I typed.

“Hit return and then do a control C,” Lucy said. “Now you can do an ls minus one and pipe it to p-g and you'll see your file.”

I simply typed -Is- and caught a flash of something flying by.

“Here's what I think happened,” Lucy resumed. “Someone was in your directory - and we'll get to that in a minute. Maybe they were looking for something in your files and couldn't find whatever it was. So this person sent a message, or tried to, to the device called t-t-y-oh-seven. Only he was in a hurry, and instead of typing cat redirect slash d-e-v slash t-t-y-oh-seven, he left out the dev directory and typed cat redirect t-t-y-oh-seven. So the keystrokes weren't echoed on t-t-y-oh-seven's screen at all. In other words, instead of sending a message to t-t-y-oh-seven, this person unwittingly created a file called t-t-y-oh-seven.”

“If the person had typed in the proper command and sent the keystrokes, would the message have been saved? “ I asked.

“No. The keystrokes would have appeared on t-t-yo-h-seven's screen, and would have stayed there until the user cleared it. But you would have seen no evidence of this in your directory or anywhere else. There wouldn't be a file.”

“Meaning, we don't know how many times somebody might have sent a message from my directory, saying it was-done correctly.”

“That's right.”

“How could someone have been able to read anything in my directory?” I went back to that basic question.

“You're sure no one else might have your password?”

“No one but Margaret.”

“She's your computer analyst?”

“That's right.”

“She wouldn't have given it to anyone?”

“I can't imagine that she would,” I said.

“Okay. You could get in without the password if you have root privileges,” Lucy said. “That's the next thing we'll check. Change to the etc directory and vi the file called Group and look for root group - that's r-o-o-t-g-r-p. See which users are listed after it.”

I began to type.

“What do you see?”

“I'm not there yet,” I said, unable to keep the impatience out of my voice.

She repeated her instructions slowly.

“I see three log-in names in the root group,” I said.

“Good. Write them down. Then colon, q, bang, and you're out of Group.”

“Bang?”

I asked, mystified.

“An exclamation point. Now you've got to vi the password file - that's p-a-s-s-w-d - and see if any of those log-ins with root privileges maybe don't have a password.”

“Lucy.” I took my hands off the keyboard.

“It's easy to tell because in the second field you'll see the encrypted form of the user's password, if he has a password. If there's nothing in the second field except two colons, then he's got no password.”

“Lucy.”

“I'm sorry, Aunt Kay. Am I going too fast again?”

“I'm not a UNDO programmer. You might as well be speaking Swahili.”

“You could learn. UNIX is really fun.”

“Thank you, but my problem is I don't have time to learn right now. Someone broke into my directory. I keep very confidential documents and data reports in there. Not to mention, if someone is reading my private files, what else is he looking at and who is doing it and why?”

“The who part is easy unless the violator is dialing in by modem from the outside.”

“But the note was sent to someone in my office - to a device in my office.”

“That doesn't mean that an insider didn't get someone from the outside to break in, Aunt Kay. Maybe the person snooping doesn't know anything about UNIX and needed help to break into your directory, so they got a programmer from the outside.”

“This is serious,” I said.

“It could be. If nothing else, it sounds to me like your system isn't very secure.”

“When's your term paper due?” I asked.

“After the holidays.”

“Are you finished?”

“Almost.”

“When does Christmas vacation start?”

“It starts Monday.”

“How would you like to come up here for a few days and help me out with this?” I asked.

“You're kidding.”

“I'm very serious. But don't expect much. I generally don't bother with much in the way of decorations. A few poinsettias and candles in the windows. Now, I will cook.”

“No tree?”

“Is that a problem?”

“I guess not. Is it snowing?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“I've never seen snow. Not in person.”

“You'd better let me talk to your mother,” I said.

Dorothy, my only sibling, was overly solicitous when she got on the phone several minutes later.

“Are you still working so hard? Kay. You work harder than anyone I've ever met. People are so impressed when I tell them we're sisters. What's the weather like in Richmond?”

“There's a good chance we'll have a white Christmas.”

“How special. Lucy ought to see a white Christmas at least once in her life. I've never seen one. Well, I take that back. There was the Christmas I went skiing out west with Bradley.”

