Someone was crying.

Elise heard the woman as she and Gould approached Truman Harrison's hospital room. That individual sound of sobbing triggered a companion response, and at least two other people joined in.

Ten feet from the open door, Gould stopped. "Christ." He fell back against the wall as if trying to hide from a shooter.

What now?

"I don't know if I can go in there. I don't like hospitals. I don't like dealing with-" He pointed in the direction of the sobbing. "I don't like dealing with that kind of emotion."

Elise knew it wasn't fair, but she suddenly blamed Gould for everything that was wrong in her life at the moment-the main thing being her lack of time for Audrey. Her reaction may have been extreme, but she didn't have the energy or the inclination to hold David Gould's hand.

"Maybe when you were an FBI agent you could keep your distance," she said, unable to mask her annoyance, "but dealing with grieving families is part of a detective's job. It's never easy, but it's something we have to do."

"Did I ever tell you about the time I got my appendix out?" he asked with agitation, obviously stalling.

Why couldn't she have gotten a real partner? "This isn't about you," she told him.

"Wait."

Stalling.

"What I have to say makes sense."

She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. She'd give him one minute.

"When I was twenty years old, I had an emergency appendectomy," he said quickly. "They prepped me, doped me up, and wheeled me into the operating room, where they began administering anesthesia. But instead of knocking me out, the drug made me hyper-aware. My senses were intensified. The nerve endings under my skin were electrically charged." He lifted a hand, fingers spread, as if to demonstrate. "I could feel the hairs growing from my pores." He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned closer. "I could hear conversations two rooms away."

"Are you telling me you were awake through the whole operation?" She needed to trade David Gould in for a new model.

"I could feel and hear everything."

"How horrible." She didn't believe him.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Well…"

"That's okay. Nobody did. Not the doctors or nurses. Or my parents. My girlfriend. Why should you? But that's not why I chose this moment to tell you a little story about myself. What I'm saying is that our buddy Harrison might be able to hear what's going on around him, even though he's in a coma."

In his roundabout way, Gould was finally making sense. Maybe she wouldn't trade him in just yet. "I'll be careful."

"Assume he can hear everything." "I'll keep that in mind." She looked closely at his ashen face, experiencing a pang of empathy. "You going to be okay?" A partner with a hospital phobia. What other surprises did he have up his sleeve?

He nodded, gave his shoulders a loose shake, and followed her into the room.

A woman in a white suit sat near a sunny window. Two other people, a younger man and woman, hovered nearby. The crying, at least for now, had stopped. A comatose Mr. Harrison was lying in bed, attached to an IV and a heart monitor that pulsed steadily. The woman in the white suit turned out to be Mr. Harrison's wife, the other two people his children.

Elise introduced herself and Gould. "We're going to be looking into the case, trying to find out how your husband ended up in the morgue… prematurely."

"He woke up in the middle of the night," Mrs. Harrison explained. "Said he felt sick. On the way to the bathroom he collapsed. I called 911 and an hour later he was pronounced dead."

She started to cry, fought it, pulled in a trembling breath, then continued. "I hate to think of him being put in that body bag. Hate to think of him in that morgue. On the autopsy table-when he was alive. It's a nightmare. That's what it is. A nightmare."

The beeping of the heart monitor suddenly increased. Heads swiveled and everybody turned to stare at the screen as the pulse rate dropped back to its previous level.

"Did he hear me?" Mrs. Harrison asked. "Do you think he heard me? Doctor said he can't hear anything."

Elise and Gould exchanged glances.

Strange.

Yep.

The family gathered around Mr. Harrison's bed, everyone talking at once, trying to elicit a response or an increase in pulse.

Nothing happened.

Elise asked Mrs. Harrison a few more questions, then produced her business card. "Call if you think of anything you may have forgotten to tell us."

Outside the hospital room, a young office assistant was lying in wait. "The administrator would like to talk to you," she said, stepping forward.

She led the detectives to an elevator, down a car-^ peted hall, to a. large meeting room. They were welcomed by the hospital administrator, the head of ER, the hospital's press liaison, and the doctor who had been unfortunate enough to pronounce poor Mr. Harrison dead. Completing the group was a grim-looking bald man with a briefcase, who turned out to be the hospital lawyer.

