I reached for my coffee. "Okay. Let's get to the other four fibers. What can you tell me about them?"

She glanced over her paperwork. "One is acrylic, one olefin, one polyethylene, the other Dynel. Again, the first three are consistent with carpet-type fibers. The Dynel fiber is interesting because I don't see Dynel very often. It's generally associated with fake fur coats, furlike rugs, wigs. But this Dynel fiber is rather fine, more consistent with garment material."

"The only clothing fiber you found?"

"I'm inclined that way," she answered.

"Beryl was thought to have been wearing a tannish pants suit…"

"It's not Dynel," she said. "At least her slacks and jacket aren't. They're a cotton and polyester blend. It's possible her blouse was Dynel, no way to know since it hasn't turned up."

She retrieved another slide from the file folder and mounted it on the stage. "As for the orange fiber I mentioned, the only acrylic one I found, it has a shape at cross section I've never seen before."

She drew a diagram to demonstrate, three circles joined in the center, bringing to mind a three-leaf clover without a stem. Fibers are manufactured by forcing a melted or dissolved polymer through the very fine holes of a spinneret. Cross-sectionally, the resulting filaments, or fibers, will be the same shape as the spinneret holes, just as a line of toothpaste will be the same cross-sectional shape as the opening in the tube it was squeezed through. I had never seen the clover-leaf shape before, either. Most acrylics are a peanut, dog bone, dumbbell, round, or mushroom shape at cross section.

"Here."

Joni moved to one side, making room for me.

I peered through the ocular lens. The fiber looked like a blotchy twisted ribbon, its varying shades of bright orange lightly peppered with black particles of titanium dioxide.

"As you can see," she explained, "the color is also a little awkward. The orange. Uneven, and moderately dense with delustering particles to dull the fiber's shine.

All the same, the orange is garish, a real Halloween orange, which I find peculiar for clothing or carpet fibers. The diameter is moderately coarse."

"Which would make it consistent with carpeting," I ventured. "Despite the peculiar color."

"Possibly."

I began thinking about what materials I had come across that were bright orange. "What about traffic vests?"

I asked. "They're bright orange, and a fiber from that would fit with the vehicle-type debris you've identified."

"Unlikely," she replied. "Most traffic vests I've seen are nylon versus acrylic, usually a very coarse mesh that isn't likely to shed. In addition, windbreakers and jackets you might associate with road crews or traffic cops are smooth, also unlikely to shed, and they're usually nylon."

She paused, adding thoughtfully, "It also seems to me you aren't likely to find much, if any, delustering particles-you wouldn't want a traffic vest to appear dull."

I backed away from the stereoscope. "Whatever the case, this fiber is so distinctive I suspect it's patented. Someone out there should recognize it even if we don't have a known material for comparison."

"Good luck."

"I know. Proprietary blackouts," I said. "The textile industry is as secretive about their patents as people are about their assignations."

Joni stretched her arms and massaged the back of her neck. "It's always struck me as miraculous the Feds were able to get so much cooperation in the Wayne Williams case," she said, referring to the grisly twenty-two-month spree in Atlanta, in which it is believed that as many as thirty black children were murdered by the same serial killer. Fibrous debris recovered from twelve of the victims' bodies was linked to the residence and automobiles used by Williams.

"Maybe we should get Hanowell to take a look at these fibers, especially this orange one," I said.

Roy Hanowell was an FBI special agent in the Microscopic Analysis Unit in Quantico. He examined the fibers in the Williams case, and ever since had been inundated with other investigative agencies worldwide wanting him to look at everything from cashmere to cobwebs.

"Good luck," Joni said again, just as drolly.

"You'll call him?" I asked.

"I doubt he'll be inclined to look at something that's already been examined," she said, adding, "You know how the Feds are."

"We'll both call him," I decided.

When I returned to my office there were half a dozen pink telephone messages. One jumped out at me. Written on it was a number with a New York City exchange and the note: "Mark. Please return call ASAP."

There was only one reason I could think of for his being in New York. He was seeing Sparacino, Beryl's attorney. Why was Orn-dorff amp; Berger so intensely interested in Beryl Madison's murder? The telephone number apparently was Mark's direct line because he picked up on the first ring.