I could not remember who Bradley was. My younger sister's boyfriends and husbands were an endless parade I had stopped watching years ago.

“I'd very much like Lucy to spend Christmas with me,” I said. “Would that be possible?”

“You can't come to Miami?”

“No, Dorothy. Not this year. I'm in the middle of several very difficult cases and have court scheduled virtually up to Christmas Eve.”

“I can't imagine a Christmas without Lucy,” she said with great reluctance.

“You've had Christmas without her before. When you went skiing out west with Bradley, for example.”

“True. But it was hard,” she said, nonplussed. “And every time we've spent a holiday apart, I've vowed to never do it again.”

“I understand. Maybe another time,” I said, sick to death of my sister's games. I knew she couldn't get Lucy out the door fast enough “Actually, I'm on deadline for this newest book and will be spending most of the holiday in front of my computer anyway,” she reconsidered quickly. “Maybe Lucy would be better off with you. I won't be much fun. Did I tell you that I now have a Hollywood agent? He's fantastic and knows everybody who's somebody out there. He's negotiating a contract with Disney.”

“That's great. I'm sure your books will make terrific movies.”

Dorothy wrote excellent children's books and had won several prestigious awards. She was simply a failure as a human being.

“Mother's here,” my sister said. “She wants to have a word with you. Now listen, it was so good to talk to you. We just don't do it enough. Make sure Lucy eats something besides salads, and I warn you that she'll exercise until it drives you mad. I worry that she's going to start looking masculine.”

Before I could say anything; my mother was on the line.

“Why can't you come down here, Katie? It's sunny and you should see the grapefruit.”

“I can't do it, Mother. I'm really sorry.”

“And now Lucy won't be here, either? Is that what I heard? What am I supposed to do, eat a turkey by myself?”

“Dorothy will be there.”

“What? Are you kidding? She'll be with Fred. I can't stand him.”

Dorothy had gotten divorced again last summer. I didn't ask who Fred was.

“I think he's Iranian or something. He'll squeeze a penny until it screams and has hair in his ears. I know he's not Catholic, and Dorothy never takes Lucy to church these days. You ask me, that child's going to hell in a hand basket.”

“Mother, they can hear you.”

“No they can't. I'm in the kitchen by myself staring at a sink full of dirty dishes that I just know Dorothy expects me to do while I'm here. It's just like when she comes to my house, because she hasn't done a thing about dinner and is hoping I'll cook. Does she ever offer to bring anything? Does she care that I'm an old woman and practically a cripple? Maybe you can talk some sense into Lucy.”

“In what way is Lucy lacking sense?” I asked.

“She doesn't have any friends except this one girl you have to wonder about. You should see Lucy's bedroom. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie with all these computers and printers and pieces and parts. It's not normal for a teenage girl to live inside her brain all the time like that and not get out with kids her own age. I worry about her just like I used to worry about you.”

“I turned out all right,” I said.

“Well, you spent far too much time with science books, Katie. You saw what it did to your marriage.”

“Mother, I'd like Lucy to fly here tomorrow, if possible. I'll make the reservations from my end and take care of the ticket. Make sure she packs her warmest clothes.

Anything she doesn't have, such as a winter coat, we can find here.”

“She could probably borrow your clothes. When was the last time you saw her? Last Christmas?”

“I guess it was that long ago.”

“Well, let me tell you. She's gotten bosoms since then. And the way she dresses? And did she bother to ask her grandmother's advice before cutting off her beautiful hair? No. Why should she bother telling me that-”

“I've got to call the airlines.”

“I wish you were coming here. We could all be together.”

Her voice was getting funny. My mother was about to cry.

“I wish I could, too,” I said.

Late Sunday morning I drove to the airport along dark, wet roads running through a dazzling world of glass. Ice loosened by the sun slipped from telephone lines, roofs, and trees, shattering to the ground like crystal missiles dropped from the sky. The weather report called for another storm, and I was deeply pleased, despite the inconvenience. I wanted quiet time in front of, the fire with my niece. Lucy was growing up.

