"Are you sure you want to drink that?"

"Are you insane?" He held the bottle high. "It's impossible to find this vintage anymore."

That might well be true. She had inadvertently cornered the market with her collection. "What if the wine is poisoned?"

His glass hovered in midair, and his face was also frozen.

"You're not sure, are you? Lost your edge?" She sipped from her wineglass and assumed what she hoped was a Mallory smile.

Perversely, he found that reassuring, and tipped back his own glass for a long draught. "You still believe you can talk your way out of this?"

She nodded and drank her wine. And he drank.

"Just as I remember it – fabulous." His gaze fell on Riker's body. "Too bad. I actually liked that man."

"He's not dead yet," said Johanna.

"He'll be dead soon enough, Doctor. And it's all your fault, you know. All those murders. If only you'd hung that jury when you had the chance. It would've taken one vote – yours. If you'd voted guilty, my plan would have died right there in the courtroom. You see that now, don't you? All your fault. And now poor Riker has to die."

"You're making everything too complicated. That's how they'll catch you."

"You'll never know, Doctor. You'll be dead. Or… one phone call to Victor Patchock and you get to live." He perused the bottle's label. "So Timothy Kidd put you onto this wine. That night in the liquor store – was he following me?"

She sipped from the glass. "That's been driving you crazy, hasn't it? How did Timothy know it was you? What did you do wrong?"

"He found me in the neighborhood of a fresh corpse."

"That wasn't it. The body hadn't been found yet. No, the odd note was when you recognized him. In hindsight, it's so simple. You haunted your crime scenes. That's part of the kick, isn't it? The police activity, the media frenzy. That's how you knew Timothy was FBI. Forgive me – I'm digressing. Of course he recognized you. Your face was on the news every night. But he had to wonder why you'd be surprised to see him, a man you'd never met. And then you disappeared so quickly. Details like this are food for a paranoid personality. He was only suspicious that night. When another juror turned up dead the next day, that's when he – "

"Still trying to buy time? You really think the cavalry is coming over the hill to save you. Now, that's odd, because you're the one with the rescuer complex." He yawned. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" He aimed the gun at her face.

"Actually, I was just about to pay you a compliment." He lowered the gun. She knew he would.

"The idea was brilliant," she said. "And you almost pulled it off. You nearly disemboweled the justice system." "With a little help from the ACLU."

"Yes, a nice touch." She watched the rise and fall of Riker's chest, and found comfort in this.

"I don't have to kill him, Doctor. Choose. Riker or Victor." His gun hand warred a moment with the hand that held the wine. The revolver was left to rest on the couch cushion. He drained his glass, then filled it again. "Perhaps I shouldn't rush you. As victims go, you're miles more entertaining than the rest of them." "Even my friend Timothy?"

"Oh, absolutely boring. Though, to be fair, I suppose it's difficult to be scintillating company once your throat is slashed and you're bleeding to death." Zachary lifted his wineglass again, then watched, surprised and helpless to prevent it from tipping forward. His fingers could not close around the crystal. The wine spilled across the couch cushions in a wide red stain.

Johanna was reminded of Timothy Kidd quietly bleeding his life away in an armchair.

Zachary gave her a foolish smile. "I'm drunk."

She shook her head. "No, that's not it." Johanna looked down at her glass. "Such a poor wine. That's all you had in common with Timothy- neither one of you had a discriminating palate. I think my chemicals actually improved the taste."

It was a struggle for him to keep his eyes open. There was a high color in his cheeks and his eyes were those of a dullard, slow to focus. But now, as he began to understand what she had done, he made a clumsy attempt to rise from the couch. Panic worked against him. "You drugged me." His fingers wormed around the handle of the gun, but he could not lift it from the cushion. "You put me to sleep."

"I considered that option," she said. "I have a high tolerance for these drugs, but you have greater body mass. So I couldn't count on outlasting you. And you might've been the first to wake up. No, I didn't sedate you… I killed you. A syringe in the cork. It's the simple plans that work best."

"But you drank – "

"I killed us both. There was no other way." Johanna sat quietly, finally coming to terms with Timothy Kidd's last moments and sharing them. She sipped air and life, what measure was left.

The more Ian Zachary struggled, the faster he died. The red wine stain spread across the upholstery, just like the bloodstains on Timothy's chair. She had not anticipated the justice of this tableau. She had not dared to think so far ahead, lest she falter with the syringe while poisoning the wine.

Zachary's head rolled to one side, and he stared at her in dumb surprise. The muscle spasm, a preview of her own death, made his body go suddenly rigid. Then came the violent shakes, and then nothing at all. He had ceased to exist.

And she was alone.

There was no euphoria to numb her own panic while she separated from the solid earth. Johanna Apollo, the recalcitrant suicide, grieved for her lost life as she careened away from it. This was the moment after the leap from a mountain, the knowledge that she could not scratch her way back to the ledge, and the experience of free fall was intense. There was such cruelty in this long descent from grace – so much time for regret.

The final spasm came. The wineglass fell from her hand. And, in the ether of her dying brain starved of oxygen and blood, regret, tenacious thing, remained.

Riker was bleeding from a head wound, always a good indication of ongoing life, and his pulse was strong. Mallory was still holding on to his wrist as she spoke to the 911 operator, saying the words guaranteed to get the best service, "Officer down."

His limp hand fell back to the floor. Mallory rose to a stand and moved on to examine other elements of her new crime scene: Riker's blood on the wine bottle, his stolen revolver in the loose grip of Zachary's gloved hand. So the doctor had lost the gun to this man before she could get off one round; no surprise there. The Reaper's trademark, a honed penknife, lay at Zachary's feet, and one case was closed. What else? Spilled wine on the couch and a shattered glass on the floor by the doctor's chair. In the absence of visible wounds, poison was such an easy call – a murder-suicide.

No, it was not quite that simple. There were a few outstanding details.

And now the scene was all too easily read, and here her mind made a bruising stumble, slamming up against her own mistake: she had underestimated the doctor's feelings for Riker.

He moaned, and she turned around to see other signs of Riker's awakening, subtle movements of his face and limbs. Before the real horror show could begin, she turned out the light so he would not open his eyes to see the dead white face of Johanna Apollo.

After dragging his body into the hallway, the young detective returned to tamper with the crime scene. In her limited rule book for a cop's life, this was an act of heresy.

She could not remove Riker's stolen gun from the premises; Jack Coffey knew who had taken it, and he would expect to find it listed on the crime-scene inventory. She settled for hiding the revolver in a drawer of the armoire, and now it was less clear that suicide had been Dr. Apollo's second option. Next, with one hand, Mallory wiped the wet face of a corpse, formerly a woman who had loved her life and proved it, leaving behind the irrefutable evidence of tears.