The Last Precinct

Chapter 25

I HAVE NEVER DRIVEN MARINO'S DODGE RAM QUAD Cab pickup truck, and were circumstances not so strained I would probably find the scenario comical. I am not a big person, barely five foot five, slender, and there is nothing funky or extreme about me. I do wear jeans, but not today. I suppose I dress like a proper chief or lawyer, usually in a tailored skirt suit or flannel trousers and a blazer, unless I am working a crime scene. I wear my blond hair short and neatly styled, am light on makeup and, other than my signet ring and watch, jewelry is an afterthought. I don't have a single tattoo. I don't look like the sort who would be roaring along in a monster macho truck that is dark blue with pinstriping, chrome, mud flaps, scanner and big, swooping antennas that go with the CB and two-way radios.

I take 64 West back to Richmond because it is quicker, and I pay close attention to my driving because it is a lot to handle a vehicle this size with only one arm. I have never spent a Christmas Eve like this and I am increasingly depressed over the notion. Usually, by now I have stocked the refrigerator and freezer, and have cooked sauces and soups and decorated the house. I feel utterly homeless and alien as I drive Marino's truck along the interstate, and it occurs to me that I don't know where I will sleep tonight. I guess at Anna's, but I dread the necessary chill between us. I didn't even see her this morning, and a helpless feeling of loneliness settles over me and seems to push me down in my seat. I page Lucy. "I've got to move back into my house tomorrow," I tell her on the phone.

"Maybe you should stay in the hotel with Teun and me," she suggests.

"How about you and Teun stay with me?" It is so hard for me to express a need, and I need them. I do. For a lot of reasons.

"When do you want us there?"

"We'll have Christmas together in the morning."

"Early." Lucy has never stayed in bed past six on Christmas morning.

"I'll be up, and then we'll go to the house," I tell her.

December 24. Days have gotten as short as they can, and it will be a while before light savors the hours and burns off my heavy, anxious moods. It is dark by the time I reach downtown Richmond, and when I pull up to Anna's house at five minutes past six, I find Berger waiting for me in her Mercedes SUV, headlights penetrating the night. Anna's car is gone. She is not home. I don't know why this unsettles me so completely unless it is that I am suspicious she somehow knows Berger is meeting me and chose not to be here. Considering such a possibility reminds me that Anna has talked to people and may one day be forced to reveal what I have told her during my most vulnerable hours in her home. Berger climbs out as I open the track door, and if she is taken aback by my transportation, she makes no indication of it.

"Do you need anything from inside the house before we go?" she asks.

"Give me just a minute," I tell her. "Was Dr. Zenner here when you arrived?"

I feel her stiffen a little. "I got here just a few minutes before you did."

Evasion, I think as I climb the front steps. I unlock the door and turn off the burglar alarm. The foyer is dark, the great chandelier and Christmas tree lights off. I write Anna a note and thank her for her friendship and hospitality. I need to return to my own home tomorrow and know she will understand why I must. Mostly, I want her to believe I am not upset with her, that I realize she is as victimized by circumstances as I am. I say circumstances because I am no longer sure who is holding a gun to Anna's head and ordering her to divulge confidences about me. Rocky Caggiano may be next in line, unless I am indicted. If that should happen, I will be no factor in Chandonne's trial, not hardly. I leave the note on Anna's immaculately made Biedermeier bed. Then I get in Berger's car and begin to tell her about my day in James City County, about the abandoned campsite and the long, pale hairs. She listens intently, driving, knowing where she is going as if she has lived in Richmond all of her life.

"Can we prove the hairs are Chandonne's?" she finally asks. "Assuming there are no roots, as usual. And there weren't roots with the ones found at the crime scenes, right? Your crime scenes. Luong and Bray."

"No roots," I say, rankled by the reference to my crime scenes. They aren't my crime scenes, I silently protest. "He shed those hairs, so there are no roots," I tell Berger. "But we can get mitochondrial DNA from the shafts. So yes, we can definitely know if the hairs from the campground are his."

"Please explain," she says. "I'm not an expert on mitochondrial DNA. Or an expert on hair for that matter, especially the kind of hair he has."

