Postmortem

Chapter 12

Henna Yarborough's flesh, wet from repeated rinsings, glistened like white marble in the overhead light. I was alone inside the morgue with her, suturing the last few inches of the Y incision, which ran in a wide seam from her pubis to her sternum and forked over her chest.

Wingo took care of her head before he left for the night. The skullcap was exactly in place, the incision around the back of her scalp neatly closed and completely covered by her hair, but the ligature mark around her neck was like a rope burn. Her face was bloated and purple, and neither my efforts nor those of the funeral home were ever going to change that.

The buzzer sounded rudely from the bay. I glanced up at the clock. It was shortly after 9:00 P.M.

Cutting the twine with a scalpel, I covered her with a sheet and peeled off my gloves. I could hear Fred, the security guard, saying something to someone down the hall as I pulled the body onto a gurney and began to wheel it into the refrigerator.

When I reemerged and shut the great steel door, Marino was leaning against the morgue desk and smoking a cigarette.

He watched me in silence as I collected evidence and tubes of blood and began to initial them.

"Find anything I need to know?"

"Her cause of death is asphyxiation due to strangulation due to the ligature around her neck," I said mechanically.

"What about trace?"

He tapped an ash on the floor.

"A few fibers-"

"Well," he interrupted, "I gotta couple of things."

"Well," I said in the same tone, "I want to get the hell out of here."

"Yo, Doc. Exactly what I had in mind. Me, I'm thinking of taking a ride."

I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. His hair was clinging damply to his pate, his tie was loose, his short-sleeved white shirt was badly wrinkled in back as if he'd been sitting for a long time in his car. Strapped under his left arm was his tan shoulder holster with its long-barreled revolver. In the harsh glare of the overhead light he looked almost menacing, his eyes deeply set in shadows, his jaw muscles flexing.

"Think you need to come along," he added unemphatically. "So, I'll just wait while you get out of your scrubs there and call home."

Call home? How did he know there was anyone at home I needed to call? I'd never mentioned my niece to him. I'd never mentioned Bertha. As far as I was concerned, it was none of Marino's goddam business I even had a home.

I was about to tell him I had no intention of riding anywhere with him when the hard look in his eyes stopped me cold.

"All right," I muttered. "All right."

He was still leaning against the desk smoking as I walked across the suite and went into the locker room. Washing my face in the sink, I got out of my gown and back into skirt and blouse. I was so distracted, I opened my locker and reached for my lab coat before I realized what I was doing. I didn't need my lab coat. My pocketbook, briefcase and suit jacket were upstairs in my office.

Somehow I collected all of these things and followed Marino to his car. I opened the passenger door and the interior light didn't go on. Slipping inside, I groped for the shoulder harness and brushed crumbs and a wadded paper napkin off the seat.

He backed out of the lot without saying a word to me. The scanner light blinked from channel to channel as dispatchers transmitted calls Marino didn't seem interested in and which often I didn't understand. Cops mumbled into the microphone. Some of them seemed to eat it.

"Three-forty-five, ten-five, one-sixty-nine on chan'1 three."

"One-sixty-nine, switchin' ov'."

"You free?"

"Ten-ten. Ten-seventeen the breath room. With subj't."

"Raise me whenyurten-twen-fo'."

"Ten-fo'."

"Four-fifty-one."

"Four-fifty-one X."

"Ten-twenty-eight on Adam Ida Lincoln one-seven-zero…"

Calls went out and alert tones blared like a bass key on an electric organ. Marino drove in silence, passing through downtown where storefronts were barred with the iron curtains drawn at the end of the day. Red and green neon signs in windows garishly advertised pawnshops and shoe repairs and greasy-spoon specials. The Sheraton and Marriott were lit up like ships, but there were very few cars or pedestrians out, just shadowy clusters of peripatetics from the projects lingering on corners. The whites of their eyes, followed us as we passed.

It wasn't until several minutes later that I realized where we were going. On Winchester Place we slowed to a crawl in front of 498, Abby Turnbull's address. The brownstone was a black hulk, the flag a shadow limply stirring over the entrance. There were no cars in front. Abby wasn't home. I wondered where she was staying now.

Marino slowly pulled off the street and turned into the narrow alleyway between the brownstone and the house next door. The car rocked over ruts, the headlights jumping and illuminating the dark brick sides of the buildings, sweeping over garbage cans chained to posts and broken bottles and other debris. About twenty feet inside this claustrophobic passageway he stopped and cut the engine and the lights. Directly left of us was the backyard of Abby's house, a narrow shelf of grass girdled by a chain-link fence with a sign warning the world to "Beware" of a "Dog" I knew didn't exist.

Marino had the car searchlight out and the beam was licking over the rusting fire escape against the back of the house. All of the windows were closed, the glass glinting darkly. The seat creaked as he moved the light around the empty yard.

"Go on," he said. "I'm waiting to hear if you're thinking what I am."

I stated the obvious. "The sign. The sign on the fence. If the killer thought she had a dog, it should have given him pause. None of his victims had dogs. If they had, the women would probably still be alive."

"Bingo."

