"You don't know what you're messing with here," Rocco says.

The agent doesn't bother answering him, his eyes darting around the room. Rocco wipes his face with his greasy napkin, his attention wandering to the steak knife on his plate.

"Try it," the agent says, looking at the steak knife. "Go ahead. Please try it. Make my life a hell of a lot easier."

"I wasn't gonna do nothing. Just let me go and we'll forget this ever happened."

"I can't let you go. Truth is, this isn't my idea of fun. So I'm in a bad mood already. Don't piss me off. You want to help yourself? Well, you know what they say about coming clean at the end."

"No. What the hell do they say?"

"Where's Jay Talley, and don't tell me another fucking lie, asshole."

"I don't know," Rocco whines. "I swear to God I don't. I'm scared of him, too. He's crazy. He don't play the game, and every one of us stay clear of him. He marches to his own beat, swear to God. Can't I please change my pants? You can watch me. I won't try nothing."

Rudy gets off the bed and opens the closet door, the Colt casually by his side, indicating to an increasingly defeated and terrified Rocco that this man is not afraid of anything. There are maybe half a dozen flashy suits hanging on the rod, and he pulls off a pair of pants and tosses them to Rocco.

"Go on." The agent opens the bathroom door and sits back down on the bed.

Rocco trembles as he walks inside the bathroom and peels off his pants and briefs. He tosses them into the tub, douses a towel with tap water and wipes himself.

"Jay Talley," the agent says again. "Real name, Jean-Paul Chandonne."

"Ask me something else." Rocco means it as he sits in a different chair.

"Okay. We'll get back to Talley later. You got plans to take out your father?" The agents stare is cold. "It's no secret you hate him."

"I don't claim him."

"Doesn't matter, Rocco. You ran away from home. You changed your name from Marino to Caggiano. What's the plan and who's involved?"

Rocco hesitates for the longest time, thoughts jumping behind his bloodshot eyes. The agent gets up, breathing through his mouth as if to avoid the stench. He presses the barrel of the Colt against Rocco's right temple.

"Who, what, when and where?" he says, tapping the barrel of the pistol against Rocco's head with each word. "Don't fuck with me!"

"I was gonna do it. In a couple months when he goes fishing. He always goes fishing at Buggs Lake the first week of August. Nail him in his cabin, make it look like a burglary gone bad."

"So you would kill your own father when he's on a fishing trip. You know what you are, Rocco? You're the worst shit I ever met."

WHENEVER NIC ROBILLARD drives past the Sno Depot in downtown Zachary, she feels like crying.

Tonight, the stand, with its handpainted signs advertising snow cones, is dark and deserted. If Buddy were with her, he'd be staring out the window and begging, not caring that the Sno Depot is closed and it isn't possible for his mother to buy him a treat. That boy loves snow cones more than anybody Nic's ever heard of, and despite her efforts to steer him away from sweets, he demands a snow cone-cherry or grape-every time she takes him anywhere in the car.

Buddy is with his grandfather in Baton Rouge right now, where he always is when Nic has to work late, and ever since she returned from Knoxville, she works constantly. Scarpetta inspired her. The need to impress Scarpetta dominates Nic's life. She is determined to bring about the arrest of the serial killer. She is frantic about the abducted women, knowing it absolutely will happen again if the maniac isn't caught. She is tormented by grief and guilt because she is neglecting her son after she was away from him for two and a half months.

If Buddy ever stopped loving her or turned out wrong, Nic would want to die. Some nights when she finally returns to her tiny Victorian house around the corner from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on Lee Street, she lies in bed, staring at dark shapes inside her small room, and listens to the silence as she imagines Buddy sound asleep at her fathers house in Baton Rouge. Thoughts about her son and ex-husband, Ricky, flit about like moths. She contemplates whether she would shoot herself in the heart or the head if she were to lose everything that matters.

Not one person has any idea that Nic gets depressed. Not one person would ever imagine that there are times when she entertains thoughts of suicide. What keeps her from the unthinkable is her belief that self-murder is one of the most selfish sins a person can commit, and she envisions the dire consequences of such an act, pushing the fatal fantasy far out of reach until the next time she dives into a dead man's spin of powerlessness, loneliness and despair.

"Shit," she whispers as she drives south on Main Street, leaving the Sno Depot behind in her emotional wake. "I'm so sorry, Buddy-Boy, my Buddy-Boy." What a decision she faces: choosing between doing nothing about women being murdered and doing nothing about her son.

"MON PETIT AGNEAU PRISЙ!" 

My little treasured lamb, Scarpetta translates as her heart freezes at the sight of Chandonne's handwriting and she feels his presence in his letter to her.

She has been sitting in the same position for so long-in the straight-backed wooden chair by her bedrooms open door-that her lower back aches and the small glass table is sweating from the humid sea air. As she remembers to breathe, she realizes that every muscle is tense, her entire body like a clenched fist.

The letter, the letter, the letter.

It stuns her that his handwriting is beautiful, a practiced calligraphy penned in black ink, not a single word crossed through, not a single mistake that she can see at a glance. He must have spent a lot of time writing this letter to her, as if it was a loving endeavor, and the idea of that just adds to the horror. He thinks of her. He is telling her so by the very act of his artistic penmanship.

She reads his words:

Do you know about the Red Stick yet and that you must go there?

But not until you come to see me first. In the Longhorn State, as they say!

You see, I direct you.

You have no will of your own. You may think you do, but I am the current running through your body, every impulse coming from me. I am inside you. Feel it!

Do you remember that night? You eagerly opened your door and then attacked me because you could not face your longing for me. I have forgiven you for taking my eyes, but you could not take my soul. It follows you constantly. If you try, you can touch it.

Maintenant! Maintenant! It is time. The Red Stick awaits you.

You must come to me first or it will be too late to hear my stories.

Only for you will I tell them.

I know what you want, mon petit agneau prisй! I have what you want.

In two weeks I will be dead and have nothing to say. Ha!

Will you release me to the ecstasy?

Or will I release you? Sinking my teeth into your soft, round loveliness.

If you do not find me, I will find you.

Love and rapture,

Jean-Baptiste

In the old-style bathroom with its plain white toilet, its plain plastic shower curtain around the plain white tub, its mildew-stained white walls, Scarpetta vomits. She drinks a glass of water from the tap and returns to the bedroom, to the table, to that blighted piece of paper, which she suspects will offer her no evidence. He is too clever to leave evidence.

She sits in the chair, trying to fight the images of the filthy beast flying through her front door like an evil spirit crackling out of hell. Scarcely can she recall in detail the pursuit, that terrible pursuit around her living room, as he swung an iron hammer, the same iron hammer he had used before to shatter women's heads and bodies to battered flesh and splintered bone, especially their faces.