The subject of DNA is a difficult one. Explaining human life on a molecular level tells most people far more than they can understand or care to know. Cops and prosecutors love what DNA can do. They hate to talk about it scientifically. Few of them understand it. The old joke is, most people can't even spell DNA. I explain that nuclear DNA is what we get when cells with nuclei are present, such as with blood, tissue, seminal fluid and hair roots. Nuclear DNA is inherited equally from both parents, so if we have someone's nuclear DNA we have, in a sense, all of him, and can compare his DNA profile to any other biological sample this same person has left at, say, another crime scene.

"Can we just compare the hairs from the campground to the hairs he left at the murder scenes?" Berger asks.

"Not successfully," I reply. "Examining microscopic characteristics in this instance won't tell us much because the hairs are unpigmented. The most we will be able to say is their morphologies are similar or consistent with each other."

"Not conclusive to a jury." She thinks out loud.

"Not in the least."

"If we don't do a microscopic comparison anyway, the defense will bring that up," Berger considers. "He'll say, Why didn't you?"

"Well, we can microscopically compare the hairs, if you want."

"The ones from Susan Pless's body and the ones from your cases."

"If you want," I repeat.

"Explain hair shafts. How does DNA work with those?"

I tell her that mitochondrial DNA is found in the walls of cells and not in their nuclei, meaning mitochondrial DNA is the anthropological DNA of hair, fingernail, tooth and bone. Mitochondrial DNA is the molecules that make up our mortar and stone, I say. The limited usefulness lies in that mitochondrial DNA is inherited only through the female lineage. I use the analogy of an egg. Think of mitochondrial DNA as the egg white, while nuclear DNA is the yolk. You can't compare one to the other. But if you have DNA from blood, you have the whole egg and can compare mitochondrial to mitochondrial_ egg white to egg white. We have blood because we have Chandonne. He had to give up a blood sample while in the hospital. We have his complete DNA profile and can compare the mitochondrial DNA of unknown hairs to the mitochondrial DNA from his blood sample.

Berger listens without interruption. She has taken in what 1 am saying and seems to understand. As usual, she takes no notes. She asks, "Did he leave hair at your house?"

"I'm not sure what the police found."

"As much as he seems to shed, I would think he left hair at your house or certainly out in the snow in your yard when he was thrashing about."

"You would think so," I agree with her.

"I've been reading about werewolves." Berger leaps to the next topic. "Apparently, there have been people who really thought they were werewolves or tried all sorts of bizarre things to turn themselves into werewolves. Witchcraft, black magic. Satan worship. Biting. Drinking blood. Do you think it's possible Chandonne really believes he is a loup-garou? A werewolf? And maybe even wants to be one?"

"Thus not guilty by reason of insanity," I reply, and I have assumed all along this would be his defense.

"There was a Hungarian countess in the early sixteen hundreds, Elizabeth Bathory-Nadasdy, also known as the Blood Countess," Berger goes on. "She supposedly tortured and murdered some six hundred young women. Would bathe in their blood, believing it would keep her young and preserve her beauty. Familiar with the case?"

"Vaguely."

"As the story goes, this countess kept young women in her dungeon, fattened them up, would bleed them and bathe in their blood and then force other imprisoned women to lick all the blood off her body. Supposedly because towels were harsh on her skin. Rubbing blood in her skin, all over her body," she ponders. "Accounts of this have left out the obvious. I'd say there was a sexual component," she adds dryly. "Lust murders. Even if the perpetrator truly believed in the magical powers of blood, it's about power and sex. That's what it's about whether you're a beautiful countess or some genetic anomaly who grew up on the He Saint-Louis."

We turn on Canterbury Road, entering the wooded, wealthy neighborhood of Windsor Farms, where Diane Bray lived on the outer edge, her property separated by a wall from the noisy downtown expressway.

"I would give my right arm to know what's in the Chandonne library," Berger is saying. "Or better put, what sorts of things Chandonne's been reading over the years_aside from the histories and other erudite materials he says his father gave him, yada, yada, yada. For example, does he know about the Blood Countess? Was he rubbing blood all over his body in hopes it might magically heal him of his affliction?"

