"We have a whole book of verses you can look through when you're deciding on what to have inscribed."

"Then Emily's mother got this from your book?" I asked.

"Well, to tell you the truth, no. I believe she said it's Emily Dickinson." The grave diggers had put down their shovels, and it was light enough now for me to see their faces, wet with sweat and as furrowed as a farmer's fields. Heavy chain clanked as they unwound it from the winch's drum. Then one of the men stepped down into the grave. He secured the chain to hooks on the sides of the concrete vault as Ray went on to tell us that more people had shown up for Emily Steiner's funeral than he had ever heard of around here.

"They were outside the church, on the lawn, and it took close to two hours for all of them to walk past the casket to pay their respects."

"Did you have an open casket?" Marino asked in surprise.

"No, sir." Ray watched his men.

"Now, Mrs. Steiner wanted to, but I wouldn't hear of it. I told her she was distraught and would thank me later for saying no. Why, her little girl wasn't in any kind of shape for a thing like that. I knew a lot of folks would show up just to stare. Course, a lot of rubber neckers showed up anyway, seeing as how there was so much in the news." The winch strained loudly and the truck's diesel engine throbbed as the vault was slowly lifted from the earth. Soil rained down in chunks as the concrete burial chamber rocked higher in the air with each turn of the crank, and one of the men stood by like a member of a ground crew to direct with his hands. At almost the precise moment the vault was free of its grave and lowered to the grass, we were invaded by television crews with cameras mounted and reporters and photographers. They swarmed around the gaping wound in the earth and the vault so stained with red clay that it almost looked bloody.

"Why are you exhuming Emily Steiner?" one of them called out.

"Is it true the police have a suspect?" yelled another.

"Dr. Scarpetta?"

"Why has the FBI been called in?"

"Dr. Scarpetta?" A woman pushed a microphone close to my face.

"It sounds like you're second-guessing the Buncombe County medical examiner."

"Why are you desecrating this little girl's grave?" And above the fray Marino suddenly bellowed as if he had been wounded, "Get the fuck out of here now! You're interfering with an investigation! You hear me, goddam it?" He stomped his feet.

"Leave now!" The reporters froze with shocked faces. They stared at him with open mouths as he continued to rail against them, complexion crimson, blood vessels bulging in his neck.

"The only one desecrating anything around here is you assholes! And if you don't leave right now, I'm gonna start breaking cameras and anything else in my reach, including your goddam ugly heads!"

"Marino," I said, and I placed my hand on his arm. He was so tense he had turned to iron.

"All my goddam career I've been dealing with you assholes and I've had it! You hear me! I've goddam had it, you bunch of mother fuckin sonofabitch, BLOOD SUCKIN' PARASITES! "

"Marino!" I pulled him by the wrist as fear electrified every nerve in my body. Never had I seen him in such a rage. Dear Lord, I thought. Don't let him shoot anyone.

I got in front of him to make him look at me, but his eyes danced wildly above my head.

"Marino, listen to me! They're leaving. Please calm down. Marino, take it easy. Look, every last one of them is leaving right now. See them? You've certainly made your point. They're almost running." The journalists were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, like some phantom band of marauders that had materialized and vanished in the mist. Marino stared across the empty expanse of gently rolling lawn with its sprigs of plastic flowers and perfect rows of gray markers.

The clarion sound of steel striking steel rang out again and again. With hammer and chisel the diggers broke the vault's coal tar seal, then lowered the lid to the earth as Marino hurried into the woods. We pretended not to notice the hideous grunts and groans and gagging sounds coming from mountain laurels as he vomited.

"Do you still have a bottle of each of the fluids you used for embalming?" I asked Lucias Ray, whose reaction to the advancing troops of media and Marino's outburst seemed more quizzical than bothered.

"I may have half a bottle left of what I used on her," he said.

"I'll need chemical controls for toxicology," I explained.

"It's just formaldehyde and methanol with a trace of lanoline oil-as common as chicken soup. Now, I did use a lower concentration because of her small size. Your detective friend sure don't look too good," he added as Marino emerged from the woods.

"You know, the flu's going around."

"I don't think he has the flu," I said.

"How did the reporters find out we were here?"

"Now, you got me on that one. But you know how folks are." He paused to spit.

"Always someone who's got to run his yap." Emily's steel casket was painted as white as the Queen Anne's lace that had grown around her plot, and the diggers did not need the winch to lift it out of the vault and gently lower it to the grass. The casket was small like the body inside it. Lucias Ray slipped a radio out of a coat pocket and spoke into it.

"You can come on now," he said.

"Ten-four," a voice came back.

"No more reporters, I sure hope like heck?"

"They're all gone."

A shiny black hearse glided through the cemetery's entrance and drove half in the woods and half on the grass, miraculously dodging graves and trees. A fat man wearing a trench coat and porkpie hat got out to open the tailgate, and the diggers slid the casket inside while Marino watched from a distance, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

"You and I need to talk." I had moved close and spoke quietly to him as the hearse went on its way.

"I don't need nothing right now." His face was pale.

"I've got to meet Dr. Jenrette at the morgue. Are you coming?"

"No," he said.

"I'm going on back to the Travel-Eze. I'm gonna drink beer until I puke again, then I'm gonna switch to bourbon. And after that I'm gonna call Wesley's ass and ask him when the shit we can get out of this armpit town, because I tell you, I don't have another decent shirt here and I just ruined this one. I don't even have a tie."

"Marino, go lie down."

"I'm living out of a bag this big," he went on, holding his hands not too far apart.

"Take Advil, drink as much water as you can hold, and eat some toast.

I'll check on you when we finish at the hospital. If Benton calls, tell him I'll have my portable phone with me or he can call my pager. "

"He's got those numbers?"

"Yes," I said. Marino glanced at me over his handkerchief as he mopped his face again. I saw the hurt in his eyes before it slipped back behind its walls.