Silence.

"s.h.i.t," he muttered in frustration. "If only I'd known about it then, known what I know about him now. I would've driven past his crib. You know, checked to see where the h.e.l.l he was. s.h.i.t."

Silence.

He tossed the cigarette b.u.t.t out the window and lit up again. He was smoking one right after another. "So, how long you been seeing him?"

"Several months. Since April."

"He seeing any other ladies, or just you?"

"I don't think he's been seeing anybody else. I don't know. Obviously there's a lot about him I don't know."

He went on with the relentlessness of a threshing machine, "You ever pick up on anything? Anything off about him, I'm saying?"

"I don't know what you mean."

My tongue was getting thick. I was almost slurring my words as if I were falling asleep.

"Off," he repeated. "s.e.x-wise."

I said nothing.

"He ever rough with you? Force anything?"

A pause. "What's he like? He the animal Abby Turnbull described? Can you see him doing something like that, like what he done to her?"

I was hearing him and not hearing him. My thoughts were ebbing and flowing as if I were slipping in and out of consciousness.

"a like aggression, I'm saying. Was he aggressive? You notice anything strange a ?"

The images. Bill. His hands crushing me, tearing at my clothes, pushing me down hard into the couch.

"a guys like that, they have a pattern. It ain't s.e.x they're really after. They have to take it. You know, a conquest a"

He was so rough. He was hurting me. He thrust his tongue into my mouth. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't he. It was as if he'd become somebody else.

"Don't matter a d.a.m.n he's goodlooking, could have it when he wants it. You see that? People like that, they're off. OFF a" Like Tony used to do when he was drunk and angry with me.

"a I mean, he's a friggin' rapist, Doc. I know you don't want to hear it. But, G.o.ddam it, it's true. Seems like you might have picked up on something . ."

He drank too much, Bill did. He was worse when he had too much to drink.

"a happens all the time. You wouldn't believe the reports I get, these young ladies calling me to their cribs two months after the fact. They finally get around to telling someone. Maybe a friend convinces them to come forward with the info. Bankers, businessmen, politicians. They meet some babe in a bar, buy her a drink and slip in a little chloral hydrate. Boom. Next thing, she's waking up with this animal in her bed, feels like a friggin' truck's been run through her a"

He would never have tried such a thing with me. He cared about me. I wasn't an object, a stranger a Or maybe he'd simply been cautious. I know too much. He would never have gotten away with it.

"a the toads get away with it for years. Some of *em get away with it their whole lives. Go to their graves with as many notches on their belts as Jack the Giant Killer a"

We were stopped at a red light. I had no idea how long we'd been sitting here, not moving.

"That's the right allusion, ain't it? The drone who killed flies, put a notch on his belt for each one a"

The light was a bright red eye.

"He ever do it to you, Doc? Boltz ever rape you?"

"What?"

I slowly turned toward him. He was staring straight ahead, his face pale in the red glow of the traffic light.

"What?" I asked again. My heart was pounding.

The light blinked from red to green, and we were moving again.

"Did he ever rape you?" Marino demanded, as if I were someone he didn't know, as if I were one of the "babes" whose "cribs" he was called to in the past.

I could feel the blood creeping up my neck.

"He ever hurt you, try to choke you, anything like a"

Rage exploded from me. I was seeing flecks of light. As if something were shorting out. Blinded as blood pounded inside my head.

"No! I've told you every G.o.ddam thing 1 know about him! Every G.o.ddam thing I'm going to tell you! PERIOD!"

Marino was stunned into silence.

I didn't know where we were at first.

The great white clock face floated directly ahead as shadows and shapes materialized into the small trailer park of mobile unit laboratories beyond the back parking lot. There was no one else Tuesday it rained. Water poured from gray skies and my wipers couldn't clear the windshield fast enough. I was part of the barely moving string of traffic creeping along the interstate.

The weather mirrored my mood. The encounter with Marino left me feeling physically sick, hung over. How long had he known? How often had he seen the white Audi parked in my drive? Was it more than idle curiosity when he cruised past my house? He wanted to see how the uppity lady chief lived. He probably knew what the Commonwealth paid me and what my mortgage was each month.

Spitting flares forced me to merge into the left lane, and as I crept past an ambulance, and police directing traffic around a badly mangled van, my dark thoughts were interrupted by the radio.

" a Henna Yarborough was s.e.xually a.s.saulted and strangled, and it is believed she was murdered by the same man who has killed four other Richmond women in the past two monthsa " I turned up the volume and listened to what I'd already heard several times since leaving my house. Murder seemed to be the only news in Richmond these days.

" a the latest development. According to a source close to the investigation, Dr. Lori Petersen may have attempted to dial 911 just before she was murdered a"

This juicy revelation had been on the front page of the morning newspaper.

" a Director of Public Safety Norman Tanner was reached at his home a"

Tanner read an obviously prepared statement. "The police bureau has been apprised of the situation. Due to the sensitivity of these cases, I can't make any comment a"

"Do you have any idea who the source of this information is, Mr. Tanner?" the reporter asked.