It did not seem so long ago that she was born. I would never forget her wide, unblinking eyes following my every move in her mother's house, or her bewildering fits of petulance and grief when I failed her in some small way. Lucy's open adoration touched my heart as profoundly as it frightened me. She had caused me to experience a depth of feeling I had not known before. Talking my way past Security, I waited at the gate, eagerly searching passengers emerging from the boarding bridge. I was looking for a pudgy teenager with long, irk red hair and braces when a striking young woman met my eyes and grinned.

“Lucy, “ I exclaimed, hugging her. “My God. I almost didn't recognize you.”

Her hair was short and deliberately messy, accentuating dear green eyes and good bones I did not know she had. There was not so much as a hint of metal in her mouth, and her thick glasses had been replaced by weightless tortoise-shell frames that gave her the look of a seriously pretty Harvard scholar. But it was the change in her body that astonished me most, for since I had seen - her last she had been transformed from a chunky adolescent into a lean, leggy athlete dressed in snug, faded jeans several inches too short, a white blouse, a woven red leather belt, loafers, and no socks. She carried a book satchel, and I caught the sparkle of a delicate gold ankle bracelet. I was fairly certain she was wearing neither makeup nor bra.

“Where's your coat?” I asked as we headed to Baggage.

“It was eighty degrees when I left Miami this morning,” “You'll freeze walking out to the car.”

“It's physically impossible for me to freeze while walking to your car unless you're parked in Chicago.”

“Perhaps you have a sweater in your suitcase?”

“You ever notice that you talk to me the same way Grans talks to you? By the way, she thinks I look like a 'pet rocker.' That's her malapropism for the month. It's what you get when you cross a pet rock with a punk rocker.”

“I've got a couple of ski jackets, corduroys, hats, gloves. You can borrow anything you wish.”

She slipped her arm in mine and staffed my hair. “You're still not smoking.”

“I'm still not smoking and I hate being reminded that I'm still not smoking because then I think about smoking.”

“You look better and don't stink like cigarettes. And you haven't gotten fat. Geez, this is a dinky airport,” said Lucy, whose computer brain had formatting errors in the diplomacy sectors. “Why do they call it Richmond International?”

“Because it has flights to Miami.”

“Why doesn't Grans ever come see you?”

“She doesn't like to travel and refuses to fly.”

“It's safer than driving. Her hip is really getting bad, Aunt Kay.”

“I know. I'm going to leave you to get your bags so I can pull the car in front,” I said when we got to Baggage. “But first let's see which carousel it is.”

“There are only three carousels. I bet I can figure it out.”

I left her for the bright, cold air, grateful for a moment alone to think. The changes in my niece had thrown me off guard and I was suddenly more unsure than ever how to treat her. Lucy had never been easy. From day one she had been a prodigious adult intellect ruled by infantile emotions, a volatility accidentally given form when her mother had married Armando. My only advantage had been size and age. Now Lucy was as tall as I was and spoke with the low, calm voice of an equal. She was not going to run to her room and slam the door. She would no longer end a disagreement by screaming that she hated me or was glad I was not her mother. I imagined moods I could not anticipate and arguments I could not win. I had visions of her coolly leaving the house and driving off in my car.

We talked little during the drive, for Lucy seemed fascinated by the winter weather. The world was melting like an ice sculpture as another cold front appeared on the horizon in an ominous band of gray. When we turned into the neighborhood where I had moved since she had visited last, she stared out at expensive homes and lawns, at colonial Christmas decorations and brick sidewalks. A man dressed like an Eskimo was out walking his old, overweight dog, and a black Jaguar gray with road salt sprayed water as it slowly floated past.

“It's Sunday. Where are the children, or aren't there any?” Lucy said as if the observation incriminated me in some way.

“There are a few.” I turned on my street.

“No bikes in the yards, no sleds or tree houses. Doesn't anybody ever go outside?”

“This is a very quiet neighborhood.”

“Is that why you chose it?”

“In part. It's also quite safe, and hopefully buying a home here will prove to be a good investment.”

“Private security?”

“Yes,” I said as my uneasiness grew.

She continued staring out at the large homes flowing past. “I bet you can go inside and shut the door and never hear from anyone never see anyone outside, either, unless they're walking their dog. But you don't have a dog. How many trick-or-treaters did you have on Halloween?”

