"I'd like to look at a tissue section of her lungs," I said.

"Come on to my office."

I was considering that the girl might have been drowned, but as I sat over Jenrette's microscope moments later moving around a slide of lung tissue, questions remained unanswered.

"If she drowned," I explained to him as I worked, "the alveoli should be dilated. There should be edema fluid in the alveolar spaces with disproportionate autolytic change of the respiratory epithelium." I adjusted the focus again.

"In other words, if her lungs had been contaminated by fresh water, they should have begun decomposing more rapidly than other tissues. But they didn't."

"What about smothering or strangulation?" he asked.

"The hyoid was intact. There were no petechial hemorrhages."

"That's right."

"And more importantly," I pointed out, "if someone tries to smother or strangle you, you're going to fight like hell. Yet there are no nose or lip injuries, no defense injuries whatsoever."

He handed me a thick case file.

"This is everything," he said. While he dictated Max Ferguson's case, I reviewed every report, laboratory request, and call sheet pertaining to Emily Steiner's murder. Her mother, Denesa, had called Dr. Jenrette's office anywhere from one to five times daily since Emily's body had been found. I found this rather remarkable.

"The decedent was received inside a black plastic pouch sealed by the Black Mountain Police. The seal number is 445337 and the seal is intact" - "Dr. Jenrette?" I interrupted. He removed his foot from the pedal of the dictating machine.

"You can call me Jim," he said again.

"It seems her mother has called you with unusual frequency."

"Some of it is us playing telephone tag. But yes." He slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"She's called a lot."

"Why?"

"Mostly she's just terribly distraught. Dr. Scarpetta. She wants to make sure her daughter didn't suffer."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I told her with a gunshot wound like that, it's probable she didn't.

I mean, she would have been unconscious. uh, probably was when the other things were done. " He paused for a moment. Both of us knew that Emily Steiner had suffered. She had felt raw terror. At some point she must have known she was going to die.

"And that's it?" I asked.

"She's called this many times to find out if her daughter suffered?"

"Well, no. She's had questions and information. Nothing of particular relevance. " He smiled sadly.

"I think she just needs someone to talk to. She's a sweet lady who's lost everyone in her life. I can't tell you how badly I feel for her and how much I pray they catch the horrible monster who did this. That Gault monster I've read about. The world will never be safe as long as he's in it."

"The world will never be safe. Dr. Jenrette. But I can't tell you how much we want to catch him, too. Catch Gault. Catch anybody who does something like this," I said as I opened a thick envelope of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Only one was unfamiliar, and I studied it intensely for a long time as Dr. Jenrette's unemphatic voice went on. I did not know what I was seeing because I had never seen anything quite like this, and my emotional response was a combination of excitement and fear. The photograph showed Emily Steiner's left buttock, where there was an irregular brownish blotch on the skin no bigger than a bottle cap.

"The visceral pleura shows scattered petechiae along the interlobar fissures"

"What is this?" I interrupted Dr. Jenrette's dictation again. He put down the microphone as I came around to his side of the desk and placed the photograph in front of him. I pointed out the mark on Emily's skin as I smelled Old Spice and thought of my ex-husband. Tony, who had always worn too much of it.

"This mark on her buttock is not covered in your report," I added.

"I don't know what that is," he said without a trace of defensiveness. He simply sounded tired. "} just assumed it was some sort of postmortem artifact."

"I don't know of any artifact that looks like that. Did you resect it?"

"No."

"Her body was on something that left that mark." I returned to my chair, sat down, and leaned against the edge of his desk.

"It could be important."

"Yes, if that's the case, I could see how it might be important," he replied, looking increasingly dejected.

"She's not been in the ground long." I spoke quietly but with feeling. He stared uneasily at me.

"She's never going to be in better shape than she is now," I went on.

"I really think we ought to take another look at her." He did not blink as he wet his lips.

"Dr. Jenrette," I said, "let's get her up now." Dr. Jenrette flipped through cards in his Rolodex and reached for the phone.

I watched him dial.

"Hello, Dr. James Jenrette here," he said to whoever answered.

"I wonder if Judge Begley might be in? " The Honorable Hal Begley said he would see us in his chambers in half an hour. I drove while Jenrette gave directions, and I parked on College Street with plenty of time to spare. The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond's overcrowded jail, spread out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Asheville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.

"Judge Begley's not known for his patience," Dr. Jenrette warned me as we climbed marble steps inside the old courthouse. "I can promise he's not going to like your plan."

I knew that Dr. Jenrette did not like my plan, either, for no forensic pathologist wants a peer digging up his work. Dr. Jenrette and I both knew that implicit in all of this was that he had not done a good job.

"Listen," I said as he headed down a corridor on the third floor, "I don't like the plan, either. I don't like exhumations. I wish there were another way."

"I guess I just wish I had more experience in the kinds of cases you see every day," he added.

"I don't see cases like this every day," I said, touched by his humility.

"Thank God, I don't."

"Well, I'd be lying to you. Dr. Scarpetta, if I said that it wasn't real hard on me when I got called to that little girl's scene. Maybe I should have spent a little more time."

"I think Buncombe County is extremely lucky to have you," I said sincerely as we opened the judge's outer office door.

"I wish I had more doctors like you in Virginia. I'd hire you." He knew I meant it and smiled as a secretary as old as any woman I'd ever met who was still employed peered up at us through thick glasses. She used an electric typewriter instead of a computer, and I surmised from the numerous gray steel cabinets lining walls that filing was her forte. Sunlight seeped wanly through barely opened Venetian blinds, a galaxy of dust suspended in the air. I smelled Rose Milk as she rubbed a dollop of moisturizing cream into her bony hands.

"Judge Begley's expecting you," she said before we introduced ourselves.

"You can just go on in. That door there." She pointed to a shut door across from the one we had just come through.

"Now just so you know, court's adjourned for lunch and he's due back at exactly one."

"Thank you," I said.

"We'll try not to keep him long."

"Won't make any difference if you try." Dr. Jenrette's shy knock on the judge's thick oak door was answered by a distracted "Come in!" from the other side. We found His Honor behind a partner's desk, suit jacket off as he sat erectly in an old red leather chair. He was a gaunt, bearded man nearing sixty, and as he glanced over notes in a legal pad, I made a number of telling assessments about him. The orderliness of his desk told me that he was busy and quite capable, and his unfashionable tie and soft-soled shoes bespoke someone who did not give a damn how people like me assessed him.