"And," I went on, "my suspicion is you're concluding the killer must have known the sign didn't mean anything, that Abby - or Henna - didn't have a dog. And how could he know that?"

"Yo. How could he know that," Marino echoed slowly, "unless he had a reason to know it?"

I said nothing. He jammed in the cigarette lighter. "Like if maybe he'd been inside the house before."

"I don't think so…"

"Cut the playing-dumb act, Doc," he said quietly.

I got out my cigarettes, too, and my hands were trembling.

"I'm picturing it. I think you're picturing it. Some guy who's been inside Abby Turnbull's house. He don't know her sister's here, but he does know there ain't no damn dog. And Miss Turnbull here's someone he don't like none too well because she knows something he don't want anybody in the whole goddam world to know."

He paused. I could feel him glancing over at me, but I refused to look at him or say a word.

"See, he's already had his piece of her, right? And maybe he couldn't help himself when he did his number because he's got some kind of compulsion, some screw loose, so to speak. He's worried. He's worried she's going to tell. Shit. She's a goddam reporter. She gets paid to tell people's dirty secrets. It's going to come out, what he did."

Another glance my way, and I remained stonily silent.

"So what's he do? He decides to whack her and make her look like the other ones. Only little problem is he don't know about Henna. Don't know where Abby's bedroom is either, see, because when he's been inside the house in the past, he never got any farther than the living room. So he goes in the wrong bedroomHenna's bedroom-when he breaks in last Friday night. Why? Because that's the one with the lights on, because Abby's out of town. Well, it's too late. He's committed himself. He's got to go through with it. He murders her…"

"He couldn't have done it."

I was trying to keep my voice from shaking. "Boltz would never do such a thing. He's not a murderer, for God's sake."

Silence.

Then Marino slowly looked over at me and flicked an ash. "Interesting. I didn't mention no names. But since you did, maybe we ought to pursue the subject, go a little deeper."

I was quiet again. It was catching up to me and I could feel my throat swelling. I refused to cry. Dammit! I wasn't going to let Marino see me cry! "Listen, Doc," he said, and his voice was considerably calmer, "I'm not trying to jerk you around, all right? I mean, what you do in private's none of my damn business, all right? You're both consenting adults, unattached. But I know about it. I've seen his car at your place…"

"My house?" I asked, bewildered. "What-"

"Hey. I'm all over this goddam city. You live in the city, right? I know your state car. I know your damn address, and I know his white Audi. I know when I seen it at your house on several occasions over the past few months he wasn't there taking a deposition… "

"That's right. Maybe he wasn't. And it's none of your business, either."

"Well, it is."

He flicked the cigarette butt out the window and lit another one. "It is my business now because of what he done to Miss Turnbull. That makes me wonder what else he's been doing."

"Henna's case is virtually the same as the other ones," I coldly told him. "There's no doubt in my mind she was murdered by the same man."

"What about her swabs?"

"Betty will work on them first thing in the morning. I don't know…"

"Well, I'll save you the trouble, Doc. Boltz is a nonsecreter. I think you know that, too, have known it for months."

"There are thousands of men in the city who are nonsecreters. You could be one, for all I know."

"Yeah," he said shortly. "Maybe I could be, for all you know. But fact is, you don't know. Fact is, you do know about Boltz. When you posted his wife last year, you PERKed her and found sperm, her husband's sperm. It's right there on the damn lab report that the guy she had sex with right before she took herself out is a nonsecreter. Hell, even I remember that. I was at the scene, remember?"

I didn't respond.

"I wasn't going to rule out nothing when I first walked into that bedroom and found her sitting up in her pretty little nightie, a big hole in her chest. Me, I always think murder first. Suicide's last on my list because if you don't think murder first, it's a little late after the fact. The only friggin' mistake I made back then was not taking a suspect's kit from Boltz. Suicide seemed so obvious after you did the post I marked the case exceptionally cleared. Maybe I shouldn't have. Back then I had a good reason to get his blood, to make sure the sperm inside her was his. He said it was, said they had sex early that morning. I let it go. I didn't get squat from him. Now I can't even ask. I don't got probable cause."

"You have to get more than blood," I said idiotically. "If he's A negative, B negative in the Lewis blood group system, you can't tell if he's a nonsecreter-you have to get saliva…"

"Yo. I know how to take a suspect kit, all right? It don't matter. We know what he is, right?"

I said nothing.

"We know the guy whacking these women is a nonsecreter. And we know Boltz would know the details of the crimes, know 'em so well he could take out Henna and make it look like the other ones."

"Well, get your kit and we'll get his DNA," I said angrily. "Just go ahead. That will tell you definitely."

"Hey. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll run him under the damn laser, too, and see if he sparkles."

The glittery residue on the mislabeled PERK flashed in my mind. Did the residue really come from my hands? Did Bill routinely wash his hands with Borawash soap? "You found the sparkles on Henna's body?"

Marino was asking. "On her pajamas. The bedcovers, too."

Neither of us spoke for a while.

Then I said, "It's the same man. I know what my findings are. It's the same man."

"Yeah. Maybe it is. But that don't make me feel any better."