"When's the last time you were in New York?" he asked casually.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's a flight leaving Richmond in exactly four hours. It's nonstop. Can you can be on it?"

"What is this about?" I asked quietly, my pulse quickening.

"I don't think it wise to discuss the details over the phone, Kay," he said.

"I don't think it wise for me to come to New York, Mark," I responded.

"Please. It's important. You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't."

"It's not possible…"

"I just spent the morning with Sparacino," he interrupted as long-suppressed emotions wrestled with my resolve. "There's a couple of new developments having to do with Beryl Madison and your office."

"My office?" I no longer sounded unmoved. "What could you possibly be discussing that has to do with my office?"

"Please," he said again. "Please come."

I hesitated.

"I'll meet you at La Guardia."

Mark's urgency cut off my attempts at retreat. "We'll find someplace quiet to talk. The reservation's already made. All you need to do is pick up your ticket at the check-in counter. I've booked a room for you, taken care of everything."

Oh God, I thought as I hung up, and then I was inside Rose's office.

"I have to go to New York this afternoon," I explained in a tone that invited no questions. "It has to do with Beryl Madison's case, and I'll be out of the office at least through tomorrow."

I evaded her eyes. Though my secretary knew nothing about Mark, I feared that my motivation was as obvious as a billboard.

"Is there a number where you can be reached?" Rose asked.

"No."

Opening the calendar, she immediately began scanning for the appointments she would need to cancel as she informed me, "The Times called earlier, something about doing a features article, a profile of you."

"Forget it," I answered irritably. "They just want to corner me about Beryl Madison's case. It never fails. Whenever there's a particularly brutal case I refuse to discuss, suddenly every reporter in town wants to know where I went to college, if I have a dog or ambivalence about capital punishment, and what my favorite color, food, movie, and mode of death are."

"I'll decline," she muttered, reaching for the phone.

I left the office in time to make it home, throw a few things into a suit bag, and beat the rush-hour traffic. As Mark promised, my ticket was waiting for me at the airport. He had booked me in first class, and within the hour I was settled in a row all to myself. For the next hour I sipped Chivas on the rocks and tried to read as my thoughts shifted like the clouds in the darkening sky beyond my oval window.

I wanted to see Mark. I realized it wasn't professional necessity, but a weakness that I had believed I had completely overcome. I was alternately thrilled and disgusted with myself. I did not trust him, but I wanted to desperately. He's not the Mark you once knew, and even if he was, remember what he did to you. And no matter what my mind said, my emotions would not listen.

I went through twenty pages of a novel written by Beryl Madison as Adair Wilds and had no earthly idea what I had read. Historical romances are not my favorite, and this one, in truth, wouldn't win any prizes. Beryl wrote well, her prose sometimes breaking into song, but the story limped along on wooden feet. It was the sort of pulp that was written almost to formula, and I wondered if she might have succeeded at the literature she aspired to write had she lived.

The pilot's voice suddenly announced we would be landing in ten minutes. Below, the city was a dazzling circuit board with tiny lights moving along highways and tower lights winking red from the tops of skyscrapers.

Minutes later, I pulled my suit bag out of the storage compartment and passed through the boarding bridge into the madness of La Guardia. I turned, rather startled, at the pressure of a hand on my elbow. Mark was behind me, smiling.

"Thank God," I said with relief.

"What? You thought I was a purse snatcher?" he asked dryly.

"If you had been, you wouldn't be standing," I said.

"I don't doubt that."

He began steering me through the terminal. "Your only bag?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Out front, we got a cab piloted by a bearded Sikh in a maroon turban whose name was Munjar, according to the ID clamped to his visor. He and Mark shouted at each other until Munjar appeared to understand our destination.

"You haven't eaten, I hope," Mark said to me.

"Nothing but smoked almonds…" I fell against his shoulder as we screeched from lane to lane.

"There's a good steak house not far from the hotel," Mark said loudly. "Figured we'd just eat there since I don't know a damn thing about getting around in this city."

Just getting to the hotel would do, I thought, as Munjar began an unsolicited monologue about how he had come to this country to get married, and had a December wedding planned even though he had no prospects for a wife at the moment. He went on to inform us that he had been driving a cab for only three weeks, and had learned how to drive in the Punjab, where he had started driving a tractor at the age of seven.