“Halloween was quiet,” I said evasively.

In truth, my doorbell had rung only once, when I was working in my study. I could see in my video monitor the four trick-or-treaters on my porch, and picking up the handset, I started to tell them that I would be right there when I overheard what they were saying to each other.

“No, there isn't a dead body in there,” whispered the tiny UVA cheerleader.

“Yes, there is,” said Spiderman. “She's on TV all the time because she cuts dead people up and puts them in jars. Dad told me.”

I parked inside the garage and said to Lucy, “We'll get you settled in your room and the first order of business after that is for me to build a fire and make a pot of hot chocolate. Then we'll think about lunch.”

“I don't drink hot chocolate. Do you have an espresso maker?”

“Indeed I do.”

“That would be perfect, especially if you have decaf French roast. Do you know your neighbors?”

“I know who they are. Here, let me get that bag and you take this one so I can unlock the door and deactivate the alarm. Lord, this is heavy.”

“Grans insisted I bring grapefruit. They're pretty good, but full of seeds.”

Lucy looked around as she stepped inside my house. “Wow. Skylights. What do you call this style of architecture, besides rich?”

Maybe her disposition would self-correct if I pretended not to notice.

“The guest bedroom is back this way,” I said. “I could put you upstairs if you wish, but I thought you'd rather be down here near me.”

“Down here is fine. As long as I'm close to the computer.”

“It's in my study, which is next door to your room.”

“I brought my UNDO notes, books, and a few other things.”

She paused in front of the sliding glass doors in the living room. “The yard's not as nice as your other one.”

She said this as if I had let down everyone I had ever known.

“I've got plenty of years to work on my yard. It gives me something to look forward to.”

Lucy slowly scanned her surroundings, her eyes finally resting on me. “You've got cameras in your doors, motion sensors, a fence, security gates, and what else? Gun turrets?” “No gun turrets.”

“This is your Fort Apache, isn't it, Aunt Kay? You moved here because Mark's dead and there's nothing left in the world except bad people.”

The comment ambushed me with terrific force, and instantly tears filled my eyes. I went into the guest bedroom and set down her suitcase, then checked towels, soap, and toothpaste in the bath. Returning to the bedroom, I opened the curtains, checked dresser drawers, rearranged the closet, and adjusted the heat while my niece sat on the edge of the bed, following my every move. In several minutes, I was able to meet her eyes again.

“When you unpack, I'll show you a closet you can rummage through for winter things,” I said.

“You never saw him the way everybody else did.”

“Lucy, we need to talk about something else.”

I switched on a lamp and made certain the telephone was plugged in.

“You're better off without him,” she added with conviction.

“Lucy.. “

“He wasn't there for you the way he should have been. He never would have been there because that's the way he was. And every time things didn't go right, you changed.”

I stood in front of the window and looked out at dormant clematis and roses frozen to trellises.

“Lacy, you need to learn a little gentleness and tact. You can't just say exactly what you think.”

“That's a funny thing to hear coming from you. You've always told me how much you hate dishonesty and games.”

“People have feelings.”

“You're right. Including me,” she said.

“Have I somehow hurt your feelings?”

“How do you think I felt?”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Because you didn't think about me at all. That's why you don't understand.”

“I think about you all the time.”

“That's like saying you're rich and yet you never give me a dime. What difference does it make to me what you've got hidden away?”

I did not know what to say.

“You don't call me anymore. You haven't come to see me once since he got killed.”

The hurt in her voice had been saved for a long time. “I wrote you and you didn't write back. Then you called me yesterday and asked me to come visit because you needed something.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“It's the same thing Mom does.”

I shut my eyes and lead my forehead against the cold glass. “You expect too much from me, Lucy. I'm not perfect.”

“I don't expect you to be perfect. But I thought you were different.”

“I don't know how to defend myself when you make a remark like that.”

“You can't defend yourself!”

I watched a gray squirrel hop along the top of the fence bordering the yard. Birds were pecking seeds off the grass.

“Aunt Kay?”

I turned to her and never had I seen her eyes look so dejected.