"We believe he was bathing in the Seine and then here in the James River" I reply. "Possibly for that reason. To be magically healed."

"Sort of a biblical thing."

"Maybe."

"He might read the Bible, too," she offers. "Was he influenced by the French serial killer Gilles Gamier, who killed little boys and ate them and bayed at the moon? There were a lot of so-called werewolves in France during the Middle Ages. Some thirty thousand people charged with it, can you imagine?" Berger has been doing a lot of research. This is evident. "And there's the other weird idea," she goes on. "In werewolf folklore it was believed if you were bitten by a werewolf, you would turn into one. Possible Chandonne was trying to turn his victims into werewolves? Maybe so he could find a bride of Frankenstein, a mate just like him?"

These unusual considerations begin to form a composite that is far more matter-of-fact and pedestrian than it might seem. Berger is simply anticipating what the defense is going to do in her case, and an obvious ploy is to distract the jury from the heinous nature of the crimes by preoccupying them with Chandonne's physical deformity and alleged mental illness and downright bizarreness. If the argument can be successfully made that he believes he is a paranormal creature, a werewolf, a monster, then it is highly unlikely the jury will find him guilty and sentence him to life in prison. It occurs to me that some people might even feel sorry for him.

"The silver-bullet defense." Berger alludes to the superstition that only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf. "We have a mountain of evidence, but then so did the prosecution in the O.J. case. The silver bullet for the defense will be that Chandonne is deranged and pitiful."

DIANE BRAY'S HOUSE is A WHITE CAPE COD WITH A gambrel roof, and although the police have secured and cleared the scene, the property has not returned to life. Not even Berger can enter without permission of the owner, or in this case, the person acting as custodian. We sit in the driveway and wait for Eric Bray, the brother, to appear with a key.

"You may have seen him at the memorial service." Berger reminds me that Eric Bray was the man carrying the urn containing his sister's cremains. "Tell me how you think Chan-donne got an experienced policewoman to open the door." Berger's attention flows far away from monsters in medieval France to the very real slaughterhouse before our eyes.

"That's a little wide of my boundaries, Ms. Berger. Maybe it's better if you restrict your questions to the bodies and what my findings are."

"There are no boundaries right now, only questions."

"Is this because you assume I may never be in court, at least not in New York, because I'm tainted?" I go ahead and open that door. "In fact, they don't get much more tainted than I am right this minute."

I pause to see if she knows. When she says nothing, I confront her. "Has Righter given you a hint that I may not prove very helpful to you? That I'm being investigated by a grand jury because he has this cockeyed notion that I had something to do with Bray's death?"

"I've been given more than a hint," she quietly replies as she stares out at Bray's dark house. "Marino and I have talked about it, too."

"So much for secret proceedings," I sardonically say.

"Well, the rule is, nothing that goes on inside the grand jury room can be discussed. Nothing's gone on yet. All that's happening is Righter is using a special grand jury as a tool for gaining access to everything he can. About you. Your phone bills. Your bank statements. What people have to say. You know how it works. I'm sure you've testified in your share of grand jury hearings."

She says all this as if it is routine. My indignation rises and spills over in words. "You know, I do have feelings," I say. "Maybe murder indictments are everyday matters to you, but they aren't to me. My integrity is the one thing I've got that I can't afford to lose. It's everything to me, and of all people to accuse of such a crime. Of all people! To even consider that I would do the very thing I fight against every waking minute of my life? Never. I don't abuse power. Never. I don't deliberately hurt people. Never. And I don't take this bullshit in stride, Ms. Berger. Nothing worse could happen to me. Nothing."

"Do you want my recommendation?" She looks at me.

"I'm always open for suggestions."

"First, the media's going to find out. You know that. I'd beat them to the draw and have a press conference. Right away. The good news is, you haven't been fired. You haven't lost the support of the people who have power over your professional life. A fucking miracle. Politicians are usually quick to run for cover, but the governor has a very high opinion of you. He doesn't believe you killed Diane Bray. If he makes a statement to that effect, then you should be all right, providing the special grand jury doesn't come back with a true bill, an indictment."

"Have you discussed any of this with Governor Mitchell?" I ask her.

