"Jesus!" Berger's grip lightens, but she doesn't let go of her. "Jesus, Lucy. Look at you. You're shaking like a leaf."

"You can't do this." Lucy angrily steps away. "I'm not a child. When you touch me…" She steps back some more. "When you touch me, it means something different. It still does. So don't. Don't."

"I know what it means," Berger says. "I'm sorry."

AT TEN P.M., SCARPETTA climbs out of a taxi in front of Jaime Berger's building.

Still unable to reach her niece, Scarpetta is pricked by anxiety that has worsened with each call she has made. Lucy doesn't answer her apartment or her cell phone. One of her associates at her office said he doesn't know where she is. Scarpetta begins to think about her reckless, fire-breathing niece and contemplates the worst. Her ambivalence about Lucy's new career has not abated. Hers is an unregimented, dangerous and highly secretive life that may suit her personality, but it frustrates Scarpetta and frightens her. She can be impossible to get hold of, and Scarpetta rarely knows what Lucy is doing.

Inside Jaime Berger's luxurious high-rise, a doorman greets Scarpetta.

"May I help you, ma'am?"

"Jaime Berger," Scarpetta replies. "The penthouse."

LUCY IS TEMPTED TO DASH from the building when she realizes that her aunt is headed up in the elevator.

"Calm down," Berger says.

"She doesn't know I'm here," Lucy says, upset. "I don't want her to know I'm here. I can't see her right now."

"You're going to have to see her at some point. May as well be now."

"But she doesn't know I'm here," Lucy repeats herself. "What am I going to tell her?"

Berger gives her an odd look as they hover near the door, waiting for the sound of the elevator.

"Is the truth such a bad thing?" Berger replies angrily. "You could tell her that. Now and then, telling the truth is very therapeutic."

"I'm not a liar," Lucy says. "That's one thing I'm not, unless it is for the sake of work, especially the undercover work."

"The problem is when the boundaries merge," Berger says as the elevator arrives. "Go sit in the living room." As if Lucy is a child. "Let me talk to her first."

Berger s foyer is marble, a table centered with fresh flowers across from the spotless brass elevator. She hasn't seen Scarpetta in several years and is dismayed when she walks out of the elevator. Kay Scarpetta looks exhausted, her suit badly wrinkled, her eyes anxious.

"Does anybody on Earth answer the phone anymore?" she says first thing. "I've tried Marino, Lucy, you. In your case, your line was busy and has been busy for an hour. So at least I assumed someone was home."

"I had it off the hook… I wanted no interruptions."

This makes no sense to Scarpetta. "I'm so sorry to barge in on you like this. I'm frantic, Jaime."

"I can tell. Before you come in, I want you to know that Lucy is here." She states this matter-of-factly. "I didn't want to shock you. But I expect you are relieved."

"Not entirely. Her office stonewalled me, meaning Lucy did."

"Kay, please come in," Berger says.

They walk into the living room.

"Hi." Lucy hugs her aunt.

Her response is stiff. "Why are you treating me like this?" she asks, not caring if Berger hears.

"Treating you like what?" Lucy returns to the living room and sits on the couch. "Come on." She motions for Scarpetta to join her. "You, too, Jaime."

"Not unless you're going to tell her," Berger says. "Otherwise, I want no part in the conversation."

"Tell me what?" Scarpetta sits next to Lucy. "Tell me what, Lucy?"

"I guess you've heard that Rocco Caggiano allegedly committed suicide in Poland," Berger tells her.

"I haven't heard any news today about anything," Scarpetta replies. "Was either on the phone or in a plane, then a taxi. Now I'm here. What do you mean allegedly?"

Lucy stares down at her feet and says nothing. Berger stands at the edge of the living room and is silent.

"You disappeared for days. No one would tell me where you were," Scarpetta begins quietly. "Were you in Poland?"

A long pause, then Lucy lifts her eyes. "Yes, I was."

"Dear God," Scarpetta mutters. "Alleged suicide," she repeats.

Lucy explains the tip about the murdered journalists that Chandonne divulged to her in a letter. She explains further information from him about Rocco's whereabouts. Then she tells her aunt about the Red Notice.

"So Rudy and I found him, found him in the hotel he always stays in when he does his dirty business in Szczecin. We told him about the Red Notice, and he knew that was it. The end. Because, apprehended or not, the Chandonnes would make sure he didn't live very long."

"So he killed himself," Scarpetta says, looking straight into Lucy's eyes, searching them.

Lucy doesn't reply. Berger walks out of the room.

"Interpol has posted the information," Lucy then says, somewhat inanely. "The police say his death is a suicide."

This appeases Scarpetta temporarily, only because she doesn't have the strength to probe further.

She opens her briefcase and shows Lucy the letter from Chandonne, and then Lucy goes into Berger s office.

"Please come," Lucy starts to say.

"No," Berger replies, the look in her eyes one of disappointment, of judgment. "How can you lie to her?"

"I didn't and I haven't."

"By omission. The whole truth, Lucy."

"I'll get there. When it's time. Chandonne wrote her. You've got to see it. There's something really bizarre going on."

"There sure is." Berger gets up from her desk.

They return to the living room and look at the letter and envelopes through their protective plastic.

"That's not like the letter I got," Lucy says immediately. "It was block printing. It wasn't mailed regular post. I guess Rocco mailed it for him. Rocco mailed a lot of things for him. Why would Chandonne write Marino and me in block printing?"

"What did the paper look like?" Scarpetta asks.

"Notebook paper. Lined paper."

"The paper in the prison commissary is plain white, twenty-pound cheap stock. The same thing most of us use in our printers."

"If he didn't send those letters to Marino and me, then who did?" Lucy feels sluggish, her system overloaded.

Based on the information in the letter to her, she orchestrated Rocco Caggiano's death. When she and Rudy held him hostage in the hotel room, Rocco never actually admitted to murdering the journalists. Lucy recalls him rolling his eyes toward the ceiling-his only response. She can't know as fact what he really meant by that gesture. She can't know as fact that the information she sent to Interpol is correct. What she offered was enough for an arrest, but not necessarily a conviction because, in fact, Lucy doesn't know the facts. Did Rocco really meet with the two journalists mere hours before their murders? Even if he did, was he the one who shot them?

Lucy is responsible for the Red Notice. The Red Notice is why Rocco knew his life was over, no matter what he confessed or didn't confess. He became a fugitive, and if Lucy and Rudy hadn't brought about his death, the Chandonnes would have. He should be dead. He needed to be dead. Lucy tells herself the world is better off because Rocco isn't in it.

"Who wrote me that goddamn letter?" Lucy says. "Who wrote the one to Marino and the first one to you?" She looks at Scarpetta. "The ones that came in those National Academy of Justice postage-paid envelopes? They sound like they were written by Chandonne."

"I agree with that," Scarpetta says. "And the coroner in Baton Rouge got one, too."

"Maybe Chandonne changed his handwriting and paper when he wrote this one." Lucy indicates the letter with its beautiful calligraphy. "Maybe the bastard's not in prison at all."