'Dr Scarpetta?' He carried his authority easily, but it was there.

'Yes,' I said, and I had several bags, including a heavy hard case containing my microscope and MicroCam.

'Let me help with those.' He held out his hand. 'I'm Ron Martinez, the station chief at

Crisfield.'

'Thanks. I really appreciate this,' I said.

'Hey, so do we.'

The gap between the pier and the forty-foot patrol boat yawned and narrowed as the surge pushed the boat against the pier. Grabbing the rail, I boarded. Martinez went down a steep ladder, and I followed him into a hold packed with rescue equipment, fire hoses and huge coils of rope, the air heavy with diesel fumes. He tucked my belongings in a secure spot and tied them down. Then he handed me a mustang suit, life vest and gloves.

'You're going to need to put these on, in case you go in. Not a pretty thought but it can happen. The water's maybe in the fifties.' His eyes lingered on me. 'You might want to stay down here,' he added as the boat knocked against the pier.

'I don't get seasick but I am claustrophobic,' I told him as I sat on a narrow ledge and took off my boots.

'Wherever you want, but it's gonna be rough.'

He climbed back up as I began struggling into the suit, which was an exercise in zippers and Velcro, and filled with polyvinyl chloride to keep me alive a little longer should the boat capsize. I put my boots back on, then the life vest, with its knife and whistle, signal mirror and flares. I climbed back up to the cabin because there was no way I was going to stay down there. The crew shut the engine cover on deck, and Martinez strapped himself into the pilot's chair.

'Wind's blowing out of the northwest at twenty-two knots,' a guardsman said. 'Waves cresting at four feet.'

Martinez began pulling away from the pier. 'That's the problem with the bay,' he said to me. 'The waves are too close together so you never get a good rhythm like you do at sea. I'm sure you're aware that we could get diverted. There's no other patrol boat out, so something goes down out here, there's no one but us.'

We began slowly passing old homes with widow's walks and bowling greens.

'Someone needs rescuing, we got to go,' he went on as a member of the crew checked instruments.

I watched a fishing boat go past, an old man in hip-high boots standing as he steered the outboard motor. He stared at us as if we were poison.

'So you could end up on anything.' Martinez enjoyed making this point.

'It wouldn't be the first time,' I said as I began to detect a very revolting smell.

'But one way or another, we'll get you there, like we did the other doctor. Never did get his name. How long have you worked for him?'

'Dr Hoyt and I go way back,' I said blandly.

Ahead were rusting fisheries with rising smoke, and as we got close I could see moving conveyor belts tilted steeply toward the sky, carrying millions of menhaden in to be processed for fertilizer and oil. Gulls circled and waited greedily from pilings, watching the tiny, stinking fish go by as we passed other factories that were ruins of

brick crumbling into the creek. The stench now was unbearable, and I was certainly more stoical than most.

'Cat food,' a guardsman said, making a face.

'Talk about cat breath.'

'No way I'd live around here.'

'Fish oil's real valuable. The Algonquin Indians used cogies to fertilize their corn.'

'What the hell's a cogy?' Martinez asked.

'Another name for those nasty little suckers. Where'd you go to school?'

'Doesn't matter. Least I don't got to smell that for a living. Unless I'm out here with a schleps like you.'

'What the hell's a schlep?'

The banter continued as Martinez pushed the throttle up more, engines rumbling, bow dipping. We sailed by duck blinds and floats marking crab pots as rainbows followed in the spray of our wake. He pushed the speed up to twenty-three knots and we cut into the deep blue water of the bay, where no pleasure boats were out this day, only an ocean liner a dark mountain on the horizon.

'How far is it?' I asked Martinez, hanging on to the back of his chair, and grateful for my suit.

'Eighteen miles total.' He raised his voice, riding waves like a surfer, sliding in sideways and over, his eyes always ahead. 'Ordinarily, it wouldn't take long. But this is worse than usual. A lot worse, really.'

His crew continued checking depth and direction detectors as the GPS pointed the

way by satellite. I could see nothing but water now, moguls rising in front, and behind, waves clapping hard like hands as the bay attacked us from all sides.

'What can you tell me about where we're going?' I almost had to shout.

'Population of about seven hundred. Until about twenty years ago they generated their own electricity, got one small airstrip made of dredge material. Damn.' The boat slammed down hard in a trough. 'Almost broached that one. That'll turn you over in a flash.'

His face was intense as he rode the bay like a bronco, his crewmen unfazed but alert as they held on to whatever they could.

'Economy's based on blue crabs, soft-shell crabs, ship'em all over the country,' Martinez went on. 'In fact, rich folks fly private planes in all the time just to buy crabs.'

'Or that's what they say they're buying,' someone remarked.

'We do have a problem with drunkenness, bootlegging, drugs,' Martinez went on. 'We board their boats when we're checking for life jackets, doing drug interdictions, and they call it being overhauled.' He smiled at me.

'Yeah, and we're the guards,' a guardsman quipped. 'Look out, here come the guards.'

'They use language any way they want,' Martinez said, rolling over another wave.

'You may have a problem understanding them.'

'When does crab season end?' I asked, and I was more concerned about what was being exported than I was about the way Tangiermen talked.

'This time of year they're dredging, dragging the bottom for crabs. They'll do that all winter, working fourteen, fifteen hours a day, sometimes gone a week at a time.' Starboard, in the distance, a dark hulk protruded from the water like a whale. A crewman caught me looking.

'World War Two Liberty ship that ran aground,' he said. 'Navy uses it for target practice.'

At last, we were slowing as we approached the western shore, where a bulkhead had been built of rocks, shattered boats, rusting refrigerators, cars and other junk, to stop the island from eroding more. Land was almost level with the bay, only feet above sea level at its highest ground. Homes, a church steeple and a blue water tower were

proud on the horizon on this tiny, barren island where people endured the worst weather with the least beneath their feet.

We chugged slowly past marshes and tidal flats. Old gap-toothed piers were piled high with crab pots made of chicken wire and strung with colored floats, and battle- scarred wooden boats with round and boxy sterns were moored but not idle. Martinez whelped his horn, and the sound ripped the air as we came through. Tangiermen with

bibs turned expressionless, raw faces on us, the way people do when they have private opinions that aren't always friendly. They moved about in their crab shanties and worked on their nets as we docked near fuel pumps.

'Like most everybody else here, the chief's name is Crockett,' Martinez said as his crew tied us down. 'Davy Crockett. Don't laugh.' His eyes searched the pier and a snack bar that didn't look open this time of year. 'Come on.'

I followed him out of the boat, and wind blowing off the water felt as cold as January. We hadn't gone far when a small pickup truck quickly rounded a corner, tires loud on gravel. It stopped, and a tense young man got out. His uniform was blue jeans, a dark winter jacket and a cap that said Tangier Police, and his eyes darted back and forth between Martinez and me. He stared at what I was carrying.