"We've had contact in the past. We're acquainted. We worked a case together when he was AG."

"Yes, I know that." It also isn't what I asked.

Silence. She stares out at Bray's house. There are no lights on inside, and I point out that it was Chandonne's MO to unscrew the lightbulb over the porch or pull out the wires, and when his victim opened the door, he was hidden by darkness.

"I would like your opinion," she then says. "I'm confident you have one. You're a very observant, seasoned investigator." She says this firmly and with an edge. "You also know what Chandonne did to you_you are intimately familiar with his MO in a way no one else is."

Her reference to Chandonne's attack on me is jarring. Even though Berger is simply doing her job, I am offended by her blunt objectivity. I am also put off by her evasiveness. I resent that she decides what we will discuss and when and for how long. I can't help it. I am human. I want her to show at least a hint of compassion toward me and what I have endured. "Someone called the morgue this morning and identified himself as Benton Wesley." I drop that one on her. "You heard from Rocky Marino Caggiano yet? What's he up to?" Anger and fear sharpen my voice.

"We won't hear from him for a while," she says as if she knows. "Not his style. But it sure wouldn't surprise me if he's up to his old tricks. Harassment. Hurting. Terrorizing. Going for the sensitive spots as a warning, if nothing else. My guess is you'll have no direct contact with him or even catch a whiff of him until closer to the trial. If you ever see him at all. He's like that, the son of a bitch. Behind the scenes all the way."

Neither of us speaks for a moment. She is waiting for me to lower the gate. "My opinion or speculation, all right," I finally say. "That's what you want? Fine."

"That's what I want. You'd make a pretty good second seat." A reference to a second D.A. who would be her co-counsel, her partner during a trial. Either she has just paid me a compliment or she is being ironical.

"Diane Bray had a friend who came over quite often." I take my first step out of bounds. I begin deducing. "Detective Anderson. She was obsessed with Bray. Bray seriously teased her, so it appears. I think it's possible Chandonne watched Bray and gathered intelligence. He observed Anderson come and go. On the night of the murder, he waited until Anderson left Bray's house"_I stare out at it_"and immediately went up to it, unscrewed the porch light, then knocked on the door. Bray assumed it was Anderson returning to resume their argument or make up or whatever."

"Because they'd been fighting. They fought a lot," Berger carries along the narrative.

"By all appearances, it was a tempestuous relationship." I keep heading deeper into restricted airspace. I am not supposed to enter this part of an investigation, but I keep going. "Anderson had stormed off and come back in the past," I add.

"You sat in on the interview with Anderson after the body was found." Berger knows this. Someone has told her. Marino, probably.

"Yes, I did."

"And the story of what happened that night while Anderson was eating pizza and drinking beer at Bray's house?"

"They got into an argument_this is according to Anderson. So Anderson left angry and soon after there is a knock on the door. The same pattern of knocking that Anderson always did. He imitated the way she knocked just as he imitated the police when he came to my house."

"Show me." Berger looks at me.

I knock on the console between the front seats. Three times, hard.

"This is how Anderson always knocked on the door? She didn't use the doorbell?" Berger asks.

"You've been around cops enough to know that they hardly ever ring doorbells. They're used to neighborhoods where doorbells don't work, if they exist."

"Interesting that Anderson didn't come back," she observes. "What if she had? Do you think Chandonne somehow knew she wasn't going to come back that night?"

"I've wondered that, too."

"Maybe just something he sensed about her demeanor when she left? Or maybe he was so out of control he couldn't stop," Berger ponders. "Or maybe his lust was stronger than his fear that he might be interrupted."

"He may have observed one other important thing," I say. "Anderson didn't have a key to Bray's house. Bray always let her in."

"Yes, but the door wasn't locked when Anderson came back the next morning and found the body, right?"

"Doesn't mean it wasn't locked when he was inside attacking Bray. He hung out a closed sign and locked the convenience store while he was killing Kim Luong."

"But we don't know for a fact that he locked the door behind him when he entered Bray's house," Berger reiterates.

"/ certainly don't know it for a fact."

"And he might not have locked up." Berger is into it. "He might have shoved his way in and the chase begins. The door is unlocked the entire time he is mutilating her body in the bedroom."