"You're sure what Abby said is true?"

"I buzzed by his office late this afternoon."

"You went to see him, to see Boltz?" I stammered.

"Oh, yeah."

"And did you get your confirmation?" My voice was rising.

"Yeah." He glanced over at me. "I got it more or less."

I didn't say anything. I was afraid to say anything.

"Course, he denied everything and got right hot about it. Threatened to sue her for slander, the whole nine yards. He won't, though. No way he'll make a peep about it because he's lying and I know it and he knows I know it."

I saw his hand go toward his left outer thigh and I suddenly panicked. His microcassette recorder!

"If you're doing what I think you're doing…" I blurted out.

"What?" he asked, surprised.

"If you've got a goddam tape recorder going…"

"Hey!" he protested. "I was scratching, all right? Hell, pat me down. Do a strip search if it'll make you feel better."

"You couldn't pay me enough."

He laughed. He was honestly amused.

He went on, "Want to know the truth? It makes me wonder what really happened to his wife."

I swallowed hard and said, "There was nothing suspicious about the physical findings. She had powder residues on her right hand-"

He cut me off. "Oh, sure. She pulled the trigger. I don't doubt that, but maybe we know why now, huh? Maybe he's been doing this for years. Maybe she found out."

Cranking the engine, he turned on his lights. Momentarily, we were rocking between houses and emerging on the street.

"Look." He wasn't going to give it a rest. "I don't mean to pry. Better put, it ain't my idea of a good time, okay? But you know him, Doc. You been seeing him, right?"

A transvestite was sashaying along a sidewalk, his yellow skirt swishing around his shapely legs, his false breasts firm and high, the false nipples erect beneath a tight white shell. Glassy eyes glanced our way.

"You been seeing him, right?" he asked again.

"Yes."

My voice was almost inaudible.

"What about last Friday night?"

I couldn't remember at first. I couldn't think. The transvestite languidly turned around and went the other way.

"I took my niece to dinner and a movie."

"He with you?"

"No."

"You know where he was last Friday night?"

I shook my head. "He didn't call or nothing?"

"No."

Silence.

"Shit," he muttered in frustration. "If only I'd known about it then, known what I know about him now. I would've driven past his crib. You know, checked to see where the hell he was. Shit."

Silence.

He tossed the cigarette butt out the window and lit up again. He was smoking one right after another. "So, how long you been seeing him?"

"Several months. Since April."

"He seeing any other ladies, or just you?"

"I don't think he's been seeing anybody else. I don't know. Obviously there's a lot about him I don't know."

He went on with the relentlessness of a threshing machine, "You ever pick up on anything? Anything off about him, I'm saying?"

"I don't know what you mean."

My tongue was getting thick. I was almost slurring my words as if I were falling asleep.

"Off," he repeated. "Sex-wise."

I said nothing.

"He ever rough with you? Force anything?"

A pause. "What's he like? He the animal Abby Turnbull described? Can you see him doing something like that, like what he done to her?"

I was hearing him and not hearing him. My thoughts were ebbing and flowing as if I were slipping in and out of consciousness.

"… like aggression, I'm saying. Was he aggressive? You notice anything strange…?"

The images. Bill. His hands crushing me, tearing at my clothes, pushing me down hard into the couch.

"… guys like that, they have a pattern. It ain't sex they're really after. They have to take it. You know, a conquest…"

He was so rough. He was hurting me. He thrust his tongue into my mouth. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't he. It was as if he'd become somebody else.

"Don't matter a damn he's good-looking, could have it when he wants it. You see that? People like that, they're off. OFF…" Like Tony used to do when he was drunk and angry with me.

"… I mean, he's a friggin' rapist, Doc. I know you don't want to hear it. But, goddam it, it's true. Seems like you might have picked up on something.."

He drank too much, Bill did. He was worse when he had too much to drink.

"… happens all the time. You wouldn't believe the reports I get, these young ladies calling me to their cribs two months after the fact. They finally get around to telling someone. Maybe a friend convinces them to come forward with the info. Bankers, businessmen, politicians. They meet some babe in a bar, buy her a drink and slip in a little chloral hydrate. Boom. Next thing, she's waking up with this animal in her bed, feels like a friggin' truck's been run through her…"

He would never have tried such a thing with me. He cared about me. I wasn't an object, a stranger… Or maybe he'd simply been cautious. I know too much. He would never have gotten away with it.

"… the toads get away with it for years. Some of 'em get away with it their whole lives. Go to their graves with as many notches on their belts as Jack the Giant Killer…"

We were stopped at a red light. I had no idea how long we'd been sitting here, not moving.

"That's the right al-lusion, ain't it? The drone who killed flies, put a notch on his belt for each one…"

The light was a bright red eye.

"He ever do it to you, Doc? Boltz ever rape you?"

"What?"

I slowly turned toward him. He was staring straight ahead, his face pale in the red glow of the traffic light.

"What?" I asked again. My heart was pounding.

The light blinked from red to green, and we were moving again.

"Did he ever rape you?" Marino demanded, as if I were someone he didn't know, as if I were one of the "babes" whose "cribs" he was called to in the past.

