THE SMALL CLEARING WAS SEEING quite a bit of activity, all of it man-made. A wide area had been cordoned off with yellow police tape intertwined among the trees. A two-person forensics team was foraging for clues directly around the crime scene, analyzing things that seemed far too small to be of any significance. Others hovered over the body of the dead woman, while still others were threading their way through the surrounding woods and underbrush looking for items of interest and possibly the ingress and egress of the killer. One uniformed officer had photographed and then videotaped the entire scene. All the cops wore floater masks to guard against the stench, and yet one by one they took turns hustling into the woods to empty their stomachs.

It all looked very efficient and orderly, but for a seasoned observer it was clearly bad guy one, good guys naught. They were finding zip.

Michelle stood off a ways and watched. Next to her was Sean King, her partner in the private investigation firm of King Maxwell. King was in his forties, three inches taller than the five-foot-ten Michelle, and had short dark hair graying at the temples. He was trim and broad-shouldered but had gimpy knees and a shoulder that a bullet had ripped into years ago during an arrest that had gone awry while he was working a forgery investigation as a Secret Service agent. He'd also once been a volunteer deputy police officer for Wrightsburg but had resigned, swearing off guns and law enforcement for the rest of his days.

Sean King had suffered through several tragedies in his life: a disgraceful end to his Secret Service career after a candidate he'd been guarding was assassinated right in front of him; a failed marriage and acrimonious divorce; and most recently, a plot to frame him for a series of local murders that had dredged up the painful details of his last days as a federal agent. These events had left King a very cautious man, unwilling to trust anyone, at least until Michelle Maxwell hurtled into his life. Though their relationship had started off on very rocky ground, she was now the one person he knew he could absolutely rely on.

Michelle Maxwell had started life at a dead run, streaking through college in three years, winning an Olympic silver medal in rowing and becoming a police officer in her native Tennessee before joining the Secret Service. Like King, her exit from the federal agency hadn't been pleasant: she'd lost a protectee to an ingenious kidnapping scheme. It was the first time in her life she had failed at anything, and that debacle had nearly destroyed her. While investigating the kidnapping case she had met King. At first she'd taken an instant dislike to the man. Now, as his partner, she saw Sean King for what he was: the best pure investigative mind she had ever been associated with. And her closest friend.

Yet the two could not have been more different. While Michelle craved adrenaline highs and pushing her body to the limit with intensive, lung-and-limb-shocking physical activities, King preferred spending his leisure time hunting for appropriate wines to add to his collection, dabbling in owning the works of local artists, reading good books, as well as boating and fishing on the lake that his home backed to. He was an introspective man by nature; he liked to think things out thoroughly before taking action. Michelle tended to move at warp speed and let the pieces fall where they may. This partnership of supernova and steady glacier had somehow flourished.

"Did they find the boys?" she asked King.

He nodded. "I understand they were pretty traumatized."

"Traumatized? They'll probably need therapy all the way through college."

Michelle had already given a detailed statement to the local police, in the person of Chief Todd Williams. The chief's hair had become noticeably whiter after her and King's first adventure in Wrightsburg. Today his features held a resigned expression, as though murder and mayhem were now to be expected in his tiny hamlet.

Michelle watched as a slender and attractive red-haired woman in her late thirties carrying a black satchel and a rape kit arrived on the scene, knelt down and started examining the body.

"That's the deputy medical examiner assigned to this area," King explained. "Sylvia Diaz."

"Diaz? She looks more like Maureen O'Hara."

"George Diaz was her husband. He was a very noted surgeon in the area. He was struck by a car and killed several years ago. Sylvia used to be a professor of forensic pathology at UVA. Now she's a physician in private practice."

"And a deputy M.E. on the side. Busy woman. Any children?"

"No. I guess her work is her life," said King.

Michelle put her hand up to her nose as the direction of the wind changed yet again, flinging the stench of the body directly at them. "Some life," she said. "God, she isn't even wearing a mask, and I'm about to hurl from back here."

Twenty minutes later Diaz rose, spoke with the police, popped off her examination gloves and started snapping pictures of the body and surrounding area. Finished with that, she stowed her camera and started to walk away when she noticed King. She smiled warmly and headed toward them.

Michelle whispered, "And you forgot to tell me that you two dated?"

King looked at her surprised. "We went out a few times a while back. How'd you know that?"

"After spending close-up time with a dead body, you don't get a smile like that unless there was a prior relationship."

"Thanks for the astute observation. But be nice. Sylvia's really wonderful."

"I'm sure she was, but I don't need to hear the details, Sean."

"Rest assured, you'll never hear the details while there's breath in my body."

"I see. You're being quite theVirginia gentleman."

"No, I just don't want to be critiqued."

SYLVIA DIAZ GAVE KING A HUG that lingered a bit past "friends" status, Michelle felt, and then King introduced the two women.

The deputy medical examiner looked at Michelle with what the latter perceived as an unfriendly gaze.

"I haven't seen you in a while, Sean," Sylvia said, turning back to him.

"We'd been swamped with investigative work, but things have finally slowed down."

"So," Michelle broke in, "do you have a cause of death on our corpse yet?"

Sylvia looked at her with a surprised expression. "That's not really something I can discuss with you."

"I was just wondering," said Michelle innocently, "since I happened to be one of the first on the scene. I guess you won't know for sure until you do the post."

"You'll be doing the autopsy here, won't you?" asked King.

Sylvia nodded. "Yes, although suspicious deaths traditionally were sent over toRoanoke."

"Why no longer?" asked Michelle.

"There used to be four official facilities certified to conduct autopsies in the state: Fairfax, Richmond, Tidewater and Roanoke. However, due to the generosity of John Poindexter, a very wealthy man who was also a past Speaker of the House in the state General Assembly, we now have a certified forensics substation right here."

"Strange donation, a morgue," said Michelle.

"Poindexter's daughter was killed here years ago. Wrightsburg falls on the jurisdictional line between the medical examiner's office in Richmond and the western district office in Roanoke. Because of that, there was a fight over which office would perform the autopsy..Roanoke finally won out, but during the transfer of the body the vehicle was involved in an accident, and vital evidence was lost or compromised. Consequently, the girl's killer was never caught, and as you can imagine, her father was not very happy. When Poindexter died, his will left the money to build a state-of-the-art facility." Sylvia glanced over her shoulder at the body. "But even with a state-of-the-art facility the cause of death on this one might be tricky."