"Come on down to the unit," he said, "and let's see what this is about."

Lieutenant Hershel Mote could not keep the note of near hysteria out of his voice when Wesley returned his telephone call at twenty-nine minutes past six p. m.

"You're where?" Wesley asked him again on the speaker phone.

"In the kitchen."

"Lieutenant Mote, take it easy. Tell me exactly where you are."

"I'm in SBI Agent Max Ferguson's kitchen. I can't believe this. I've never seen nothing like this."

"Is there anybody else there?"

"It's just me here alone. Except for what's upstairs, like I told you.

I've called the coroner and the dispatcher seeing who he can raise. "

"Take it easy. Lieutenant," Wesley said again with his usual unflappability.

I could hear Mote's heavy breathing.

I said to him, "Lieutenant Mote? This is Dr. Scarpetta.

I want you to leave everything exactly the way you found it. "

"Oh, Lordy," he blurted.

"I done cut him down…"

"It's okay…"

"When I walked in I… Lord have mercy, I couldn't just leave him like that."

"It's all right," I reassured him.

"But it's very important that nobody touches him now."

"What about the coroner?"

"Not even him." Wesley's eyes were on me.

"We're heading out. You'll see us no later than twenty-two hundred hours. In the meantime, you sit tight."

"Yes, sir. I'm just going to sit right in this chair till my chest stops hurting."

"When did this start?" I wanted to know.

"When I got here and found him. I started having these pains in my chest."

"Have you ever had them before?"

"Not that I recollect. Not like this."

"Describe where they are," I said with growing alarm.

"Right in the middle."

"Has the pain gone to your arms or neck?"

"No, ma'am."

"Any dizziness or sweating?"

"I'm sweating a bit."

"Does it hurt when you cough?"

"I've not been coughing. So I don't reckon I can say."

"Have you ever had any heart disease or high blood pressure?"

"Not that I know of."

"And you smoke?"

"I'm doing it now."

"Lieutenant Mote, I want you to listen to me carefully. I want you to put out your cigarette and try to calm down. I'm very concerned because you've had a terrible shock, you're a smoker, and that's a setup for a coronary. You're down there and I'm up here. I want you to call an ambulance right now."

"The pain's settling down a little. And the coroner should be here any minute. He's a doctor."

"That would be Dr. Jenrette?" Wesley inquired.

"He's all we got'round here."

"I don't want you fooling around with chest pains, Lieutenant Mote," I said firmly.

"No, ma'am, I won't." Wesley wrote down addresses and phone numbers. He hung up and made another call.

"Is Pete Marino still running around out there?" he asked whoever had answered the phone.

"Tell him we've got an urgent situation. He's to grab an overnight bag and meet us over at HRT as fast as he can get there. I'll explain when I see him."

"Look, I'd like Katz in on this one," I said as Wesley got up from his desk.

"We're going to want to fume everything we can for prints, in the event things aren't the way they appear."

"Good idea."

"I doubt he'd be at The Body Farm this late. You might want to try his pager."

"Fine. I'll see if I can track him down," he said of my forensic scientist colleague from Knoxville. When I got to the lobby fifteen minutes later, Wesley was already there, a tote bag slung over his shoulder. I had had just enough time in my room to exchange pumps for more sensible shoes, and to grab other necessities, including my medical bag.

"Dr. Katz is leaving Knoxville now," Wesley told me.

"He'll meet us at the scene." Night was settling beneath a distant slivered moon, and trees stirring in the wind sounded like rain. Wesley and I followed the drive in front of Jefferson and crossed a road dividing the Academy complex from acres of field offices and firing ranges. Closest to us, in the demilitarized zone of barbecues and picnic tables shaded by trees, I spotted a familiar figure so out of context that for an instant I thought I was mistaken. Then I recalled Lucy once mentioning to me that she sometimes wandered out here alone after dinner to think, and my heart lifted at the chance of making amends with her.

"Benton," I said, "I'll be right back." The faint sound of conversation drifted toward me as I neared the edge of the woods, and I wondered, bizarrely, if my niece were talking to herself. Lucy was perched on top of a picnic table, and as I drew closer I was about to call her name when I saw she was speaking to someone seated below her on the bench. They were so close to each other their silhouettes were one, and I froze in the darkness of a tall, dense pine.

"That's because you always do that," Lucy was saying in a wounded tone I knew well.

"No, it's because you always assume I'm doing that." The woman's voice was soothing.

"Well, then, don't give me cause."

"Lucy, can't we get past this? Please."

"Let me have one of those."

"I wish you wouldn't start."

"I'm not starting. I just want a puff."

I heard the spurt of a match striking, and a small flame penetrated the darkness. For an instant, my niece's profile was illuminated as she leaned closer to her friend, whose face I could not see. The tip of the cigarette glowed as they passed it back and forth. I silently turned and walked away. Wesley resumed his long strides when I got back to him.

"Someone you know?" he asked.

"I thought it was," I said.

We walked without speaking past empty ranges with rows of target frames and steel silhouettes eternally standing at attention. Beyond, a control tower rose over a building constructed completely of tires, where HRT, the Bureau's Green Berets, practiced maneuvers with live ammunition. A white-and-blue Bell Jetranger waited on the nearby grass like a sleeping insect, its pilot standing outside with Marino.

"We all here?" the pilot asked as we approached.

"Yes. Thanks, Whit," Wesley said.

Whit, a perfect specimen of male fitness in a black flight suit, opened the helicopter's doors to help us board. We strapped ourselves in, Marino and I in back, Wesley up front, and put on headsets as blades began to turn, the jet engine warming. Minutes later, the dark earth was suddenly far beneath our feet as we rose above the horizon, air vents open and cabin lights off. Our transmitted voices blurted on and off in our ears as the helicopter sped south toward a tiny mountain town where another person was dead.

"He couldn't have been home long," Marino said.

"We know…?"

"He wasn't." Wesley's voice cut in from the copilot's seat.

"He left Quantico right after the consultation. Flew out of National at one."

"We know what time his plane got to Asheville?"

"Around four-thirty. He could have been back to his house by five."

"In Black Mountain?"

"Right."

I spoke. "Mote found him at six."

"Jesus." Marino turned to me.

"Ferguson must've started beating off the minute he hit" - The pilot cut in! "We got music if anybody wants it."

"Sure."

"What flavor?"

"Classical."

"Shit, Benton."

"You're outvoted, Pete."

"Ferguson hadn't been home long. That much is clear no matter who or what's to blame," I resumed our jerky conversation as Berlioz began in the background.

"Looks like an accident. Like auto eroticism gone bad. But we don't know." Marino nudged me.

"Got any aspirins?"

I dug in my pocketbook in the dark, then got a mini Maglite out of my medical bag and rooted around some more. Marino muttered profanities when I motioned I could not help him, and I realized he was still in the sweatpants, hooded sweatshirt, and lace-up boots he had been wearing at Hogan's Alley. He looked like a hard drinking coach for some bush-league team, and I could not resist shining the light over incriminating red paint stains on his upper back and left shoulder. Marino had gotten shot.