"That would suggest he was out of control and taking big risks," I point out.

"Hmmm. I don't want to go down the road of out of control." Berger seems to talk to herself.

"Out of control isn't at all the same thing as insane," I remind her. "All people who murder, except out of self-defense, are out of control."

"Ah. Touche." She nods. "So Bray opens the door, and the light is out and there he is in the dark."

"This is also what he did to Dr. Stvan in Paris," I tell Berger. "Women were being murdered over there, same MO, and in several cases Chandonne left notes at the crime scenes."

"That's where the name Loup-Garou comes from," Berger interjects.

"He also wrote that name on a box inside the cargo container where the body was found_the body of his brother, Thomas. But yes," I say, "he apparently began leaving notes, referring to himself as a werewolf when he began murdering over there, in Paris. One night, he showed up at Dr. Stvan's door, not realizing that her husband was home sick. He works at night as a chef, but on this particular occasion, he was home unexpectedly, thank God. Dr. Stvan opens the door and when Chandonne hears her husband call out from another room, he flees."

"She get a good look at him?"

"I don't think so." I conjure up what Dr. Stvan told me. "It was dark. It was her impression that he was dressed neatly in a long, dark coat, a scarf, his hands in his pockets. He spoke well, was gentlemanly, using the ruse that his car had broken down and he needed a phone. Then he realized she wasn't alone and ran like hell."

"Anything else she remembered about him?"

"His smell. He had a musky smell, like a wet dog."

Berger makes a strange sound at that comment. I am becoming familiar with her subtle mannerisms, and when a detail is especially weird or disgusting, she sucks the inside of her cheek and emits a quiet rasping squeak like a bird. "So he goes after the chief medical examiner there, and then goes after the one here. You," she adds for emphasis. "Why?" She has turned halfway around in her seat and is resting an elbow on the steering wheel, facing me.

"Why?" I repeat, as if it is a question I can't possibly answer_as if it is a question she shouldn't ask me. "Maybe someone should tell me that." Again, I feel the heat of anger rise.

"Premeditation," she replies. "Insane people don't plan their crimes with this sort of deliberation. Picking the chief medical examiner in Paris and then the one here. Both women. Both autopsied his victims and therefore in a perverse way are intimate with him. Perhaps more intimate with him than a lover, because you have, in a sense, watched. You see where he has touched and bitten. You put your hands on the same body he did. In a way, you have watched him make love with these women, for this is how Jean-Baptiste Chandonne makes love to a woman."

"A revolting thought." I find her psychological interpretation personally offensive.

"A pattern. A plan. Not the least bit random. So it's important we understand his patterns, Kay. And do so without personal revulsion or reaction." She draws out a pause. "You must look at him dispassionately. You can't indulge in hate."

"It's hard not to hate someone like him," I reply honestly.

"And when we truly resent and hate someone, it's also hard to give them our time and attention, to be interested in them as if they are worth figuring out. We have to be interested in Chandonne. Intensely interested. I need you to be more interested in him than you have in anyone else in your life."

I don't disagree with what Berger is saying. I know she is pointing out a significant truth. But I desperately resist being interested in Chandonne. "I've always been victim-driven," I tell Berger. "I've never spent my time trying to get into the soul and mind of the assholes who do it."

"And you've never been involved in a case like this, either," she counters. "You've never been a suspect in a murder, either. I can help you with your mess. And I need you to help me with mine. Help me get into Chandonne's mind, into his heart. I need you not to hate him."

I am silent. I don't want to give Chandonne any more of myself than he has already taken. I feel tears of frustration and fury and blink them back. "How can you help me?" I ask Berger. "You have no jurisdiction here. Diane Bray is not your case. You can drag her into your Molineux motion in Susan Pless's murder, but I'm left hanging out to dry when it comes to a Richmond special grand jury. Especially if certain people are trying to make it appear that I killed her, killed Bray. That I'm deranged." I take a deep breath. My heart races.

"The key to your clearing your name is my same key," she replies. "Susan Pless. How could you possibly have had anything to do with that death? How could you have tampered with that evidence?"

