He raised his glass and took a long sip of Melanie’s creation – a blue lady she’d called it. Not bad, for a martini. He usually found them bitter. This had a refreshing, fruity taste.

“Did you have any part to play in the second case, the man who died?” he asked. “I saw your name on the order sheet there as well.”

The makings of a grin played at the corners of her mouth. “Could be. You see, after my triumph with Bessie, I was the floor’s authority on dig for a while, so likely I stuck my nose into that resuscitation as well, if I was around. But I’d have to look at the chart.”

“Would you mind? And could you take a look at Bessie’s old file as well? Those notes might jog your memory about something that’s not written down.”

“Sure.” She leaned forward to take his half-empty glass, got up, and walked with it toward a stunning kitchen area that he knew Janet would die for. Except it looked so polished, he doubted Melanie did any cooking in it.

“That’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it?” Melanie said, opening a refrigerator the size of his minivan and pouring him a refill from a small pitcher of the cocktail that she’d left chilling in the freezer.

“It’s still worth pursuing, given what little we have. Keep this under your hat, but unofficially Mark Roper thinks Chaz Braden somehow got Bessie to slip into a coma so she couldn’t talk about what happened back then.”

She started, looked up from refilling his glass, and the blue slush brimmed over the rim onto her hand. “Now there’s one hell of a big leap,” she said, reaching for a cloth to clean up the spill. “Has he any proof?”

“Just his gut.”

She returned with the drink. “How does he think Chaz could have precipitated a coma?” She stood over him, still holding his glass and wiping its stem.

“First of all it would have to be a drug that couldn’t be traced. He figures a shot of short-acting insulin could have done the trick. Think about it. The onset of profound hypoglycemia would occur in a matter of hours after Chaz gave her the injection. A protracted insulin coma would in itself destroy a pack of neurons. Throw in prolonged convulsions and an extended obstruction of her airway, both of which he could have reasonably anticipated since he may have made sure she couldn’t summon help – they found her call button unplugged – Bessie wouldn’t have much left between the ears. In other words, she’d be exactly the way she is now.”

“I see.” Melanie continued polishing the outside of the glass. “You haven’t told me what you think.”

“Two cases of unexplained digoxin toxicity under Chaz Braden twenty-seven years ago, the year Kelly died, and the survivor now lies in an unexplained coma that occurred less than twenty-four hours after forensic experts identified Kelly’s body. That’s a lot of mystery illnesses clustered around a common set of events. Yeah, I’m beginning to go along with the idea there’s a connection.”

Her caressing action with the cloth slowed to a stop. “But do you believe Chaz is responsible for it all?”

“The man’s such an ass, part of me wants to say, ‘Who else could it be?’ ”

“And the rest of you?”

He shrugged. “It bothers me the police investigated the hell out of him for Kelly’s murder, yet couldn’t nail him. So let’s just say that while he’s still number one in my book, and I think what happened to Bessie McDonald is somehow linked to Kelly’s death, I’m also keeping an open mind as to the possibility of other suspects.” He was thinking of Samantha McShane.

Melanie remained perfectly motionless.

He felt a crick in his neck from looking up at her.

“What about making a case against Chaz regarding Bessie?” she asked after a few seconds.

“Maybe we’ll luck out and someone will remember seeing him on the floor that night. If so, we could connect the dots for the police and point them to him. Then he’d at least have some explaining to do.”

“That army of lawyers his daddy keeps will say otherwise.”

“There’s another potential charge that would make everyone, including those lawyers, look at him in a different light. Someone took a shot at Mark early last night-”

“A shot?”

“Yeah, with a hunting rifle. He skidded into a ditch, and Mark thinks it was Chaz’s work as well. Put a chink like that in his armor – it’s reckless endangerment at the very least, if not attempted murder – Daddy won’t be able to protect him. Maybe then we can tie him to Bessie, and ultimately Kelly.”

“It all sounds flimsy.”

“I know.”

“And if you can’t finger him for taking a shot at Mark?”

“We’re screwed, all the way back to square one. We’d have to get him another way, or go after someone new.”

She studied him for a few seconds, then seemed to realize she still held his drink. “Oh, how rude of me,” she said, and placed it in front of him. Reentering the kitchen, she stopped at the sink and began to wash her hands, allowing the water to run down her forearms and off her elbows.

Out of habit from scrubbing up, Earl thought. When distracted, he sometimes did the same.

“If you like, I can order some food, and we can reminisce the night away,” she called over her shoulder, actually sounding festive.

Jesus, he thought, starting to feel uncomfortable. Is she coming on to me? “I’m sorry, Melanie, but I only have time for the drink,” he said, attempting to extricate himself as painlessly as possible from any overture she’d just made. “I’ve a ton of e-mails waiting from my department, and will be hours dealing with them. You know how it is, everyone getting the urge to make decisions when the chief’s away, and then no end of sandbox spats.”

She reached for a towel. “You’re sure? There’s some terrific gourmet French I could have here in twenty minutes.”

“Sorry. But this hit the spot.” He picked up the drink, toasted her with it, and took three healthy swallows, enough to make her think he at least appreciated her bartending efforts. Nasty-tasting concoction.

Then he stood.

She walked over and took his hand. “You always were a stubborn man, Earl.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. When he returned the gesture, she leaned in, her breasts brushing up against him.

She hasn’t changed a bit, he thought. Still making passes at any half-decent-looking guy.

Outside her building, walking toward the pedestrian overpass that crossed the southern tip of West Street, he figured he’d handled the visit smoothly enough. She hadn’t even asked whom he suspected of being Kelly’s lover. Always a lousy liar, he’d been apprehensive about putting on a show of ignorance.

He looked up behind him and saw her backlit like a tiny mannequin in her penthouse window. To the east, piercing as a phantom pain midst the glitter of lower Manhattan, loomed the area she’d screened off – the void where the Twin Towers once stood.

5:45 P.M.

Hampton Junction

Mark had shown Lucy a full menu of how the human body could fester and fail.

At Zackery Abrams’s she’d seen how pressure sores on a forty-year-old paraplegic could crack the skin along a thigh and open it to the bone. IVs, dressing changes, antibiotics, and painkillers simply held the fort. Skin grafts should have been next, but Zak wouldn’t leave his four-year-old daughter, Christina, in the care of a foster home. “Her mother was killed in the same crash that cost me the use of my legs,” he explained to Lucy, his wan face hardened against the sort of wound that no treatment could cure.

In Christina Halprin’s home the sixty-two-year-old woman explained how her heart was so feeble she could go into acute failure, her lungs filling with fluid, just from making love with Mel, her husband. Rejected as a transplant candidate, and already on every known cardiac medication, she insisted Mark prescribe enough diuretics in order that she could take an extra dose now and then, enough to see her through a special evening with Mel. “So far so good,” she told Lucy, her voice lowered and a soft flush spreading across her cheeks. “Think about it, honey. It’s the one moment when my damned body still feels wonderful. You always read about men going in the saddle. Why not me?”