"Yes, he did."

Morse's inside knowledge of events was pissing him off.

"But no autopsy was done," she pointed out.

"I'm aware of that. You're not suggesting that one should be done now, are you?"

Agent Morse dismissed this idea with a flick of her hand. "We wouldn't find anything. Whoever's behind these murders is too good for that."

Chris snorted. "Who's that good, Agent Morse? A professional assassin? A forensic pathologist?"

"There was a mob enforcer some years ago who prided himself on this kind of work. He was a very reserved man with a massive ego. He had no formal medical training, but he was an enthusiastic amateur. He's nominally retired now. We've had some people following him, just to make sure."

Chris couldn't sit any longer. He rose and said, "This is nuts. I mean, what the hell do you expect me to do now?"

"Help us."

"Us? That's only about the third time you've said us in this whole conversation."

Agent Morse smiled more fully this time. "I'm the lead agent. We're spread pretty thin on these kinds of cases since 9/11. Everybody's working counterterrorism."

Chris looked deep into her eyes. There was sincerity there, and passion. But he saw something else, too-something not so different from what he read in the eyes of those patients who tried to con him out of drugs every week.

"Murder's a state crime, isn't it?" he said slowly. "Not a federal one."

"Yes. But when you kill someone, you also deprive him of his civil rights."

Chris knew this was true. Several decades-old race murders in Mississippi had been dragged back into the courtroom by trying previously acquitted Ku Klux Klan killers for violating their victims' civil rights. But still…something seemed wrong about Alexandra Morse's story.

"The first victim you told me about-if these are murder victims-was your sister, right? Doesn't that create some sort of conflict? I'm not supposed to treat family members for anything serious. Should you be investigating your own sister's death?"

"To be perfectly frank, no. But there's no one else I trust to do it right." Agent Morse looked at her watch for the first time. "We don't have time to get deep into this, Dr. Shepard. I'll speak to you again soon, but I don't want you to deviate from your normal routine. Not in any way that your wife or anyone else would notice."

"Who else would notice?"

"The person planning to kill you."

Chris went still. "Are you saying someone might be following me?"

"Yes. You and I cannot be seen together in public."

"Wait a minute. You can't tell me something like this and just walk out of here. Are you giving me protection? Are there going to be FBI agents covering me when I walk out?"

"It's not like that. Nobody's trying to assassinate you with a rifle. If the past is any guide-and it almost always is, since criminals tend to stick to patterns that have been successful in the past-then your death will have to look natural. You should be careful in traffic, and you shouldn't walk or jog or bicycle anywhere that there's traffic. No one can protect you from that kind of hit. But most important is the question of food and drink. You shouldn't eat or drink at home for a while. Not even bottled water. Nothing bought or prepared by your wife."

"You're kidding, right?"

"I realize that might be difficult, but we'll work it out. To tell you the truth, I think we have some working room, as far as time is concerned. Your wife just consulted this lawyer, and this kind of murder takes meticulous planning."

Chris heard a note of hysteria in his laughter. "That's a huge comfort, Agent Morse. Seriously. I feel so much better now."

"Does your wife have plans to be out of town anytime soon?"

He shook his head.

"Good. That's a good sign." Morse picked up her handbag. "You'd better write me that prescription now."

"What?"

"The Levaquin."

"Oh, right." He took a pad from his pocket and scribbled a prescription for a dozen antibiotic pills. "You think of everything, don't you?"

"No one thinks of everything. And be glad for it. That's the way we catch most criminals. Stupid mistakes. Even the best of us make them."

"You haven't given me a card or anything," Chris said. "No references I can check. All you did was show me an ID that I wouldn't know was fake or not. I want a phone number. Something."

Agent Morse shook her head. "You can't call anyone at the Bureau, Doctor. You can't do anything that could possibly tip off your killer. Your phones may be tapped, and that includes your cell phone. That's the easiest one to monitor."

Chris stared at her for a long time. He wanted to ask about the scars. "You said everybody makes mistakes, Agent Morse. What's the worst you ever made?"

The woman's hand rose slowly to her right cheek, as though of its own volition. "I didn't look before I leaped," she said softly. "And somebody died because of it."

"I'm sorry. Who was it?"

She hitched her handbag over her shoulder. "Not your problem, Doctor. But you do have a problem. I'm sorry to be the one to turn your life upside down. I really am. But if I hadn't, you might have gone to sleep one night thinking you were happy and never woken up."

Morse took the prescription from Chris's hand, then gave him her taut smile. "I'll contact you again soon. Try not to freak out. And whatever you do, don't ask your wife if she's trying to kill you."

Chris gaped after Morse as she walked down the corridor toward the waiting-room door. Her stride was measured and assured, the walk of an athlete.

"So?" Holly said from behind him, startling him. "What's her story?"

"Cystitis," he mumbled. "Honeymoon syndrome."

"Too much bumping monkey, huh? I didn't see no wedding ring on her finger."

Chris shook his head at Holly's wiseass tone, then walked down the hall to his private office and closed the door.

He had a waiting room filled with patients, but as sick as some of them were, they seemed secondary now. He shoved aside a stack of charts and looked at Thora's picture on his desk. Thora was the antithesis of Agent Alex Morse. She was blond-naturally blond, unlike 98 percent of the golden-haired women you saw on the street-and of Danish descent, which was unusual in the South. Her eyes were grayish blue-sea blue, if you wanted to get poetic about it, which he had, on occasion. But though she might be mistaken for a Viking princess on the basis of appearance, Thora had no pretensions of superiority. She had spent four years married to Red Simmons, a down-to-earth country boy who'd made good by trusting his instincts and who'd treated people well after he made his pile. Chris believed Red's instincts about women were as good as his hunches about oil. Yes, Thora had become rich when Red died, but where was the fault in that? When a rich man died, someone always profited. That was the way of the world. And Red Simmons wasn't the type to demand a prenuptial agreement. He'd had a loving young wife who'd shared his life for better or worse-with quite a bit of worse in that last year-and she deserved everything he had, come hell or high water. That's the way Red would have put it. And the more Chris reflected on what Agent Morse had said in Exam Room 4, the angrier he got.

He picked up the phone and called his front desk.

"Yes?" drawled Jane Henry, his peppery receptionist. The yes finally terminated after two long syllables-maybe two and a half.

"Jane, I had a fraternity brother in college named Darryl Foster. That's D-A-R-R-Y-L."

"Uh-huh. And?"

"I think he's an FBI agent now. I don't know where. He was originally from Memphis, but the last I heard, he was working in the Chicago field office."

"And?"

"I need you to find him for me. His phone number, I mean. My old fraternity is trying to add on to the house up at Ole Miss, and they want to hit up everybody for contributions."