She waits for my answer, as if I have one. The thought numbs me. Of course, I had nothing to do with Susan Pless's murder.

"My question is this," Berger goes on. "If the DNA from Susan's case matches your cases here and possibly the DNA in the Paris cases, doesn't that mean it has to be the same person who killed all these people?"

"I guess jurors don't have to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. All they need is probable cause," I reply, playing devil's advocate in my own dilemma. "The chipping hammer with Bray's blood on it_found in my house. And a receipt showing that I bought a chipping hammer. And the chipping hammer I actually bought has vanished. All sort of sticks out like a smoking gun, Ms. Berger, don't you think?"

She touches my shoulder. "Answer me this," she says. "Did you do it?"

"No," I reply. "No, I didn't do it."

"Good. Because I can't afford for you to have done it," she says. "I need you. They need you." She stares out at the cold, empty house beyond our windshield, indicating Chandonne's other victims, the ones who didn't survive. They need me. "Okay." She returns us to why we are waiting in this driveway. She returns us to Diane Bray. "So he comes through her front door. There's no sign of a struggle and he doesn't attack her until they are all the way to the other end of the house, in her bedroom. It doesn't appear she attempted to escape or defend herself in any way. She never went for her gun? She's a policewoman. Where's her gun?"

"I know when he forced his way into my house," I reply, "he tried to throw his coat over my head." I am trying to do what she wants. I act as if I am talking about someone else.

"Then maybe he nets Bray with a coat or something else he threw over her head, and forced her back to the bedroom?"

"Maybe. The police never found Bray's gun. Not that I know of," I reply.

"Huh. Wonder what he did with that?" Berger muses.

Headlights shine in the rearview mirror and I turn around. A station wagon slows at the driveway.

"There was also money missing from her house," I add. 'Twenty-five hundred dollars, drug money Anderson had just brought over earlier that evening. According to her, to Anderson." The station wagon pulls up behind us. "From the sale of prescription pills, if Anderson's telling the truth."

"Do you think she was telling the truth?" Berger asks.

"The whole truth? I don't know," I reply. "So maybe Chan-donne took the money and he may have taken her gun, too. Unless Anderson took the money when she came back to the house the next morning and found the body. But after seeing what was in the master bedroom, it's frankly hard for me to imagine she did anything but run like the wind."

"Based on the photographs you've shown me, I would tend to agree," Berger replies.

We get out. I can't see Eric Bray well enough to recognize him, but my vague impression is of a well-dressed, attractive man who is close in age to his slain sister, maybe forty or so. He hands Berger a key attached to a manila tag. "The alarm code's written on it," he says. "I'm just going to wait out here."

"I'm really sorry to put you to all this trouble." Berger gathers a camera and an accordion file from the backseat. "Especially on Christmas Eve."

"I know you people have to do your job," he says in a dull, flat tone.

"Have you been inside?"

He hesitates and stares off at the house. "Can't do it." His voice rises with emotion and tears cut him off. He shakes his head and climbs back inside his car. "I don't know how any of us… Well," he clears his throat, talking to us through the open car door, the interior light on, the bell dinging. "How we're ever going to go in and deal with her things." He focuses on me, and Berger introduces us. I have no doubt he already knows very well who I am.

"There are professional cleaning services in the area," I delicately tell him. "I suggest you contact one and have them go in before you or any other family member does. Service Master, for example." I have been through this many times with families whose loved ones have died violently inside the residence. No one should have to go in and deal with their loved one's blood and brains everywhere.

"They can just go in without us?" he asks me. "The cleaning people can?"

"Leave a key in a lock box at the door. And yes, they'll go in and take care of things without you present," I reply. "They're bonded and insured."

"I want to do that. We want to go on and sell this place," he tells Berger. "If you're not needing it anymore."

"I'll let you know," she replies. "But you, of course, have the right to do whatever you want with the property, Mr. Bray."

"Well, I don't know who will buy it after what happened," he mutters.