I could feel the blood creeping up my neck.

"He ever hurt you, try to choke you, anything like…"

Rage exploded from me. I was seeing flecks of light. As if something were shorting out. Blinded as blood pounded inside my head.

"No! I've told you every goddam thing 1 know about him! Every goddam thing I'm going to tell you! PERIOD!"

Marino was stunned into silence.

I didn't know where we were at first.

The great white clock face floated directly ahead as shadows and shapes materialized into the small trailer park of mobile unit laboratories beyond the back parking lot. There was no one else Tuesday it rained. Water poured from gray skies and my wipers couldn't clear the windshield fast enough. I was part of the barely moving string of traffic creeping along the interstate.

The weather mirrored my mood. The encounter with Marino left me feeling physically sick, hung over. How long had he known? How often had he seen the white Audi parked in my drive? Was it more than idle curiosity when he cruised past my house? He wanted to see how the uppity lady chief lived. He probably knew what the Commonwealth paid me and what my mortgage was each month.

Spitting flares forced me to merge into the left lane, and as I crept past an ambulance, and police directing traffic around a badly mangled van, my dark thoughts were interrupted by the radio.

"… Henna Yarborough was sexually assaulted and strangled, and it is believed she was murdered by the same man who has killed four other Richmond women in the past two months… " I turned up the volume and listened to what I'd already heard several times since leaving my house. Murder seemed to be the only news in Richmond these days.

"… the latest development. According to a source close to the investigation, Dr. Lori Petersen may have attempted to dial 911 just before she was murdered…"

This juicy revelation had been on the front page of the morning newspaper.

"… Director of Public Safety Norman Tanner was reached at his home…"

Tanner read an obviously prepared statement. "The police bureau has been apprised of the situation. Due to the sensitivity of these cases, I can't make any comment…"

"Do you have any idea who the source of this information is, Mr. Tanner?" the reporter asked.

"Not at liberty to make any comments about that…"

He couldn't comment because he didn't know.

But I did.

The so-called source close to the investigation had to be Abby herself. Her byline was nowhere to be found. Obviously, her editors would have taken her off the stories. She was no longer reporting the news, now she was making it, and I remembered her threat: "Someone will pay…"

She wanted Bill to pay, the police to pay, the city to pay, God Himself to pay. I was waiting for news of the computer violation and the mislabeled PERK. The person who would pay was going to be me.

I didn't get to the office until almost eight-thirty, and by then the phones were already ringing up and down the hall.

"Reporters," Rose complained as she came in and deposited a wad of pink telephone message slips on my blotter. "Wire services, magazines and a minute ago some guy from New Jersey who says he's writing a book."

I lit a cigarette.

"The bit about Lori Petersen calling the police," she added, her face lined with anxiety. "How awful, if it's true…"

"Just keep sending everybody across the street," I interrupted. "Anybody who calls about these cases gets directed to Amburgey."

He had already sent me several electronic memos demanding I have a copy of Henna Yarborough's autopsy report on his desk "immediately."

In the most recent memo, "immediately" was underlined and included was the insulting remark "Expect explanation about Times release."

Was he implying I was somehow responsible for this latest "leak" to the press? Was he accusing me of telling a reporter about the aborted 911 call? Amburgey would get no explanation from me. He wasn't going to get a damn thing from me today, not even if he sent twenty memos and appeared in person.

"Sergeant Marino's here," Rose quite unnerved me by adding. "Do you want to see him?"

I knew what he wanted. In fact, I'd already made a copy of my report for him. I supposed I was hoping he'd stop by later in the day, when I was gone.

I was initialing a stack of toxicology reports when I heard his heavy footsteps down the hall. When he came in, he was wearing a dripping-wet navy blue rain slicker. His sparse hair was plastered to his head, his face haggard.

"About last night…" he ventured as he approached my desk.

The look in my eyes shut him up.

Ill at ease, he glanced around as he unsnapped his slicker and dug inside a pocket for his cigarettes. "Raining cats and dogs out there," he muttered. "Whatever the hell that means. Don't make any sense, when you think of it."

A pause. "'Sposed to burn off by noon."

Wordlessly, I handed him a photocopy of Henna Yarborough's autopsy report, which included Betty's preliminary serological findings. He didn't take the chair on the other side of my desk but stood where he was, dripping on my rug, as he began to read.

When he got to the gross description, I could see his eyes riveted about halfway down the page. His face was hard when he looked at me and asked, "Who all knows about this?"

"Hardly anybody."

"The commissioner seen it?"

No.

"Tanner?"

"He called a while ago. I told him only her cause of death. I made no mention of her injuries."

He perused the report a little while longer.

"Anybody else?" he asked without looking up.

"No one else has seen it."

Silence.

"Nothing in the papers," he said. "Not on the radio or the tube either. In other words, our leak out there don't know these details."

I stared stonily at him.

"Shit."

He folded the report and tucked inside a pocket. "The guy's a damn Jack the Ripper."

Glancing at me, he added, "I take it you ain't heard a peep from Boltz. If you do, dodge him, make yourself scarce."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

The mere mention of Bill's name physically bit into me.

