He was punctual, as always, and drove up at five exactly.

"It's good and it's bad," he remarked when we were on my back patio lighting the grill.

"Bad?" I asked. "I don't think you mean it quite like that, Bill."

The sun was at a sharp angle and still very hot, but clouds were streaming across the face of it, throwing us into intervals of shade and white light. The wind had whipped up and the air was pregnant with change.

He wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve and squinted at me. A gust of wind bent the trees and sent a paper towel fluttering across the patio. "Bad, Kay, because his getting quiet may mean he's left the area."

We backed away from the smoldering coals and sipped from bottles of beer. I couldn't endure the thought that the killer might have moved on. I wanted him here. At least we were familiar with what he was doing. My nagging fear was he might begin striking in other cities where the cases would be worked by detectives and medical examiners who did not know what we knew. Nothing could foul up an investigation like a multi jurisdictional effort. Cops were jealous of their turf. Each investigator wanted to make the arrest, and he thought he could work the case better than anyone else. It got to the point one thought a case belonged to him.

I supposed I was not above feeling possessive either. The victims had become my wards, and their only hope for justice was for their killer to be caught and prosecuted here. A person can be charged with only so many capital murders, and a conviction somewhere else might preclude a trial here. It was an outrageous thought. It would be as if the deaths of the women in Richmond were practice, a warm-up, and utterly in vain. Maybe it would turn out that everything happening to me was in vain, too.

Bill was squirting more lighter fluid on the charcoal. He backed away from the grill and looked at me, his face flushed from the heat.

"How about your computer?" he asked. "Anything new?"

I hesitated. There was no point in my being evasive. Bill knew very well that I'd ignored Amburgey's orders and hadn't changed the pa.s.sword or done anything else to, quote, "secure" my data. Bill was standing right over me last Monday night when I activated answer mode and set the echo on again as if I were inviting the perpetrator to try again. Which was exactly what I was doing.

"It doesn't appear anyone else has gotten in, if that's what you mean."

"Interesting," he mused, taking another swallow of beer. "It doesn't make much sense. You'd think the person would try to get into Lori Petersen's case."

"She isn't in the computer," I reminded him. "Nothing new is going into the computer until these cases are no longer under active investigation."

"So the case isn't in the computer. But how's the person getting in going to know that unless she looks?"

"She?"

"She, he-whoever."

"Well, she-he-whoever looked the first time and couldn't pull up Lori's case."

"Still doesn't make a lot of sense, Kay," he insisted. "Come to think of it, it doesn't make a lot of sense someone would have tried in the first place. Anybody who knows much about computer entry would have realized a case autopsied on a Sat.u.r.day isn't likely to be in the office data base by Monday."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," I muttered.

I was edgy around Bill. I couldn't seem to relax or give myself up to what should have been a lovely evening.

Inch-thick rib eyes were marinating in the kitchen. A bottle of red wine was breathing on the counter. Lucy was making the salad, and she was in fine spirits considering we hadn't heard a word from her mother, who was off somewhere with her ill.u.s.trator. Lucy seemed perfectly content. In her fantasies she was beginning to believe she would never leave, and it troubled me that she'd begun hinting at how nice it would be "when Mr. Boltz" and I "got married."

Sooner or later I would have to dash her dreams against the hard rock of reality. She would be going home just as soon as her mother returned to Miami, and Bill and I were not going to get married.

I'd begun scrutinizing him as though for the first time. He was staring pensively at the flaming charcoal, his beer absently cradled in both hands, the hair on his arms and legs gold like pollen in the sun. I saw him through a veil of rising heat and smoke, and it seemed a symbol of the distance growing between us.

Why did his wife kill herself with his gun? Was it simply utilitarian, that his gun was the most convenient means of instantly snuffing herself out? Or was it her way of punishing him for sins I knew nothing of? His wife shot herself in the chest while she was sitting up in bed-in their bed. She pulled the trigger that Monday morning just hours, maybe even minutes, after they made love. Her PERK was positive for sperm. The faint scent of perfume still lingered on her body when I examined her at the scene. What was the last thing Bill said to her before he left for work? "Earth to Kay a"

My eyes focused.