"Not at liberty to make any comments about that a"

He couldn't comment because he didn't know.

But I did.

The so-called source close to the investigation had to be Abby herself. Her byline was nowhere to be found. Obviously, her editors would have taken her off the stories. She was no longer reporting the news, now she was making it, and I remembered her threat: "Someone will pay a"

She wanted Bill to pay, the police to pay, the city to pay, G.o.d Himself to pay. I was waiting for news of the computer violation and the mislabeled PERK. The person who would pay was going to be me.

I didn't get to the office until almost eight-thirty, and by then the phones were already ringing up and down the hall.

"Reporters," Rose complained as she came in and deposited a wad of pink telephone message slips on my blotter. "Wire services, magazines and a minute ago some guy from New Jersey who says he's writing a book."

I lit a cigarette.

"The bit about Lori Petersen calling the police," she added, her face lined with anxiety. "How awful, if it's true a"

"Just keep sending everybody across the street," I interrupted. "Anybody who calls about these cases gets directed to Amburgey."

He had already sent me several electronic memos demanding I have a copy of Henna Yarborough's autopsy report on his desk "immediately."

In the most recent memo, "immediately" was underlined and included was the insulting remark "Expect explanation about Times release."

Was he implying I was somehow responsible for this latest "leak" to the press? Was he accusing me of telling a reporter about the aborted 911 call? Amburgey would get no explanation from me. He wasn't going to get a d.a.m.n thing from me today, not even if he sent twenty memos and appeared in person.

"Sergeant Marino's here," Rose quite unnerved me by adding. "Do you want to see him?"

I knew what he wanted. In fact, I'd already made a copy of my report for him. I supposed I was hoping he'd stop by later in the day, when I was gone.

I was initialing a stack of toxicology reports when I heard his heavy footsteps down the hall. When he came in, he was wearing a dripping-wet navy blue rain slicker. His spa.r.s.e hair was plastered to his head, his face haggard.

"About last nighta" he ventured as he approached my desk.

The look in my eyes shut him up.

Ill at ease, he glanced around as he unsnapped his slicker and dug inside a pocket for his cigarettes. "Raining cats and dogs out there," he muttered. "Whatever the h.e.l.l that means. Don't make any sense, when you think of it."

A pause. "*Sposed to burn off by noon."

Wordlessly, I handed him a photocopy of Henna Yarborough's autopsy report, which included Betty's preliminary serological findings. He didn't take the chair on the other side of my desk but stood where he was, dripping on my rug, as he began to read.

When he got to the gross description, I could see his eyes riveted about halfway down the page. His face was hard when he looked at me and asked, "Who all knows about this?"

"Hardly anybody."

"The commissioner seen it?"

No.

"Tanner?"

"He called a while ago. I told him only her cause of death. I made no mention of her injuries."

He perused the report a little while longer.

"Anybody else?" he asked without looking up.

"No one else has seen it."

Silence.

"Nothing in the papers," he said. "Not on the radio or the tube either. In other words, our leak out there don't know these details."

I stared stonily at him.

"s.h.i.t."

He folded the report and tucked inside a pocket. "The guy's a d.a.m.n Jack the Ripper."

Glancing at me, he added, "I take it you ain't heard a peep from Boltz. If you do, dodge him, make yourself scarce."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

The mere mention of Bill's name physically bit into me.

"Don't take his call, don't see him. Whatever's your style. I don't want him having a copy of anything right now. Don't want him seeing this report or knowing anything more than he already knows."

"You're still considering him a suspect?" I asked as calmly as possible.

"h.e.l.l, I'm not sure what I'm considering anymore," he retorted. "Fact is, he's the CA and has a right to whatever he wants, okay? Fact also is I don't give a rat's a.s.s if he's the d.a.m.n governor. I don't want him getting squat. So I'm just asking you to do what you can to avoid him, to give him the slip."

Bill wouldn't be by. I knew I wouldn't hear from him. He knew what Abby had said about him, and he knew I was present when she said it.

"And the other thing," he went on, snapping up his slicker and turning the collar up around his ears, "if you're gonna be p.i.s.sed at me, then be p.i.s.sed. But last night I was just doing my job and if you're thinking I enjoyed it, you're flat-out wrong."

He turned around at the sound of a throat clearing. Wingo hesitated in my doorway, his hands in the pockets of his stylish white linen trousers.

A look of disgust pa.s.sed over Marino's face, and he rudely brushed past Wingo and left.

Nervously jingling change, Wingo came to the edge of my desk and said, "Uh, Dr. Scarpetta, there's another camera crew in the lobby a"

"Where's Rose?" I asked, slipping off my gla.s.ses. My eyelids felt as if they were lined with sandpaper.

"In the ladies' room or something. Uh, you want me to tell the guys to leave or what?"

"Send them across the street," I said, adding irritably, "just like we did to the last crew and the crew before that."

"Sure," he muttered, and he made no move to go anywhere. He was nervously jingling change again.

"Anything else?" I asked with forced patience.