"Don't take his call, don't see him. Whatever's your style. I don't want him having a copy of anything right now. Don't want him seeing this report or knowing anything more than he already knows."

"You're still considering him a suspect?" I asked as calmly as possible.

"Hell, I'm not sure what I'm considering anymore," he retorted. "Fact is, he's the CA and has a right to whatever he wants, okay? Fact also is I don't give a rat's ass if he's the damn governor. I don't want him getting squat. So I'm just asking you to do what you can to avoid him, to give him the slip."

Bill wouldn't be by. I knew I wouldn't hear from him. He knew what Abby had said about him, and he knew I was present when she said it.

"And the other thing," he went on, snapping up his slicker and turning the collar up around his ears, "if you're gonna be pissed at me, then be pissed. But last night I was just doing my job and if you're thinking I enjoyed it, you're flat-out wrong."

He turned around at the sound of a throat clearing. Wingo hesitated in my doorway, his hands in the pockets of his stylish white linen trousers.

A look of disgust passed over Marino's face, and he rudely brushed past Wingo and left.

Nervously jingling change, Wingo came to the edge of my desk and said, "Uh, Dr. Scarpetta, there's another camera crew in the lobby…"

"Where's Rose?" I asked, slipping off my glasses. My eyelids felt as if they were lined with sandpaper.

"In the ladies' room or something. Uh, you want me to tell the guys to leave or what?"

"Send them across the street," I said, adding irritably, "just like we did to the last crew and the crew before that."

"Sure," he muttered, and he made no move to go anywhere. He was nervously jingling change again.

"Anything else?" I asked with forced patience.

"Well," he said, "there's something I'm curious about. It's about him, uh, about Amburgey. Uh, isn't he an antismoker and makes a lot of noise about it, or have I got him mixed up with somebody else?"

My eyes lingered on his grave face. I couldn't imagine why it mattered as I replied, "He's strongly opposed to smoking and frequently takes public stands on the issue."

"Thought so. Seems like I've read stuff about it on the editorial page, heard him on TV, too. As I understand it, he plans to ban smoking from all HHSD buildings by next year."

"That's right," I replied, my irritation flaring. "By this time next year, your chief will be standing outside in the rain and cold to smoke-like some guilt-ridden teenager."

Then I looked quizzically at him and asked, "Why?"

A shrug. "Just curious."

Another shrug. "I take it he used to smoke and got converted or something."

"To my knowledge, he has never smoked," I told him.

My telephone rang again, and when I glanced up from my call sheet, Wingo was gone.

If nothing else, Marino was right about the weather. That afternoon I drove to Charlottesville beneath a dazzling blue sky, the only evidence of this morning's storm the mist rising from the rolling pastureland on the roadsides.

Amburgey's accusations continued to gnaw at me, so I intended to hear for myself what he had actually discussed with Dr. Spiro Fortosis. At least this was my rationale when I had made an appointment with the forensic psychiatrist. Actually, it wasn't my only reason. We'd known each other from the beginning of my career, and I'd never forgotten he had befriended me during those chilly days when I attended national forensic meetings and scarcely knew a soul. Talking to him was the closest I could comfortably get to unburdening myself without going to a shrink.

He was in the hallway of the dimly lit fourth floor of the brick building where his department was located. His face broke into a smile, and he gave me a fatherly hug, planting a light peck on the top of my head.

Professor of medicine and psychiatry at UVA, he was older by fifteen years, his hair white wings over his ears, his eyes kindly behind rimless glasses. Typically, he was dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow striped tie that had been out of fashion long enough to come into vogue again. I'd always thought he could be a Norman Rockwell painting of the "town doctor."

"My office is being repainted," he explained, opening a dark wooden door halfway down the hall. "So if it won't bother you being treated like a patient, we'll go in here."

"Right now I feel like one of your patients," I said as he shut the door behind us.

The spacious room had all the comforts of a living room, albeit a somewhat neutral, emotionally defused one.

I settled into a tan leather couch. Scattered about were pale abstract watercolors and several non-flowering potted plants. Absent were magazines, books and a telephone. The lamps on end tables were switched off, the white designer blinds drawn just enough to allow sunlight to seep peacefully into the room.

"How's your mother, Kay?" Fortosis said as he pulled up a beige wing chair.

"Surviving. I think she'll outlive all of us."

He smiled. "We always think that of our mothers, and unfortunately it's rarely true."

"Your wife and daughters?"

"Doing quite well."

His eyes were steady on me. "You look very tired."

"I suppose I am."

He was quiet for a moment.

"You're on the faculty of VMC," he began, in his mild unthreatening way. "I've been wondering if you might have known Lori Petersen in life."

With no further prompting, I found myself telling him what I had not admitted to anyone else. My need to verbalize it was overwhelming.

"I met her once," I said. "Or at least I'm fairly sure of it."

I had probed my memory exhaustively, especially during those quiet, introspective times when I was driving to or from work, or when I was out in my yard, tending to my roses. I would see Lori Petersen's face and try to superimpose it on the vague image of one of the countless VMC students gathered around me at labs, or in the audiences at lectures. By now, I'd convinced myself that when I studied the photographs of her inside her house, something clicked. She looked familiar.