Elise and Gould sat side by side at the table.

The ER head, Dr. Eklund, pulled out several sheets of paper. "We have some of the lab work back on Mr. Harrison," he said, passing copies to Elise and David.

It was pretty obvious that management wanted to get its side of the story out as quickly as possible.

"Traces of TTX were detected in Truman Harrison's blood."

"TTX?" Elise asked.

"Tetrodotoxin. A toxin that's common to several varieties of marine life. I'm willing to bet we'll discover that Mr. Harrison recently ate at some exotic seafood restaurant."

"Isn't TTX found in the puffer fish?" Gould asked.

"Among other things."

The doctor cleared bis throat, his hands clasped on the table. "In Japan, people actually eat puffer fish in order to get high from the poison," he explained. "There have been a number of fatalities from it. Apparently it's also becoming fashionable here. Our comatose Mr. Harrison probably visited a sushi bar where they serve the delicacy."

"Have you questioned his wife?" Gould asked.

"She doesn't know where he ate the day he was poisoned."

Elise recognized a choreographed delivery when she saw one. As if on cue, the lawyer presented them with some official-looking documents. "This," he explained, "is a copy of the Presidential Commission's definition of death. And this is the Uniform Determination of Death Act. If you read both, you'll see that we followed their suggested criteria and that there was no negligence on the part of Mercy Hospital or anyone on our staff."

Covering their asses. That's what they were doing. Elise scooped up the loose sheets of paper and tapped them together. "We aren't here to pass judgment on anyone," she told them, trying to remain calm-at least outwardly. "Our job is to collect information."

"You can understand the hospital's concern," said the administrator, a well-dressed woman of fifty. 'The press could turn this into a circus. The hospital's reputation is at stake."

"We don't work for the hospital," Elise said, getting abruptly to her feet. She'd heard enough. "We work for the public, and they have a right to know what happened. If Mr. Harrison ingested a toxin at an eating establishment anywhere in the bistate region, we have to determine the location of that establishment and quickly relay information to the media. Harrison may not be the only poisoning case. You need to make your staff aware of the symptoms. You need to contact specialists and find out how it can be treated. This isn't the time to focus on protecting your reputation. It's time to protect the public."

That said, Elise turned to leave. Gould followed a little more slowly, giving the group a small salute before walking out the door.

The elevator was occupied, so Elise took the stairs.

"Way to go," Gould shouted, hurrying down the steps after her. He caught up as she exited for the parking area. "You really chewed out their corporate asses."

She swung around to face him, at last able to release the anger she'd been holding in check. Too bad Gould was the recipient. Later she would regret her outburst, but right now it felt damn good. "And you didn't think they needed chewing out?"

Gould put both hands in the air. "I was just admiring your ability to get so worked up, that's all."

"Is that because getting worked up is something you can only admire from a distance?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She stopped and cast a glance around. "Where's my car?"

"I drove." Gould pointed to his black Honda. "You left yours at the morgue."

He unlocked his car with the automatic opener and they both slid inside.

"It just doesn't seem like you care about anything other than to be occasionally amused by it," Elise said. There. It was finally out. She'd told him what she'd been thinking for the past three months. "You aren't engaged."

He reversed the little car, then quickly exited the lot. "I can do my job without being engaged."

"A good cop has to care about people."

"You get hurt that way. You burn out that way."

"Is that why you wanted to avoid Mr. Harrison's room?" she asked. "Because you go out of your way to keep an emotional distance?"

"I told you. I don't like hospitals."

"Well, that's too damn bad! Neither do I! Do you think you can run from everything unpleasant?"

"I try."

Why couldn't they just have a normal conversation? Why did he have to make everything so hard?

"So." He stopped at a red light. "You're telling me I should do something about my attitude."

"Some adjustment wouldn't hurt and might even make your life easier." And hers.

"Hmm."

Remarkably, he seemed to give her words consideration.

"You might have a point."

This had been so easy. "Please give it some thought." Why hadn't she brought up his attitude before? Communication. That was what it was all about.

"Just say no," he said.

"Say no?" For a total of thirty seconds, their conversation had made sense. "Say no to what?"