Bill was staring at me. "Off somewhere?" he asked, slipping an arm around my waist, his breath close to my cheek. "Can I come?"

"I was just thinking."

"About what? And don't tell me it's about the office a"

I came out with it. "Bill, there's some paperwork missing from one of the case files you, Amburgey and Tanner were looking through the other day a"

His hand kneading the small of my back went still. I could feel the anger in the pressure of his fingers. "What paperwork?"

"I'm not real sure," I nervously replied. I didn't dare get specific, didn't dare mention the PERK label missing from Lori Petersen's file. "I was just wondering if you may have noticed anyone accidentally picking up anything-" He abruptly removed his arm and blurted out, "s.h.i.t. Can't you push these G.o.ddam cases out of your mind for one G.o.ddam evening?"

"Bill a"

"Enough, all right?"

He plunged his hands into the pockets of his shorts and wouldn't look at me. "Jesus, Kay. You're going to make me crazy. They're dead. The women are f.u.c.king dead. Dead. Dead! You and I are alive. Life goes on. Or at least it's supposed to. It's going to do you in-it's going to do us in-if you don't stop obsessing over these cases."

But for the rest of the evening, while Bill and Lucy were chatting about inconsequential matters at the dinner table, my ear was turned toward the phone. I kept expecting it to ring. I was waiting for Marino's call.

When it rang early in the morning the rain was lashing my house and I was sleeping restlessly, my dreams fragmented, worrisome.

I fumbled for the receiver.

No one was there.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said again as I flicked on the lamp.

In the background a television was faintly playing. I could hear the murmur of distant voices reciting lines I could not make out, and as my heart thudded against my ribs I slammed down the receiver in disgust.

It was Monday now, early afternoon. I was going over the preliminary lab reports of the tests the forensic scientists were conducting upstairs.

They had given the strangling cases a top priority. Everything else - blood alcohol levels, street drugs and barbiturates was temporarily on hold. I had four very fine scientific minds focused on trace amounts of a glittery residue that might be a cheap soap powder found in public restrooms all over the city.

The preliminary reports weren't exactly thrilling. So far, we couldn't even say very much about the known sample, the Borawash soap we used in the building. It was approximately twenty five percent "inert ingredient, an abrasive," and seventy-five percent sodium borate. We knew this because the manufacturer's chemists had told us so. Scanning electron microscopy wasn't so sure. Sodium borate, sodium carbonate and sodium nitrate, for example, all came up as flat-out sodium in SEM. The trace amounts of the glittery residue came up the same way - as sodium. It's about as specific as saying something contains trace elements of lead, which is everywhere, in the air, in the soil, in the rain. We never tested for lead in gunshot residues because a positive result wouldn't mean a thing.

In other words, all that glitters isn't borax.

The trace evidence we'd found on the slain women's bodies could be something else, such as a sodium nitrate with uses ranging from fertilizer to a component of dynamite. Or it could be a crystal carbonate used as a const.i.tuent in photography developers. Theoretically, the killer could spend his working hours in a darkroom or in a greenhouse or on a farm. How many substances out there contain sodium? G.o.d only knows.

Vander was testing a variety of other sodium compounds in the laser to see if they sparkled. It was a quick way to mark items off our list.

Meanwhile, I had my own ideas. I wanted to know who else in the greater Richmond metropolitan area ordered Borawash, who in addition to the Health and Human Services Department. So I called the distributor in New Jersey. I got some secretary who referred me to sales who referred me to accounting who referred me to data processing who referred me to public relations who referred me back to accounting.

Next, I got an argument.

"Our list of clients is confidential. I'm not allowed to release that. You're what kind of examiner?"

"Medical examiner," I measured out each word. "This is Dr. Scarpetta, chief medical examiner in Virginia."

"Oh. You grant licenses to physicians, then-"

"No. We investigate deaths."

A pause. "You mean a coroner?"