Last month I had given a Grand Rounds lecture, "Women in Medicine."

I remembered standing behind the podium and looking out over a sea of young faces lining the tiers rising up to the back of the medical college auditorium. The students had brought their lunches and were sitting comfortably in the red-cushioned seats as they ate and sipped their soft drinks. The occasion was like all others before it, nothing extraordinary or particularly memorable about it, except retrospectively.

I did not know for a fact but believed Lori was one of the women who came forward afterward to ask questions. I saw the hazy image of an attractive blonde in a lab coat. The only feature I remembered clearly was her eyes, dark green and tentative, as she asked me if I really thought it was possible for a woman to manage a family and a career as demanding as medicine. This stood out because I momentarily faltered. I managed one but certainly not the other.

Obsessively I'd replayed that scene, going over and over it in my mind, as if the face would come into focus if I conjured it up enough. Was it she or wasn't it? I would never be able to walk the halls of VMC again without looking for that blond physician. I did not think I would find her. I think she was Lori briefly appearing before me like a ghost from a future horror that would relegate her to nothing but a past.

"Interesting," Fortosis remarked in his thoughtful way. "Why do you suppose it's important that you met her then or at any other time?"

I stared at the smoke drifting up from my cigarette. "I'm not sure, except that it makes her death more real."

"If you could go back to that day, would you?"

"Yes."

"What would you do?"

"I would somehow warn her," I said. "I would somehow undo what he did."

"What her killer did?"

"Yes."

"Do you think about him?"

"I don't want to think about him. I just want to do everything I can to make sure he is caught."

"And punished?"

"There's no punishment equal to the crime. No punishment would be enough."

"If he's put to death, won't that be punishment enough, Kay?"

"He can die only once."

"You want him to suffer, then."

His eyes wouldn't let me go.

"Yes," I said.

"How? Pain?"

"Fear," I said. "I want him to feel the fear they felt when they knew they were going to die."

I wasn't aware of how long I'd talked but the inside of the room was darker when I finally stopped.

"I suppose it's getting beneath my skin in a way other cases haven't," I admitted.

"It's like dreams."

He leaned back in the chair and lightly tapped his fingertips together. "People often say they don't dream, when it's more accurate to say that they don't remember their dreams. It gets under our skin, Kay. All of it does. We just manage to cage in most of the emotions so they don't devour us."

"Obviously, I'm not managing that too well these days, Spiro."

"Why?" I suspected he knew very well but he wanted me to say it. "Maybe because Lori Petersen was a physician. I relate to her. Maybe I'm projecting. I was her age once."

"In a sense, you were her once."

"In a sense."

"And what happened to her - it could have been you?"

"I don't know if I've pushed it that far."

"I think you have."

He smiled a little. "I think you've been pushing a lot of things pretty far. What else?"

Amburgey. What did Fortosis actually say to him? "There are a lot of peripheral pressures."

"Such as?"

"Politics." I brought it up.

"Oh, yes."

He was still tapping his fingertips together. "There's always that."

"The leaks to the press. Amburgey's concerned they might be coming from my office."

I hesitated, looking for any sign that he was already privy to this.

His impassive face told me nothing.

"According to him, it's your theory the news stories are making the killer's homicidal urge peak more quickly, and therefore the leaks could be indirectly responsible for Lori's death. And now Henna Yarborough's death, too. I'll be hearing that next, I'm sure."

"Is it possible the leaks are coming from your office?"

"Someone - an outsider - broke into our computer data base. That makes it possible. Better put, it places me in a somewhat indefensible position."

"Unless you find out who's responsible," he matter-of-factly stated.

"I don't see a way in the world to do that."

I pressed him, "You talked to Amburgey."

He met my eyes. "I did. But I think he's overemphasized what I said, Kay. I would never go so far as to claim information allegedly leaked from your office is responsible for the last two homicides. The two women would be alive, in other words, were it not for the news accounts. I can't say that. I didn't say that."

I was sure my relief was visible.

"However, if Amburgey or anyone else intends to make a big deal of the so-called leaks that may have come from your office computer, I'm afraid there isn't much I can do about it. In truth, I feel strongly there's a significant link between publicity and the killer's activity. If sensitive information is resulting in more inflammatory stories and bigger headlines, then yes, Amburgey or anybody else for that matter-may take what I objectively say and use it against your office."

He looked at me for a long moment. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"You're saying you can't defuse the bomb," I replied, my spirits falling.

Leaning forward, he flatly told me, "I'm saying I can't defuse a bomb I can't even see. What bomb? Are you suggesting someone's setting you up?"

"I don't know," I replied carefully. "All I can tell you is the city stands to have a lot of egg on its face because of the 911 call Lori Petersen made to the police right before she was murdered. You read about that?"

He nodded, his eyes interested.

