'I'm sorry,' she repeated, her eyes sad, for she knew my history well. 'I didn't mean to bring up something painful. You seem blue enough this morning.'

'You made an interesting point.' I tried to be brave. 'I suspect the killer we're looking for is rather much like a bomber. He doesn't care who he kills. His victims are people with no faces or names. They are nothing but symbols of his private, evil credo.'

'Would it bother you terribly if I asked a question about Mark?' she said.

'Ask anything you want.' I smiled. 'You will anyway.'

'Have you ever gone to where it happened, visited that place where he died?'

'I don't know where it happened,' I quickly replied. She looked at me as she smoked.

'What I mean is, I don't know where, exactly, in the train station.' I was evasive, almost stuttering.

Still she said nothing, crushing the cigarette beneath her foot.

'Actually,' I went on, 'I don't know that I've been in Victoria at all, not that particular station, since he died. I don't think I've had reason to take a train from there. Or arrive there. Waterloo was the last one I was in, I think.'

'The one crime scene the great Dr Kay Scarpetta will not visit.' She tapped another

Consulate out of the pack. 'Would you like one?'

'God knows I would. But I can't.'

She sighed. 'I remember Vienna. All those men and the two of us smoking more than they did.'

'Probably the reason we smoked so much was all those men,' I said.

'That may be the cause, but for me, there seems to be no cure. It just goes to show that what we do is unrelated to what we know, and our feelings don't have a brain.' She shook out a match. 'I've seen smokers' lungs. And I've seen my share of fatty livers.'

'My lungs are better since I quit. I can't vouch for my liver,' I said. 'I haven't given up whiskey yet.'

'Don't, for God's sake. You'd be no fun.' She paused, adding pointedly, 'Course, feelings can be directed, educated, so they don't conspire against us.'

'I will probably leave tomorrow.' I got back to that.

'You have to go to London first to change planes.' She met my eyes. 'Linger there. A

day.'

'Pardon?'

'It's unfinished business, Kay. I have felt this for a long time. You need to bury Mark

James.'

'Margaret, what has suddenly prompted this?' I was tripping over words again.

'I know when someone is on the run. And you are, just as much as this killer is.'

'Now, that's a comforting thing to say,' I replied, and I did not want to have this conversation.

But she was not going to let me escape this time. 'For very different reasons and very similar reasons. He's evil, you're not. But neither of you wants to be caught.'

She had gotten to me and could tell.

'And just who or what is trying to catch me, in your opinion?' My tone was light but I

felt the threat of tears.

'At this stage, I expect it's Benton Wesley.'

I stared off, past the gurney and its protruding pale foot tied with a tag. Light from above shifted by degrees as clouds moved over the sun, and the smell of death in tile and stone went back a hundred years.

'Kay, what do you want to do?' she asked kindly as I wiped my eyes.

'He wants to marry me,' I said.

I flew home to Richmond and days became weeks with the weather getting cold. Mornings were glazed with frost and evenings I spent in front of the fire, thinking and fretting. So much was unresolved and silent, and I coped the way I always did, working my way deeper into the labyrinth of my profession until I could not find a way out. It was making my secretary crazy.

'Dr Scarpetta?' She called out my name, her footsteps loud and brisk along the tile floor in the autopsy suite.

'In here,' I answered over running water.

It was October 30. I was in the morgue locker room, washing up with antibacterial soap.

'Where have you been?' Rose asked as she walked in. 'Working on a brain. The sudden death from the other day.'

She was holding my calendar and flipping pages. Her gray hair was neatly pinned back, and she was dressed in a dark red suit that seemed appropriate for her mood. Rose was deeply angry with me and had been since I' d left for Dublin without saying good-bye. Then I forgot her birthday when I got back. I turned off the water and dried my hands.

'Swelling, with widening of the gyri, narrowing of the sulci, all good for ischemic encephalopathy brought on by his profound systemic hypotension,' I cited.

'I've been trying to find you,' she said with strained patience.

'What did I do this time?' I threw up my hands.

'You were supposed to have lunch at the Skull and Bones with Jon.'

'Oh, God,' I groaned as I thought of him and other medical school advisees I had so little time to see.

'I reminded you this morning. You forgot him last week, too. He really needs to talk to you about his residency, about the Cleveland Clinic.'

'I know, I know.' I felt awful about it as I looked at my watch. 'It's one-thirty. Maybe he can come by my office for coffee?'

'You have a deposition at two, a conference call at three about the Norfolk-Southern case. A gunshot wound lecture to the Forensic Science Academy at four, and a meeting at five with Investigator Ring from the state police.' Rose went down the list. I did not like Ring or his aggressive way of taking over cases. When the second torso had been found, he had inserted himself into the investigation and seemed to think he knew more than the FBI.

'Ring I can do without,' I said, shortly.

My secretary looked at me for a long moment, water and sponges slapping in the autopsy suite next door.

'I'll cancel him and you can see Jon instead.' She eyed me over her glasses like a stern headmistress. 'Then rest, and that's an order. Tomorrow, Dr Scarpetta. Don't come in. Don't you dare let me see you darken the door.'

I started to protest and she cut me off.

'Don't even think of arguing,' she firmly went on. 'You need a mental health day, a long weekend. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it.'

She was right, and as I thought about having a day to myself, my spirits lifted.

'There's not a thing I can't reschedule,' she added. 'Besides.' She smiled. 'We're having a touch of Indian summer and it's supposed to be glorious, in the eighties with a big blue sky. Leaves are at their peak, poplars an almost perfect yellow. Maples look like they're on fire. Not to mention, it's Halloween. You can carve a pumpkin.'

I got suit jacket and shoes out of my locker. 'You should have been a lawyer,' I said.

The next day, the weather was just what Rose predicted, and I woke up thrilled. As stores were opening, I set out to stock up for trick-or-treaters and dinner, and I drove far out on Hull Street to my favorite gardening center. Summer plantings had long since faded around my house, and I could not bear to see their dead stalks in pots. After lunch, I carried bags of black soil, boxes of plants and a watering can to my front porch.

I opened the door so I could hear Mozart playing inside as I gently tucked pansies into their rich, new bed. Bread was rising, homemade stew simmering on the stove, and I smelled garlic and wine and loamy soil as I worked. Marino was coming for dinner, and we were going to hand out chocolate bars to my small, scary neighbors. The

world was a good place to live until three-thirty-five when my pager vibrated against my waist.

'Damn,' I exclaimed as it displayed the number for my answering service.

I hurried inside, washed my hands and reached for the phone. The service gave me a number for a Detective Grigg with the Sussex County Sheriff's Department, and I immediately called.