There was no point in explaining that, no, I was not a coroner. Coroners are elected officials. They usually aren't forensic pathologists. You can be a gas station attendant and get elected coroner in some states. I let him think he was in the right ballpark and this only made matters worse.

"I don't understand. Are you suggesting someone is saying Borawash is fatal? That just isn't possible. To my knowledge, it isn't toxic, absolutely not. We've never had any problems of that nature. Did someone eat it? I'm going to have to refer you to my supervisor a"

I explained a substance that may be Borawash had been found at several related crime scenes but the cleanser had nothing to do with the deaths, the potential toxicity of the soap wasn't my concern. I told him I could get a court order, which would only waste more of his time and mine. I heard keys clicking as he went into a computer.

"I think you're going to want me to send this to you, ma'am. There are seventy-three names here, clients in Richmond."

"Yes, I would very much appreciate it if you would send me a printout as quickly as possible. But if you would, read me the list over the phone, please."

Decidedly lacking in enthusiasm, he did, and a lot of good it did. I didn't recognize most of the businesses except for the Department of Motor Vehicles, Central Supply for the city, and of course, HHSD. Collectively speaking, they included probably ten thousand employees, everyone from judges to public defenders to prosecutors to the entire police force to mechanics at the state and city garages. Somewhere within this great pool of people was a Mr. n.o.body with a fetish for cleanliness.

I was returning to my desk a little after 3:00 P.M. with another cup of coffee when Rose buzzed me and transferred a call.

"She's been dead awhile," Marino was saying.

I grabbed my bag and was out the door.

Chapter 11.

According to Marino, the police had yet to find any neighbors who had seen the victim over the weekend. A friend she worked with tried to call Sat.u.r.day and Sunday and didn't get an answer. When the woman didn't show up to teach her one o'clock cla.s.s the friend called the police. An officer arrived at the scene and went around to the back of the house. A window on the third floor was wide open. The victim had a roommate who apparently was out of town.

The address was less than a mile from downtown and on the fringes of Virginia Commonwealth University, a sprawling physical plant with more than twenty thousand students. Many of the schools that made up the university were located in restored Victorian homes and brownstones along West Main. Summer cla.s.ses were in session, and students were walking and riding bicycles along the street. They lingered at small tables on restaurant terraces, sipping coffee, their books stacked by their elbows as they talked with friends and luxuriated in the sunny warmth of a lovely June afternoon.

Henna Yarborough was thirty-one and taught journalism at the university's School of Broadcasting, Marino had told me. She had moved to the city from North Carolina last fall. We knew nothing more about her except that she was dead and had been dead for several days.

Cops, reporters were all over the place.

Traffic was slow rolling past the dark red brick, three-story house, with a blue-and-green handmade flag fluttering over the entrance. There were windowboxes bright with pink and white geraniums, and a blue-steel slate roof with an Art Nouveau flower design in pale yellow.

The street was so congested I was forced to park almost half a block away, and it didn't escape my notice that the reporters were more subdued than usual. They scarcely stirred as I pa.s.sed. They didn't jam cameras and microphones in my face. There was something almost militaristic in their bearing-stiff, quiet, definitely not at ease-as if they sensed this was another one. Number five. Five women like themselves or their wives and lovers who had been brutalized and murdered.

A uniformed man lifted the yellow tape barring the front doorway at the top of the worn granite steps. I went into a dim foyer and up three flights of wooden stairs. On the top landing I found the chief of police, several high-ranking officers, detectives and uniformed men. Bill was there, too, closest to an open doorway and looking in. His eyes briefly met mine, his face ashen.

I was hardly aware of him as I paused in the doorway and looked inside the small bedroom filled with the pungent stench of decomposing human flesh that is unlike any other odor on earth. Marino's back was to me. He was squatting on his heels and opening dresser drawers, his hands deftly shuffling through layers of neatly folded clothing.

