W ith the press staking out her townhouse in suburban Virginia, Michelle checked into a hotel in D.C. She used the breathing space to snatch a quick, informative lunch with a girlfriend who happened to be an FBI agent. The Secret Service and the Bureau didn't always see eye-to-eye. Indeed, in federal law enforcement circles the Bureau was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in relation to all the other agencies. However, Michelle liked to remind her FBI buddies that their agency had been founded with seven former Secret Service agents.

Both women were also members of WIFLE, or Women in Federal Law Enforcement. It was a support network with conventions and annual meetings, and though her male colleagues loved to rib her about it, WIFLE had been a great tool for Michelle as she confronted issues at work related to her gender. Her friend was clearly nervous about meeting with Michelle, but Michelle had helped her earn an Olympic silver medal, thereby securing a bond that almost nothing could break.

Over Caesar salads and iced tea Michelle was given the results of the investigation thus far. Simmons was a member of the security service that had guarded the funeral home, although he wasn't supposed to be on duty that day. In fact, the funeral home was only patrolled at night. Simmons-of course, that wasn't his real name-had disappeared. The paper trail at the company was useless. Noneof Simmons's information checked out: stolen Social Security number, fake driver's license and references, the works, all expertly done. He'd been employed there less than a month. Thus far, Simmons was a major dead end.

"When he came running up, I thought he was just some green rent-a-cop, so I commandeered him and put him into action. We didn't even search his van. Bruno was obviously hidden in the back somewhere. I played right into his hands. Gave him a perfect opportunity to kill one of my men." In her misery Michelle put her face in her hands. With an effort she recovered, pushed a forkful of lettuce in her mouth and chewed so hard her teeth hurt.

"Before they pulled the plug on me, I found out that they got the slug out of Neal Richards. It was a dumdum. Probably never get a ballistic match, even if we lay our hands on the probable weapon that fired it."

Her friend agreed and then told Michelle that the van had been discovered in an abandoned barn. It was being run for prints and other microscopic indicators, but nothing had turned up thus far.

Mildred Martin, wife of the deceased, had been found at her home, working quietly in her garden. She had been planning to go and see her husband later that night with friends and family. She hadn't called John Bruno and asked him to come to the funeral home. Her husband had been Bruno's law supervisor, and they'd been close. If the candidate wanted to come and see her dead husband, he could have; it was simple as that, she told investigators.

"Yet why did Bruno scramble his schedule and go to see Martin at the funeral home at the last minute?" asked Michelle. "It was just dropped on us out of the blue."

"According to his staff, he received a call from Mildred Martin that morning asking him to come and see her husband at the funeral home. And according to Dickers, Bruno's chief of staff, Bruno was agitated after getting the call."

"Well, a close friend of his had died."

"But Dickers also says Bruno already knew that Martin was dead."

"So you think there's more to it?"

"Well, she picked a time when there weren't that many people at the funeral home. And a few things Bruno said after the call led Dickers to believe there was more to the meeting than simply paying last respects."

"So that may be why he pushed me so hard to leave them alone in there?"

Her friend nodded. "Well, depending on what the widow had to say, I suppose Bruno would want it to be private."

"But Mildred Martin said she didn't call."

"Somebody impersonated her, Michelle."

"And if Bruno hadn't come?" She answered her own question. "Then they would have just left. And if I'd gone in with him, they wouldn't have tried it, and Neal Richards…" Her voice trailed off. "What else do you have?"

"Our thinking is that this had been planned for some time. I mean, they had to coordinate a lot of different things, and they executed it to perfection."

"They must have had inside sources on Bruno's campaign. How else would they know his schedule?"

"Well, one way was his campaign's official Web site. The event he was going to when he took a detour to the funeral home had been scheduled for quite some time."

"Damn it, I told them not to post his schedule on the Web. Do you know that a waitress at one of the hotels where we stayed knew more about Bruno's itinerary than we did, because she'd overheard Bruno and his staff talking about it? They don't bother to tell us until the last minute."

"Frankly, with all that, I don't know how you do your job."

Michelle looked at her sharply. "And having Bruno's mentor conveniently die? I mean, that started the whole chain of events."

The woman was already nodding. "Bill Martin was elderly, hadterminal cancer in its late stages and died in bed during the night. Under those circumstances no report was filed with the medical examiner, and no autopsy was conducted. The attending physician signed the death certificate. However, after what happened, his body was posted, and toxicology tests were run on the postmortem samples."

"And they found what?"

"Large amounts of Roxanol, liquid morphine, which he was taking for pain, and over a liter of embalming fluid, among other things. No gastric contents because those had been drained during the embalming. No smoking gun really."

Michelle eyed her friend closely. "And yet you don't look convinced."

Her friend finally shrugged. "Embalming fluid gets into all major vessels, cavities, solid organs, so it's tough to be accurate. But under the circumstances the medical examiner took a sampling of the middle brain, where typically the embalming fluid doesn't penetrate, and she found a spike of methanol."

"Methanol! But that's a compound of embalming fluid, isn't it? What if the embalming fluid did get in there?"

"That's a concern. And in case you didn't know, there are differences in embalming fluids. High-budget embalming fluids have less methanol but more formaldehyde. Low-budget ones, like Martin's, have higher levels of pure methanol. Added to that is that methanol is found in lots of things, like wine and liquor. Martin was reportedly a heavy drinker. That might account for the spike, the M.E. couldn't be sure. Bottom line, though, for a man as terminally ill as Bill Martin it wouldn't have taken a large dose of methanol to kill him."

She took out a file and flipped through it. "The autopsy also found organ damage, shrunken mucous membranes, stomach lining torn, all markers for methanol poisoning. And yet he had cancer throughout his body and had undergone radiation and chemotherapy. All inall the M.E. had a mess on her hands. The probable cause of death was circulatory failure, but there are lots of reasons a very elderly man with a terminal illness would have died from circulatory failure."

"Yet killing someone with methanol, knowing he'd probably be embalmed without an autopsy, that's pretty ingenious," said Michelle.

"Actually that's pretty damn scary."

"But he must have been murdered," said Michelle. "They couldn't just wait around hoping Martin would die on his own and then have his body at the funeral home precisely when Bruno was passing through." She paused. "List of suspects?"

"I really can't say. It's an ongoing investigation, and I've already told you more than I should have. I might have to pass a polygraph on this, you know."

When the check came, Michelle was quick to grab it. As they walked out together, her friend said, "So what are you going to do? Lie low? Look for another position?"

"The ‘lying low' part, yes; the ‘looking for another job,' not yet."

"So what, then?"

"I'm not ready to give up my career at the Service without a fight."

Her friend eyed her warily. "I know that look. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking you're FBI, and it's better that you don't know. Like you said, you might have to pass a polygraph."