Neither Berger nor I comment. He is probably right. Most people do not want a house where someone has been murdered. "I already talked to one realtor," he goes on in a dull voice that belies his anger. "They said they couldn't take it on. They're sorry and all that, but they didn't want to represent the property. I don't know what to do." He stares out at the dark, lifeless house. "You know, we weren't real close to Diane, no one in the family was. She wasn't what I would call really into her family or friends. Mostly just into herself, and I know I probably shouldn't say that. But it's the damn honest truth."

"Did you see her very often?" Berger asks him.

He shakes his head, no. "I guess I knew her best because we're only two years apart. We all knew she had more money than we could understand. She stopped by my house on Thanksgiving, pulled up in this brand new red Jaguar." He smiles bitterly and shakes his head again. "That's when I knew for sure she was into something I probably didn't want to know a damn thing about. I'm not surprised, really." He takes a deep, quiet breath. "Not surprised really that it's ended up like this."

"Were you aware of her involvement in drugs?" Berger shifts her file to her other arm.

I am getting cold standing out here, and the dark house pulls at us like a black hole.

"The police have said some things. Diane never talked about what she did and we didn't ask, frankly. As far as we know, she didn't even have a will. So now we've got that mess, too," Eric Bray tells us. "And what to do with her things." He looks up at us from the driver's seat and the dark can't hide his misery. "I really don't know what to do."

So much eddies around a violent death. These are hardships that no one sees in the movies or reads about in the newspapers: the people left behind and the wrenching concerns they bear. I give Eric Bray my business card and tell him to call my office if he has any further questions. I go through my usual routine of letting him know the Institute has a book- let, an excellent resource called What to Do When the Police Leave written by Bill Jenkins, whose young son was murdered during the mindless robbery of a fast-food restaurant a couple years back. "The book will answer a lot of your questions," I add. "I'm sorry. A violent death leaves many victims in its wake. That's the unfortunate reality."

"Yes, ma'am, that's for damn sure," he says. "And yes, I'd like to read anything you got. I don't know what to expect, what to do about any of this," he repeats himself. "I'm out here if you have any questions. I'll be right here inside the car."

He shuts his door. My chest is tight. I am touched by his pain, yet I can't feel sorrow for his slain sister. If anything, the portrait he paints of her makes me like her even less. She wasn't even decent to her own flesh and blood. Berger says nothing as we climb the front steps and I sense her never-ending scrutiny. She is interested in my every reaction. She can tell that I still resent Diane Bray and what she tried to do to my life. I make no effort to hide it. Why bother at this point?

Berger is looking up at the porch light, which is faintly illuminated by the headlights of Eric Bray's car. It is a simple glass fixture, small and globe-shaped, supposed to be held into the fixture by screws. Police found the glass globe in the grass near a boxwood where Chandonne apparently tossed it. Then it was simply a matter of unscrewing the bulb, which "would have been hot," I tell Berger. "So my guess is he covered it with something to protect his fingers. Maybe he used his coat."

"No fingerprints on it," she says. "Not Chandonne's prints, according to Marino." This is news to me. "But that doesn't surprise me, assuming he covered the bulb so he didn't burn his fingers," she adds.

"What about the globe?"

"No prints. Not his." Berger inserts the key in the lock. "But he might have his hands covered when he unscrewed that, too. Just wonder how he reached the light. It's pretty high up." She opens the door and the alarm system begins beeping.

"Think he climbed up on something?" She goes to the key pad inside and enters the code.

"Maybe he climbed up on the railing," I suggest, suddenly the expert on Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's behavior and not liking the role.

"What about at your house?"

"He could have done that," I reply. "Climbed up on the railing and steadied himself against the wall or the porch roof."

"No prints on your light fixture or the bulb, in case you don't know," she tells me. "Not his, at any rate."

Clocks tick-lock in the living room, and I remember how surprised I was when I walked into Diane Bray's house for the first time, after she was dead, and discovered her collection of perfectly synchronized clocks and her grand but cold English antiques.

"Money." Berger stands in the living room and looks around at the scroll-end sofa, the revolving bookcase, the ebonized sideboard. "Oh yes, indeed. Money, money, money. Cops don't live like this."

"Drugs," I comment.

