'Damn!' I exclaimed as rage thundered in my temples.

'So as best we know, Benton calls the number this asshole left. Turns out to be a pay phone near the grocery that got burned,' he went on. 'My guess is, Benton met up with the guy - Carrie's psycho partner. Has no idea who he's talking to until BOOM!'

I jumped.

'Benton's got a gun, maybe a knife to his throat. They cuff him, double-locking with the key. And why do that? Because he's law enforcement and knows that your average Joe don't know about double-locking. Usually, all cops do is click shut the jaws of the cuff when they're hauling somebody in. The prisoner squirms, the cuffs tighten. And if he manages to get a hairpin or something similar up there to override the ratchets, then he might even spring himself free. But with double-locking, no way. Can't get out without a key or something exactly like a key. It's something Benton would've known about when it was happening to him. A big bad signal that he was dealing with someone who knew what the shit he was doing.'

'I've heard enough,' I said to Marino. 'Go home. Please.'

I had the beginning of a migraine. I could always tell when my entire neck and head began to hurt and my stomach felt queasy. I walked Marino to the door. I knew I had wounded him. He was loaded with pain and had no place to shoot, because he did not know how to show what he felt. I wasn't even sure he knew what he felt.

'He ain't gone, you know,' he said as I opened the door. 'I don't believe it. I didn't see it, and I don't believe it.'

'They will be sending him home soon,' I said as cicadas sawed in the dark, and moths swarmed in the glow of the lamp over my porch. 'Benton is dead,' I said with surprising strength. 'Don't take away from him by not accepting his death.'

'He's gonna show up one of these days.' Marino's voice was at a higher pitch. 'You wait. I know that son of a bitch. He don't go down this easy.'

But Benton had gone down this easy. It was so often like that, Versace walking home from buying coffee and magazines or Lady Diana not wearing her seat belt. I shut the door after Marino drove away. I set the alarm, which by now was a reflex that sometimes got me into trouble when I forgot I had armed my house and opened a slider. Lucy was stretched out on the couch, watching the Arts and Entertainment network in the great room, the lights out. I sat next to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

We did not speak as a documentary about gangsters in the early days of Las Vegas played on. I stroked her hair and her skin felt feverish. I wondered what was going on inside that mind of hers. I worried greatly about it, too. Lucy's thoughts were different. They were distinctly her own and not to be interpreted by any Rosetta stone of psychotherapy or intuition. But this much I had learned about her from the beginning of her life. What she didn't say mattered most, and Lucy wasn't talking about Janet anymore.

'Let's go to bed so we can get an early start, Madame Pilot,' I said.

'I think I'll just sleep in here.'

She pointed the remote control and turned down the volume.

'In your clothes?'

She shrugged.

'If we can get to HeloAir around nine, I'll call Kirby from there.'

'What if they say don't come?' my niece asked.

'I'll tell them I'm on my way. New York City is Republican at the moment. If need be, I'll get my friend Senator Lord involved, and he'll get the health commissioner and mayor on the warpath, and I don't think Kirby will want that. Easier to let us land, don't you think?'

'They don't have any ground-to-air missiles there, do they?'

'Yes, they're called patients,' I said, and it was the first time we had laughed in days.

Why I slept as well as I did, I could not explain, but when my alarm clock went off at six A.M., I turned over in bed. I realized I had not gotten up once since shortly before midnight, and this hinted of a cure, of a renewing that I desperately needed. Depression was a veil I could almost see through, and I was beginning to feel hope. I was doing what Benton would expect me to do, not to avenge his murder, really, for he would not have wanted that.

His wish would have been to prevent harm to Marino, Lucy, or me. He would have wanted me to protect other lives I did not know, other unwitting individuals who worked in hospitals or as models and had been sentenced to a terrible death in the split second it took for a monster to notice them with evil eyes burning with envy.

Lucy went running as the sun was coming up, and although it unnerved me for her to be out alone, I knew she had a pistol in her butt pack, and neither of us could let our lives stop because of Carrie. It seemed she had such an advantage. If we went on as usual, we might die. If we aborted our lives because of fear, we still died, only in a way that was worse, really.

'I'm assuming everything was quiet out there?' I said when Lucy returned to the house and found me in the kitchen.

I set coffee on the kitchen table, where Lucy was seated. Sweat was rolling down her shoulders and face, and I tossed her a dishtowel. She took off her shoes and socks, and I was slammed with an image of Benton sitting there, doing the same thing. He always hung around the kitchen for a while after running. He liked to cool down, to visit with me before he took a shower and buttoned himself up in his neat clothes and deep thoughts.

'A couple people out walking their dogs in Windsor Farms,' she said. 'Not a sign of anybody in your neighborhood. I asked the guy at the guard gate if anything was going on, like any more taxi cabs or pizza deliveries showing up for you. Any weird phone calls or unexpected visitors trying to get in. He said no.'

'Glad to hear it.'

'That's chicken shit. I don't think she's the one who did that.'

'Then who?' I was surprised.

'Hate to tell you, but there are other people out there who are none too fond of you.'

'A large segment of the prison population.'

'And people who aren't in prison, at least not yet. Like the Christian Scientists whose kid you did. You think it might occur to them to harass you? Like sending taxis, a construction Dumpster, or calling the morgue early in the morning and hanging up on poor Chuck? That's all you need, is a morgue assistant who's too spooked to be alone in your building anymore. Or worse, the guy quits. Chicken shit,' she said again. 'Petty, spiteful, chicken shit generated by an ignorant, little mind.'

None of this had ever occurred to me before.

'Is he still getting the hang-ups?' she asked.

She eyed me as she sipped her coffee, and through the window over the sink, the sun was a tangerine on a dusky blue horizon.

'I'll find out,' I said.

I picked up the phone and dialed the number for the morgue. Chuck answered immediately.

'Morgue,' he said nervously.

It was not quite seven, and I suspected he was alone.

'It's Dr Scarpetta,' I said.

'Oh!' He was relieved. 'Good morning.'

'Chuck? What about the hang-ups? You still getting them?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Nothing said? Not even the sound of somebody breathing?'

'Sometimes I think I hear traffic in the background, like maybe the person's at a pay phone somewhere.'

'I've got an idea.'

'Okay.'

'Next time it happens, I want you to say, Good morning, Mr and Mrs Quinn.'

'What?' Chuck was baffled.

'Just do it,' I said. 'And I have a hunch the calls will stop.'

Lucy was laughing when I hung up.

'Touche,' she said.