"Amburgey called me in to discuss the matter long before this morning's story. Tanner was there. So was Boltz. They said there might be a scandal, a lawsuit. At this point, Amburgey mandated that all further information to the press would have to be routed through him. No comments whatsoever are to come from me. He said you think the leaks to the press, the subsequent stories are escalating the killer's activities. I was questioned at length about the leaks, about the potentiality of their source being my office. I had no choice but to admit someone's gotten into our data base."

"I see."

"As all this progressed," I continued, "I began to get the unsettling impression if any scandal erupts, it's going to be over what's supposedly been happening inside my office. The implication: I've hurt the investigation, perhaps indirectly caused more women to die…"

I paused. My voice was starting to rise. "In other words, I have visions of everyone ignoring the city's screw up with the 911 call because everyone's so busy being enraged with the OCME, with me."

He made no comment.

I lamely added, "Maybe I'm getting bent over nothing."

"Maybe not."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear.

"Theoretically," he explained, "it could happen exactly as you've just outlined it. If certain parties want it to happen that way, because they're trying to save their own skins. The medical examiner is an easy scapegoat. The public, in the main, doesn't understand what the ME does, has rather ghastly, objectionable impressions and assumptions. People tend to resist the idea of someone cutting up a loved one's body. They see it as mutilation, the final indignity-"

"Please," I broke out.

He mildly went on, "You get my point."

"All too well."

"It's a damn shame about the computer break-in."

"Lord. It makes me wish we were still using typewriters."

He stared thoughtfully at the window. "To get lawyerly with you, Kay."

His eyes drifted toward me, his face grim. "I propose you be very careful. But I strongly advise you not to get so caught up in this that you let it distract you from the investigation. Dirty politics, or the fear of them, can be unsettling to the point you can make mistakes sparing your antagonists the trouble of manufacturing them."

The mislabeled slides flashed in my mind. My stomach knotted.

He added, "It's like people on a sinking ship. They can become savage. Every man for himself. You don't want to be in the way. You don't want to put yourself in a vulnerable position when people are panicking. And people in Richmond are panicking."

"Certain people are," I agreed.

"Understandably. Lori Petersen's death was preventable. The police made an unforgivable error when they didn't give her 911 call a high priority. The killer hasn't been caught. Women are continuing to die. The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It's the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pass the buck on down the line, they will."

"On down the line and right to my doorstep," I said bitterly, and I automatically thought of Cagney.

Would this have happened to him? I knew what the answer was, and I voiced it out loud. "I can't help but think I'm an easy mark because I'm a woman."

"You're a woman in a man's world," Fortosis replied. "You'll always be considered an easy mark until the ole boys discover you have teeth. And you do have teeth."

He smiled. "Make sure they know it."

"How?"

He asked, "Is there anyone in your office you trust implicitly?"

"My staff is very loyal…" He waved off the remark. "Trust, Kay. I mean trust with your life. Your computer analyst, for example?"

"Margaret's always been faithful," I replied hesitantly. "But trust with my life? I don't think so. I scarcely know her, not personally."

"My point is, your security - your best defense, if you want to think of it as such - would be to somehow determine who's been breaking into your computer. It may not be possible. But if there's a chance, then I suspect it would take someone who's sufficiently trained in computers to figure it out. A technological detective, someone you trust. I think it would be unwise to involve someone you scarcely know, someone who might talk."

"No one comes to mind," I told him. "And even if I found out, the news might be bad. If it is a reporter getting in, I don't see how finding that out will solve my problem."

"Maybe it wouldn't. But if it were I, I'd take the chance."

I wondered where he was pushing me. I was getting the feeling he had his own suspicions.

"I'll keep all this in mind," he promised, "if and when I get calls about these cases, Kay. If someone pressures me, for example, about the news accounts escalating the killer's peaks, that sort of thing."

A pause. "I have no intention of being used. But I can't lie, either. The fact is, this killer's reaction to publicity, his MO, in other words, is a little unusual."

I just listened.

"Not all serial killers love to read about themselves, in truth. The public tends to believe the vast majority of people who commit sensational crimes want recognition, want to feel important. Like Hinckley. You shoot the President and you're an instant hero. An inadequate, poorly integrated person who can't keep a job and maintain a normal relationship with anyone is suddenly internationally known. These types are the exception, in my opinion. They are one extreme.

"The other extreme is your Lucases and Tooles. They do what they do and often don't even stick around in the city long enough to read about themselves. They don't want anybody to know. They hide the bodies and cover their tracks. They spend much of their time on the road, drifting from place to place, looking for their next targets along the way. It's my impression, based on a close examination of the Richmond killer's MO, that he's a blend of both extremes: He does it because it's a compulsion, and he absolutely doesn't want to be caught. But he also thrives on the attention, he wants everyone to know what he's done."

"This is what you told Amburgey?" I asked.

"I don't think it was quite this clear in my mind when I talked to him or anyone else last week. It took Henna Yarborough's murder to convince me."

"Because of Abby Turnbull."

"Yes."

"If she was the intended victim," I went on, "what better way to shock the city and make national news than to kill the prizewinning reporter who's been covering the stories."

"If Abby Turnbull was the intended victim, her selection strikes me as rather personal. The first four, it appears, were impersonal, stranger killings. The women were unknown to the assailant, he stalked them. They were targets of opportunity."

