"My younger brother knew Fred Cheney. I knew him, too, though not well."

Staring off at people playing several courts away, he said, "Fred was one of the nicest guys I've ever met. And I'm not just saying that because he's… Well. My brother's really shook up about it."

He bent over and picked up a handful of balls. "And it sort of bothers me, if you want to know the truth, that the newspapers can't get past who Fred was dating. It's like the only person who disappeared was Pat Harvey's daughter. And I'm not saying that the girl wasn't terrific and what happened to her isn't just as awful as what happened to him."

He paused. "Well. I think you know, what I mean."

"I do," I said. "But the other side of that is Deborah Harvey's family is being subjected to intense scrutiny, and they will never be permitted to grieve privately because of who Deborah's mother is. It's unfair and tragic any way you look at it."

Ted thought about this and met my eyes. "You know, I hadn't considered it that way. But you're right. I don't think being famous would be a whole lot of fun. And don't think you're paying me by the hour to stand out here and talk. What would you like to work on tonight? "Ground strokes. I want you to run me corner to corner so I can remind myself how much I hate smoking."

"No more lectures from me on that subject."

He moved to the center of the net.

I backed up to the baseline. My first forehand wouldn't have been half bad had I been playing doubles.

Physical pain is a good diversion, and the harsh realities of the day were pushed aside until the phone rang at home later as I was peeling off my wet clothes.

Pat Harvey was frantic. "The bodies they found today. I have to know."

"They have not been identified, and I have not examined them yet," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and nudging off my tennis shoes.

"A male and a female. That's what I heard."

"So it appears at this point. Yes."

"Please tell me if there's arty possibility it isn't them," she said.

I hesitated.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

"Mrs. Harvey, I can't confirm - " She cut me off in a voice that was getting hysterical."

The police told me they found Debbie's purse, her driver's license."

Morrell, I thought. The half-brained bastard.

I said to her, "We can't make identifications solely from personal effects."

"She's my daughter!"

Next would follow threats and profanity. I had been through this before with the other parents who under ordinary circumstances were as civilized as Sunday school. I decided to give Pat Harvey something constructive to do.

"The bodies have not been identified," I repeated.

"I want to see her."

Not in a million years, I thought. "The bodies aren't visually identifiable," I said. "They're almost skeletonized."

Her breath caught.

"And depending on you, we might establish identity with certainty tomorrow or it might take days."

"What do you want me to do?"

she asked shakily.

"I need X rays, dental charts, anything pertaining to Deborah's medical history that you can get your hands on."

Silence.

"Do you think you could track these down for me?"

"Of course," she said. "I'll see to it immediately."

I suspected she would have her daughter's medical records before sunrise, even if she had to drag half of the doctors in Richmond out of bed.

The following afternoon, I was removing the plastic cover from the OCME's anatomical skeleton when I heard Marino in the hall.

"I'm in here," I said loudly.

He stepped inside the conference room, a blank expression on his face as he stared at the skeleton, whose bones were wired together, a hook in the vertex of his skull attached to the top of an L-shaped bar. He stood a little taller than I was, feet dangling over a wooden base with wheels.

Gathering paperwork from a table, I said, "How about rolling him out for me?"

"You taking Slim for a stroll?"

"He's going downstairs, and his name's Haresh," I replied.

Bones and small wheels clattered quietly as Marino and his grinning companion followed me to the elevator, attracting amused glances from several members of my staff. Haresh did not get out very often, and as a rule, when he was spirited away from his corner, his abductor was not motivated by serious intent. Last June I had walked into my office on the morning of my birthday to find Haresh sitting in my chair, glasses and lab coat on, a cigarette clamped between his teeth. One of the more preoccupied forensic scientists from upstairs - or so I had been told - had walked past my doorway and said good morning without noticing anything odd.

"You're not going to tell me he talks to you when you're working down here," Marino said as the elevator doors shut.

"In his own way he does," I said. "I've found having him on hand is a lot more useful than referring to diagrams in Gray's."

"What's the story on his name?"

"Apparently, when he was purchased years ago, there was an Indian pathologist here named Haresh. The skeleton is also Indian. Male, fortyish, maybe older."

"As in Little Bighorn Indian or the other kind that paint dots on their foreheads?"

"As in the Ganges River in India," I said as we got out on the first floor. "The Hindus cast their dead upon the river, believing they will go straight to heaven."

"I sure as hell hope this joint ain't heaven."

Bones and wheels clattered again as Marino rolled Haresh into the autopsy suite.

On top of a white sheet covering the first stainless steel table were Deborah Harvey's remains, gray dirty bones, clumps of muddy hair, and ligaments as tan and tough as shoe leather. The stench was relentless but not as overpowering, since I had removed her clothes. Her condition was made all the more pitiful by the presence of Haresh, who bore not so much as a scratch on his bleached white bones.

"I have several things to tell you," I said to Marino. "But first I want your promise that nothing leaves this room."

Lighting a cigarette, he looked curiously at me. "Okay."

"There's no question about their identities," I began, arranging clavicles on either side of the skull. "Pat Harvey brought in dental X rays and charts this morning - " "In person?"

he interrupted, surprised.

"Unfortunately," I said, for I had not expected Pat Harvey to deliver the records herself - a miscalculation on my part, and one I wasn't likely to forget.

"That must've created quite a stir," he said.

It had.

When she pulled up in her Jaguar, she had left it illegally parked by the curb and appeared full of demands and on the verge of tears. Intimidated by the presence of the famous public official, the receptionist let her in, and Mrs. Harvey promptly set off down the hall in search of me. I think she would have come down to the morgue had my administrator not intercepted her at the elevator and ushered her into my office, where I found her moments later. She was sitting rigidly in a chair, her face as white as chalk. On top of my desk were death certificates, case files, autopsy photographs, and an excised stab wound suspended in a small bottle of formalin tinted pink by blood. Hanging on the back of the door were bloodstained clothes I was intending to take upstairs when I made evidence rounds later in the day. Two facial reconstructions of unidentified dead females were perched on top of a filing cabinet like decapitated clay heads.

Pat Harvey had gotten more than she had bargained for. She had run head-on into the hard realities of this place.

"Morrell also brought me Fred Cheney's dental records," I said to Marino.

"Then it's definitely Fred Cheney and Deborah Harvey?"

"Yes," I said, and then I directed his attention to X rays clipped to a view box on the wall.