"You remember. The kitten he killed."

I was silent.

"You see, he did that to me and as you know I've gotten phone calls."

"Are you still getting them, Mrs. Steiner?"

"I've gotten a few. Pete wants me to get Caller I.D."

"Maybe you should."

"What I'm trying to say is these things have been happening to me, and then to Detective Ferguson, and Socks, and then you have the accident. So I'm worried it's all connected. I've certainly been telling Pete to look over his shoulder, too, especially after he tripped yesterday.

I'd just mopped the kitchen floor and his feet went right out from under him. It's like some kind of curse straight out of the Old Testament. "

"Is Marino all right?"

"He's a little bruised. But it could have been bad since he usually has that big gun stuck in the back of his pants. He's such a fine man.

I don't know what I'd do without him these days. "

"Where is he?"

"I imagine he's asleep," she said, and I was beginning to see how skillful she was at evading questions.

"I'll be glad to tell him to call you if you'll tell me where he can reach you."

"He has my pager number," I said, and I sensed in her pause that she knew I did not trust her.

"Well, that's right. Of course he does."

I did not sleep well after that conversation, and finally called Marino's pager. My phone rang minutes later and immediately stopped before I could pick it up. I dialed the front desk.

"Did you just try to put a call through for me?"

"Yes, ma'am. I guess the person hung up."

"Do you know who it was?"

"No, ma'am. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have any idea."

"Was it a man or a woman?"

"It was a woman who asked for you."

"Thank you."

Fright jolted me wide awake as I realized what had happened. I thought of Marino asleep in her bed with the pager on a table, and the hand I saw reach for it in the dark was hers. She had read the number displayed and gone into another room to call it. When she had discovered it was for the Hyatt in Knoxville, she asked for me to see if I were a guest. Then she hung up as the desk rang my room, because she did not want to talk to me. She simply wanted to know where I was, and now she did. Damn! Knoxville was a two-hour drive from Black Mountain. Well, she wouldn't come here, I reasoned. But I could not shake how unsettled I felt, and I was afraid to follow my thoughts into the dark places they were trying to creep.

I started making calls as soon as the sun rose. The first was to Investigator McKee with the Virginia State Police, and I could tell by his voice that I had awakened him from a deep sleep.

"It's Dr. Scarpetta. I'm sorry to call so early," I said.

"Oh. Hold on a minute." He cleared his throat.

"Good morning. Listen, it's a good thing you called. I've got some information for you."

"That's wonderful," I said, enormously relieved.

"I was hoping you would."

"Okay. The taillight is made out of methyl acrylate like most of them are these days, but we were able to fracture-match pieces back to the single unit you removed from your Mercedes. Plus there was a logo on one of these pieces that identified it as being from a Mercedes."

"Good," I said.

"That's what we suspected. What about the headlight glass?"

"It's a little trickier, but we got lucky. They analyzed the headlight glass you recovered, and based on its refraction index, density, design, logo, and so on, we know it came from an Infiniti J30. And that helped us narrow down possibilities for the origin of the paint. When we started looking at Infiniti J30s, there's a model painted a pale green called Bamboo Mist. To make a long story short. Dr. Scarpetta, you got hit by a '93 Infiniti J30 painted Bamboo Mist green. "

I was shocked and confused.

"My God," I muttered as chills swept up my body.

"Is that familiar?" He sounded surprised.

"This can't be right." I had blamed Carrie Grethen and had threatened her. I had been so sure.

"You know someone who has a car like that?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Who?"

"The mother of the eleven-year-old girl who was murdered in western North Carolina," I answered.

"I'm involved in that case and have had several contacts with the woman." McKee did not respond. I knew what I was saying sounded crazy.

"She also was not in Black Mountain when the accident occurred," I went on.

"She supposedly had headed north to visit a sick sister."

"Her car should be damaged," he said.

"And if she's the one who did this, you can bet she's already getting it fixed. In fact, it may already be fixed."

"Even if it is, the paint left on my car could be matched back to it," I said.

"We'll hope so."

"You sound doubtful."

"If the paint job on her car is original and has never been touched up since it came off the assembly line, we could have a problem. Paint technology's changed. Most car manufacturers have gone to a clear base coat, which is a polyurethane enamel. Even though it's cheaper, it looks really rich. But it's not as many layers, and what's unique in vehicle paint identification is the layer sequence."

"So if ten thousand Bamboo Mist Infinitis came off the assembly line at the same time, we're screwed."

"Big-time screwed. A defense attorney will say you can't prove the paint came from her car, especially since the accident occurred on an interstate that's used by people from all over the country. So it won't even do any good to try to find out how many Infinitis painted that color were shipped to certain regions. And she's not from the area where the accident occurred, anyway."

"What about the Nine-one-one tape?" I asked.

"I've listened to it. The call was made at eight forty-seven p.m." and your niece said, "This is an emergency." That's as much as she got out before she was cut off by a lot of noise and static. She sounded like she was in a panic. "

The story was awful, and I felt no better when I called Wesley at home and his wife answered.

"Hold on, and I'll get him to the phone." She was as friendly and gracious as she had always been.

I had weird thoughts while I waited. I wondered if they slept in separate bedrooms, or if she simply had gotten up earlier than he had and this was why she had to go someplace to tell him I was on the phone. Of course, she might be in their bed and he was in the bathroom. My mind spun on, and I was unnerved by what I was feeling. I liked Wesley's wife, and yet I did not want her to be his wife. I did not want anyone to be his wife. When he got on the phone, I tried to talk calmly but did not succeed.

"Kay, wait a minute," he said, and he sounded as if I had awakened him, too.

"Have you been up all night?"

"More or less. You've got to get back out there. We can't rely on Marino. If we even try to contact him, she'll know."

"You can't be certain it was her who called your pager."

"Who else could it have been? No one knows I'm here, and I'd just left the hotel number on Marino's pager. It was only minutes before I got called back."

"Maybe it was Marino who called."

"The clerk said it was a woman's voice."

"Dammit," Wesley said.

"Today ismichele's birthday."

"I'm sorry." I was about to cry and didn't know why.

"We've got to find out if Denesa Steiner's car has been damaged. Someone's got to go look. I've got to know why she was after Lucy."

"Why would she go after Lucy? How could she have known where Lucy was going to be that night and what kind of car she would be in?"

I recalled Lucy telling me that Marino had advised her on her gun purchase. It may have been that Mrs. Steiner overheard their telephone conversation, and I voiced this theory to Wesley.

"Did Lucy have a time when she was going to be there, or did she impulsively stop there on her way back from Quantico?" he asked.