The top of the dresser was spa.r.s.ely arranged with bottles of perfume and moisturizers, a hairbrush and a set of electric curlers. Against the wall to the left of it was a desk, and the electric typewriter on top of it was an island in the midst of a sea of paper and books. More books were on a shelf overhead and stacked on the hardwood floor. The closet door was open a crack, the light off inside. There were no rugs or knickknacks, no photographs or paintings on the walls-as if the bedroom had not been lived in very long or else her stay was temporary.

Far to my right was a twin bed. From a distance I saw disarrayed bedcovers and a splay of dark, tangled hair. Watching where I stepped, I went to her.

Her face was turned toward me, and it was so suffused, so bloated by decomposition, I could not tell what she had looked like in life except she was white, with shoulder-length dark brown hair. She was nude and resting on her left side, her legs drawn up, her hands behind her and tightly bound. It appeared the killer used the cords from venetian blinds, and the knots, the pattern, were joltingly familiar. A dark blue bedspread was thrown over her hips in a manner still ringing of careless cold contempt. On the floor at the foot of the bed was a pair of shorty pajamas. The top was b.u.t.toned, and it was slit from the collar to the hem. The bottoms appeared to be slit along the sides.

Marino slowly crossed the bedroom and stood next to me. "He climbed up the ladder," he said.

"What ladder?" I asked.

There were two windows. The one he was staring at was open and nearer the bed. "Against the brick outside," he explained, "there's an old iron fire escape ladder. That's how he got in. The rungs are rusty. Some of it flaked off and is on the sill, probably from his shoes."

"And he went out that way, too," I a.s.sumed aloud.

"Can't say for sure, but it would appear so. The door downstairs was locked. We had to bust it open. But outside," he added, looking toward the window again, "there's tall gra.s.s under the ladder. No footprints. It rained cats and dogs Sat.u.r.day night so that don't help our cause worth a d.a.m.n either."

"This place air-conditioned?" My skin was crawling, the airless room hot and damp and bristling with decay.

"Nope. No fans either. Not a single one."

He wiped his flushed face with his hand. His hair was clinging like gray string to his wet forehead, his eyes bloodshot and darkly ringed. Marino looked as if he hadn't been to bed or changed his clothes in a week.

"Was the window locked?" I asked.

"Neither of them was-" He got a surprised look on his face as we turned in unison toward the doorway. "What the h.e.l.l a ?"

A woman had started screaming in the foyer two floors below. Feet were scuffing, male voices were arguing.

"Get out of my house! Oh, G.o.d a Get out of my house, you G.o.ddam son of a b.i.t.c.h!" screamed the woman.

Marino abruptly brushed past me, and his steps thudded loudly on the wooden stairs. I could hear him saying something to someone, and almost immediately the screaming stopped. The loud voices faded to a murmur.

I began the external examination of the body.

She was the same temperature as the room, and rigor already had come and gone. She got cool and stiff right after death, and then as the temperature outside rose so did the temperature of her body. Finally, her stiffness pa.s.sed, as if the initial shock of death vanished with time.

I did not have to pull back the bedspread much to see what was beneath it. For an instant, I wasn't breathing and my heart seemed to stop. I gently laid the spread back in place and began peeling off my gloves. There was nothing more I could do with her here. Nothing.

When I heard Marino coming back up the stairs, I turned to tell him to be sure the body came to the morgue wrapped in the bedcovers. But the words stuck in my throat. I stared in speechless astonishment.

In the doorway next to him was Abby Turnbull. What in G.o.d's name did Marino think he was doing? Had he lost his mind? Abby Turnbull, the ace reporter, the shark that made jaws seem like a goldfish.

Then I noticed she was wearing sandals, a pair of blue jeans and a white cotton blouse that wasn't tucked in. Her hair was tied back. She wasn't wearing makeup. She carried no tape recorder or notepad, just a canvas tote bag. Her wide eyes were riveted to the bed, her face twisted by terror.

"G.o.d, no!"

As she placed her hand over her open mouth.

"It's her, then," Marino said in a low voice.

She moved closer, staring. "My G.o.d. Henna. Oh, my G.o.da"