"Yeah, well, you ought to see the other guys," his voice abruptly sounded in my ears.

"Yo, Benton. Got any aspirins?"

"Airsick?"

"Having too much fun for that," said Marino, who hated to fly. The weather was in our favor as we chopped a path through the clear night at around a hundred and five knots. Cars below us glided like bright-eyed water bugs as the lights of civilization flickered like small fires in the trees. The vibrating darkness might have soothed me to sleep were my nerves not running hot. My mind would not stay still as images clashed and questions screamed.

I envisioned Lucy's face, the lovely curve of her jaw and cheek as she leaned into the flame cupped by her girlfriend's hands. Their impassioned voices sounded in my memory, and I did not know why I was stunned.

I did not know why it should matter. I wondered how much Wesley was aware. My niece had been interning at Quantico since fall semester had begun. He had seen her quite a lot more than I had. There was not a breath of wind until we got into the mountains, and for a while the earth was a pitch-black plain.

"Going up to forty-five hundred feet," our pilot's voice sounded in our headsets.

"Everybody all right back there?"

"I don't guess you can smoke in here," Marino said. At ten past nine, the inky sky was pricked with stars, the Blue Ridge a black ocean swelling without motion or sound. We followed deep shadows of woods, smoothly turning with the pitch of blades toward a brick building that I suspected was a school. Around a corner, we found a football field with police lights flashing and flares burning copper in an unnecessary illumination of our landing zone. And the Nightsun's thirty million peak candlepower blazed down from our belly as we made our descent. At the fifty-yard line, Whit settled us softly like a bird.

" 'Home of the War Horses,' " Wesley read from bunting draped along the fence.

"Hope they're having a better season than we are." Marino gazed out his window as the blades slowed down.

"I haven't seen a high school football game since I was in one."

"I didn't know you played football," I remarked.

"Yo. Number twelve."

"What position?"

"Tight end."

"That figures," I said.

"This is actually Swannanoa," Whit announced.

"Black Mountain's just east." We were met by two uniformed officers from the Black Mountain Police. They looked too young to drive or carry guns, their faces pale and peculiar as they tried not to stare. It was as if we had arrived by spacecraft in a blaze of gyrating lights and unearthly quiet. They did not know what to make of us or what was happening in their town, and it was with very little conversation that they drove us away. Moments later, we parked along a narrow street throbbing with engines and emergency lights. I counted three cruisers in addition to ours, one ambulance, two fire trucks, two unmarked cars, and a Cadillac.

"Great," Marino muttered as he shut the car door.

"Everybody and his cousin Abner's here." Crime-scene tape ran from the front porch posts to shrubbery, fanning out on either side of the beige two-story aluminum-sided house. A Ford Bronco was parked in the gravel drive ahead of an unmarked Skylark with police antennas and lights.

"The cars are Ferguson's?" Wesley asked as we mounted concrete steps.

"The ones in the drive, yes, sir," the officer replied.

"That window up in the comer's where he's at."

I was dismayed when Lieutenant Hershel Mote suddenly appeared in the front doorway. Obviously, he had not followed my advice.

"How are you feeling?" I asked him.

"I'm holding on." He looked so relieved to see us I almost expected a hug. But his face was gray. Sweat ringed the collar of his denim shirt and shone on his brow and neck. He reeked of stale cigarettes. We hesitated in the foyer, our backs to stairs that led to the second floor.

"What's been done?" Wesley asked.

"Doc Jenrette took pictures, lots of'em, but he didn't touch nothing, just like you said. He's outside talking to the squad if you need him."

"There's a lot of cars out there," Marino said.

"Where is everybody?"

"A couple of the boys are in the kitchen. And one or two's poking around the yard and in the woods out back."

"But they haven't been upstairs?" Mote let out a deep breath.

"Well, now, I'm not going to stand here and lie to you. They did go on up and look. But nobody's messed with anything, I can promise you that. The Doc's the only one who got close." He started up the stairs.

"Max is… he's… Well, goddam." He stopped and looked back at us, his eyes bright with tears.

"I'm not clear on how you discovered him," Marino said. We resumed climbing steps as Mote struggled for composure. The floor was covered in the same dark red carpet I had seen downstairs, the heavily varnished pine paneling the color of honey. He cleared his throat.

"About six this evening I stopped by to see if Max wanted to go out for some supper. When he didn't come to the door, I figured he was in the shower or something and came on in.

"Were you aware of anything that might have indicated he had a history of this type of activity?" Wesley delicately asked.

"No, sir," Mote said with feeling.

"I can't imagine it. I sure don't understand… Well, I've heard tell of people rigging up weird things. I can't say I know what it's for."

"The point of using a noose while masturbating is to place pressure on the carotids," I explained.

"This constricts the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain, which supposedly enhances orgasm."

"Also known as going while you're coming," Marino remarked with his typical subtlety. Mote did not accompany us as we moved forward to a lighted doorway at the end of the hall.

SBI Agent Max Ferguson had a manly, modest bedroom with pine chests of drawers and a rack filled with shotguns and rifles over a rolltop desk. His pistol, wallet, credentials, and a box of Rough Rider condoms were on the table by the quilt-covered bed, the suit I'd seen him wearing in Quantico this morning neatly draped over a chair, shoes and socks nearby.

A wooden bar stool stood between the bathroom and closet, inches from where his body was covered with a colorful crocheted afghan. Overhead, a severed nylon cord dangled from an eye hook screwed into the wooden ceiling. I got gloves and a thermometer out of my medical bag. Marino swore under his breath as I pulled the afghan back from what must have been Ferguson's worst nightmare.

I doubted he would have feared a bullet half as much. He was on his back, the size-D cups of a long- line black brassiere stuffed with socks that smelled faintly of musk. The pair of black nylon panties he had put on before he died had been pulled down around his hairy knees, and a condom still clung limply to his penis. Magazines nearby revealed his predilection for women in bondage with spectacularly augmented breasts and nipples the size of saucers.

I examined the nylon noose tightly angled around the towel padding his neck. The cord, old and fuzzy, had been severed just above the eighth turn of a perfect hangman's knot. His eyes were almost shut, his tongue protruding.

"Is this consistent with him sitting on the stool?" Marino looked up at the segment of rope attached to the ceiling.

"Yes," I said.

"So he was beating off and slipped?"

"Or he may have lost consciousness and then slipped," I answered. Marino moved to the window and leaned over a tumbler of amber liquid on the sill.

"Bourbon," he announced.

"Straight or close to it." The rectal temperature was 91 degrees, consistent with what I would have expected had Ferguson been dead approximately five hours in this room, his body covered. Rigor mortis had started in the small muscles. The condom was a studded affair with a large reservoir that was dry, and I went over to the bed to take a look at the box. One condom was missing, and when I stepped into the master bathroom I found the purple foil wrapper in the wicker trash basket.