"The DNA test results will confirm whether it's the same man," I said, anticipating where I assumed his thoughts were going. "But I'm sure of it. I don't for a minute believe Henna was murdered by somebody else, a different person who might have been after her sister."

Fortosis said, "Abby Turnbull is a celebrity. On the one hand, I asked myself, if she was the intended victim, does it fit that the killer would make a mistake and murder her sister instead? On the other, if the intended victim was Henna Yarborough, isn't the coincidence she's Abby's sister somewhat overwhelming?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Of course. Nothing is certain. We can conjecture all our lives and never pin it down. Why this or why that? Motive, for example. Was he abused by his mother, was he molested, et cetera, et cetera? Is he paying back society, showing his contempt for the world? The longer I'm in this profession the more I believe the very thing most psychiatrists don't want to hear, which is that many of these people kill because they enjoy it."

"I reached that conclusion a long time ago," I angrily told him.

"I think the killer in Richmond is enjoying himself," he calmly continued. "He's very cunning, very deliberate. He rarely makes mistakes. We're not dealing with some mental misfit who has damage to his right frontal lobe. Nor is he psychotic, absolutely not. He is a psychopathic sexual sadist who is above average in intelligence and able to function well enough in society to maintain an acceptable public persona. I think he's gainfully employed in Richmond. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if he's involved in an occupation, a hobby, that brings him in contact with distraught or injured people, or people he can easily control."

"What sort of occupation, exactly?" I asked uneasily.

"Could be just about anything. I'm willing to bet he's shrewd enough, competent enough, to do just about anything he likes."

"Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief," I heard Marino say.

I reminded Fortosis, "You've changed your mind. Originally you assumed he might have a criminal record or history of mental illness, maybe both. Someone who was just let out of a mental institution or prison-"

He interrupted, "In light of these last two homicides, particularly if Abby Turnbull figures in, I don't think that at all. Psychotic offenders rarely, if ever, have the wherewithal to repeatedly elude the police. I'm of the opinion that the killer in Richmond is experienced, has probably been murdering for years in other places, and has escaped apprehension as successfully in the past as he's escaping it now."

"You're thinking he moves to a new place and kills for several months, then moves on?"

"Not necessarily," he replied. "He may be disciplined enough to move to a new place and get himself settled in his job. It's possible he can go for quite a while until he starts. When he starts, he can't stop. And with each new territory it's taking more to satisfy him. He's becoming increasingly daring, more out of control. He's taunting the police and enjoying making himself the major preoccupation of the city, that is, through the press and possibly through his victim selection."

"Abby," I muttered. "If he really was after her."

He nodded. "That was new, the most daring, reckless, thing he's done - if he set out to murder a highly visible police reporter. It would have been his greatest performance. There could be other components, ideas of reference, projection. Abby writes about him and he thinks he has something personal with her. He develops a relationship with her. His rage, his fantasies, focus on her."

"But he screwed up," I angrily retorted. "His so-called greatest performance and he completely screwed it up."

"Exactly. He may not have been familiar enough with Abby to know what she looks like, know that her sister moved in. with her last fall."

His eyes were steady as he added, "It's entirely possible he didn't know until he watched the news or read the papers that the woman he murdered wasn't Abby."

I was startled by the thought. It hadn't occurred to me.

"And this worries me considerably." He leaned back in the chair.

"What? He might come after her again?" I seriously doubted it.

"It worries me." He seemed to be thinking out loud now. "It didn't happen the way he planned. In his own mind, he made a fool of himself. This may only serve to make him more vicious."

"How violent does he have to be to qualify as 'more vicious'?" I blurted out loudly. "You know what he did to Lori. And now Henna…"

The look on his face stopped me.

"I rang up Marino shortly before you got here, Kay."

Fortosis knew.

He knew Henna Yarborough's vaginal swabs were negative.

The killer probably misfired. Most of the seminal fluid I collected was on the bedcovers and her legs. Or else the only instrument he successfully inserted was his knife. The sheets beneath her were stiff and dark with dried blood. Had he not strangled her, she probably would have bled to death.

We sat in oppressive silence with the terrible image of a person who could take pleasure in causing such horrendous pain to another human being.

When I looked at Fortosis his eyes were dull, his face drained. I think it was the first time I'd ever realized he was old beyond his years. He could hear, he could see what happened to Henna. He knew these things even more vividly than I. The room closed in on us.

We both got up at the same time.

I took the long way back to my car, veering across the campus instead of following the direct route of the narrow road leading to the parking deck. The Blue Ridge Mountains were a hazy frozen ocean in the distance, the dome of the rotunda bright white, and long fingers of shadow were spreading across the lawn. I could smell the scent of trees and grass still warm in the sun.

Knots of students drifted past, laughing and chatting and paying me no attention. As I walked beneath the spreading arms of a giant oak, my heart jumped into my throat at the sudden sound of running feet behind me. I abruptly spun around, and a young jogger met my startled gaze, his lips parting in surprise. He was a flash of red shorts and long brown legs as he cut across a sidewalk and was gone.