"No fucking kidding." Berger's eyes move everywhere. "User and dealer. Only she got others to be her mules. Including Anderson. Including your former morgue supervisor who was stealing prescription drugs that you assumed were being disposed of down the morgue sink. Chuck what's-his-name." She touches gold damask draperies and looks up at the valances. "Cobwebs," she observes. "Dust that didn't just appear during these last few days. There are other stories about her."

"There must be," I reply. "Selling prescription drugs on the street can't account for all this and a new Jaguar."

"Brings me back to a question I keep asking everyone who will stand still long enough for me to talk to them." Berger moves on toward the kitchen. "Why did Diane Bray move to Richmond?"

I have no answer.

"Not for the job, no matter what she said. Not for that. No way." Berger opens the refrigerator door. There is very little inside: Grape-Nuts cereal, tangerines, mustard, Miracle Whip. The two percent milk passed its expiration date yesterday. "Rather interesting," Berger says. "I don't think this lady was ever home." She opens a cupboard and scans cans of Campbell's soup and a box of saltine crackers. There are three jars of gourmet olives. "Martinis? I wonder. She drink a lot?"

"Not the night she died," I remind her.

"That's right. Point-oh-three alcohol level." Berger opens another cupboard and another until she finds where Bray kept her liquor. "One bottle of vodka. One of Scotch. Two Argentine cabernets. Not the bar of someone who drank a lot. Probably was too vain about her figure to ruin it with booze. Pills at least aren't fattening. When you came to the scene, was that the first time you'd ever been to her house_to this house?" Berger asks.

"Yes."

"But your house is only a few blocks away."

"I'd seen this house in passing. From the street. But no, I'd never been inside. We weren't friends."

"But she wanted to be friends."

"I'm told she wanted to have lunch or whatever. To get to know me," I reply.

"Marino."

"That's what Marino told me," I confirm, getting used to her questions by now.

"Do you think she was sexually interested in you?" Berger asks this very casually as she opens a cabinet door. Inside are glasses and dishes. "There are plenty of intimations that she played both sides of the net."

"I've been asked that before. I don't know."

"Would it have bothered you if she was?"

"It would have made me uncomfortable. Probably," I admit.

"She eat out a lot?"

"It's my understanding she did."

I am noting that Berger asks questions I suspect she already has answered. She wants to hear what I have to say and weigh my perceptions against those of others. Some of what she explores carries the echo of what Anna asked me during our fireside confessionals. I wonder if it is remotely possible that Berger has talked to Anna, too.

"Reminds me of a store that's a front for some illegal business," Berger says as she checks out what's beneath the sink: a few cleansers and several dried sponges. "Don't worry," she seems to read my mind. "I'm not going to let anyone ask you these sorts of things in court, about your sex life or whatever. Nothing about her personal life, either. I realize that's not supposed to be your area of expertise."

"Not supposed to be?" It seems an odd comment.

"Problem is, some of what you know isn't hearsay, but knowledge you got directly from her. She did tell you"_ Berger opens a drawer_"that she often ate out alone, sat at the bar at Buckhead's."

"That's what she told me."

"The night you met her there in the parking lot and confronted her."

"The night I tried to prove that she was in collusion with my morgue assistant, Chuck."

"And she was."

"Unfortunately, she certainly was," I reply.

"And you confronted her."

"I did."

"Well, good oF Chuck's in lockup where he belongs." Berger walks out of the kitchen. "And if it's not hearsay," she returns to that topic, "then Rocky Caggiano is going to ask you and I can't object. Or I can, but it will get me nowhere. You need to realize that. And how it makes you look."

"Right now, I'm more worried about how everything makes me look to a special grand jury," I pointedly answer her.

She stops in the hallway. At the end of it, the master bedroom is behind a door that is carelessly ajar, adding to the ambiance of neglect and indifference that chills this place. Berger meets my eyes. "I don't know you personally," she says. "No one seated on that special grand jury is going to know you personally. It's your word against a murdered policewoman's that it was she who harassed you and not the other way around, and that you had nothing to do with her murder_even though you seem to think the world is better off without her."

"Did you get that from Anna or Righter?" I bitterly ask her.

She starts down the hallway. "Pretty soon, Dr. Kay Scar-petta, you're gonna get a thick skin," she says. "I'm making that my mission."