“Why are men always mode important than me?”

“They're not, Lucy,” I whispered. “I swear.”

My niece wanted tuna salad and cap latte for lunch, and while I sat in front of the fire editing a journal article, she rummaged through my closet and dresser drawers. I tried not to think about another human being touching my clothes, folding something in a way I wouldn't or returning a jacket to the wrong hanger. Lucy had a gift for making me feel like the Tinman rusting in the forest. Was I becoming the rigid, serious adult I would have disliked when I was her age?

“What do you think?” she asked when she emerged from my bedroom at half past one. She was wearing one of my tennis warm-up suits.

“I think you spent a long time to come up with only that. And yes, it fits you fine.”

“I found a few other things that are okay, but most of your stuff is-too dressy. All these lawyerly suits in midnight blue and black, gray silk with delicate pinstripes, khaki and cashmere, and white blouses. You must have twenty white blouses and just as many ties. You shouldn't wear brown, by the way. And I didn't see much in red, and you'd look good in red, with your blue eyes and grayish blond hair.”

“Ash blond,” I said.

“Ashes are gray or white. Just look in the fire. We don't wear the same size shoe, not that I'm into ColeHaan or Ferragamo. I did find a black leather jacket that's really cool. Were you a biker in another life?”

“It's lambskin and you're welcome to borrow it.”

“What about your Fendi perfume and pearls? Do you own a pair of jeans?”

“Help yourself.” I started to laugh. “And yes, I have a pair of jeans somewhere. Maybe in the garage.”

“I want to take you shopping, Aunt Kay.”

“I'd have to be crazy.”

“Please?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“If it's all right, I want to go to your club to work out for a while. I'm stiff from the plane.”

“If you'd like to play tennis while you're here, I'll see if Ted has any time to hit with you. My racquets are in the closet to the left. I just switched to a new Wilson. You can hit the ball a hundred miles an hour. You'll love it.”

“No, thanks. I'd rather use the StairMaster and weights or go running. Why don't you take a lesson from Ted while I work out, and we can go together?”

Dutifully, I reached for the phone and dialed Westwood's pro shop. Ted was booked solid until ten o'clock. I gave Lucy directions and my car keys, and after she left, I read in front of the fire and fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, I heard coals shift and wind gently touching the pewter wind chimes beyond the sliding glass doors. Snow was drifting down in large, slow flakes, the sky the color of a dusty blackboard. Lights in my yard had come on, the house so silent I was conscious of the clock ticking on the wall. It was shortly after four and Lucy had not returned from the club. I dialed the number for my car phone and no one answered. She had never driven in snow before, I thought anxiously: And I needed to go to the store to pick up fish for dinner. I could call the club and have her paged. I told myself that was ridiculous. Lucy had been gone barely two hours. She was not a child anymore. When it got to be four-thirty, I tried my car phone again. At five I called the club and they could not find her. I began to panic.

“Are you sure she's not on the StairMaster or maybe in the women's locker room taking a shower? Or maybe she stopped by the mixed grill?” I again asked the young woman in the pro shop.

“We've paged her four times, Dr. Scarpetta. And I've gone around looking. I'll check again. If I locate her, I'll have her call you immediately.”

“Do you know if she ever showed up at all? She should have gotten there around two.”

“Gosh. I just came on at four. I don't know.”

I continued calling my car phone.

“The Richmond Cellular customer you have dialed does not answer…”

I tried Marino and he wasn't home or at headquarters. At six o'clock I stood in the kitchen staring out the window. Snow streaked down in the chalky glow of streetlights. My heart beat hard as I paced from room to room and continued calling my car phone. At half past six I had decided to file a missing person report with the police when the telephone rang. Running back to my study, I was reaching for the receiver when I noticed the familiar number eerily materializing on the Caller ID screen. The calls had stopped after the night of Waddell's execution I had not thought about them since. Bewildered, I froze, waiting for the expected hang up to. follow my recorded message. I was shocked when I recognized the voice that began to speak.

“I hate to do this to you, Doc…” Snatching up the receiver, I cleared my throat and said in disbelief, “Marino?”

“Yeah,- he said. “I got bad news.”