An hour later he rose and said what he always said. "You rest easy, honey, Daddy'll be back soon. I love you, baby."

He drove back to Atlee. As he lay on the couch with his gin, his last fleeting image before he fell asleep was Tippi young and smiling at her daddy.

CHAPTER 17

THE UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT Tuck Dutton had been on had not arrived late. In fact, it had arrived twenty minutes early due to a straight-in approach at Dulles and an early pushback from the gate in Jacksonville.

Michelle said, "So he had at least fifty minutes free instead of thirty. Maybe over an hour."

They were sitting over a cup of coffee the next morning at a cafe in Reston near their office. To get the press off their backs, Sean had given a statement that hadn't said much, but was enough to give them some breathing room. But they had not gone back to the office, and were staying at a hotel just in case the reporters got the primal itch to attack again.

"That's right."

"You think he was in on it?"

"If he was, why not just stay out of it? Why come back and get your head busted in?"

"To throw off suspicion."

"Motivation?"

"Husbands kill their wives with astonishing regularity," said Michelle. "Which is all the motivation I need never to walk down the aisle."

"And Willa?"

Michelle shrugged. "Maybe that's all part of the plot. Kidnap Willa but we'll find her somewhere safe and sound."

"Presumably this would all cost money. There must be a record of that."

She said, "It would be good if we could get a look at Tuck's financials."

"I know where his office is."

"We going there now?"

"After we see the ME. I talked to her. She just finished with Pam Dutton's post."

"So you do know the lady?"

"I'm just a friendly guy."

"That's what scares me."

Lori Magoulas was about forty-five years old, short and stocky with bottle-blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

After Sean introduced Michelle, Magoulas said, "Surprised to hear from you, Sean. Thought you'd gone to lose yourself at that lake of yours."

"D.C. just has that pull, Lori."

Lori looked skeptical. "Right. I can't wait to get out of here and find my lake."

She led them down a tiled floor corridor where other people in baggy hospital scrubs hovered over the dead. They stopped at one stainless steel table where Pam Dutton lay, her body permanently marked by the slashed throat as well as the standard Y-incision Magoulas had carved into her.

"What did you find?"

"She was in good health. Would've probably led a long life but for that," she said, pointing at the woman's mangled neck.

"What about the blood levels?"

Magoulas pecked on a laptop situated on a desk next to the steel table, and studied some figures that appeared on the screen. "As best as I can figure, taking into account what was left on the rug and on her clothes, she's missing about a pint."

"Presumably they took it with them?"

"The wound dissected the carotid sheath, slicing open the left common carotid artery and the left jugular. She would've bled out in a few minutes."

"What's your best guess of how it went down?" asked Michelle.

"Judging from the angle of the stab wound and the trace under the nails, I'd say she was grabbed from behind and her throat was cut. She might have reached back and gouged her attacker in the face. We found a good deal of tissue and blood under her cuticles. She must have ripped the guy pretty good. Probably didn't improve his mood."

"Certain it was a guy?" Sean said, drawing a scowl from Michelle.

"We also found beard stubble with the blood and tissue."

"Just confirming," Sean said to his partner.

"So if the left jug and carotid were cut, that means the assailant was probably right-handed if he struck from behind," said Michelle.

"That's right." She picked up a small plastic bottle. Inside were several strands of a black material.

"Found some of these under her right thumbnail and left index finger and another caught in her hair."

Michelle squinted at the evidence. "Looks like nylon."

"From a mask?" Sean opined.

"The guy I saw wore a black mask," said Michelle. "Pam reaches back, gouges at his face with her hands. She gets the nylon under her nails."

"Did you see anything else?" asked Magoulas.

"Not really. I'm pretty observant, but the guy was shooting at me with an MP5. Came within an inch of shredding me instead of a tree. I decided it was smarter to stay alive than to get a positive ID on the shooter."

Magoulas looked at her wide-eyed. "Works for me."

"Anything on the letters on her arms?" Sean asked, as he indicated them on the body. They were harder to read now because of the discoloration of Pam's decaying skin. The dead flesh seemed to be absorbing the permanent ink. Rather than letters, they now appeared to be some sort of skin disease, or else the symbols of some insane human cataloguing process.

"I'm a pathologist, not a linguistic expert. It's black ink, probably from a broad-tipped pen like a Sharpie, written in block letters, and the penmanship, in my humble opinion, isn't great. I'm fluent in Spanish, but that's not Spanish. It's not any other Romance language. It's obviously not Chinese or Russian. Wrong alphabet."

"Maybe an African tribal language?" suggested Sean.

Michelle said, "But like Russian and Chinese I don't think they'd be using an English alphabet. Maybe it's just gibberish to throw us off."

"Okay, anything else of interest?" Sean asked.

"Yeah, that's some serious red hair the lady had. I've cut up lots of redheads, but she takes the cake. I almost needed sunglasses to do the post."

"And how is that relevant to the investigation?" asked Michelle.

"He didn't ask for relevant, he asked for interest." She added with a grin, "Hey, even MEs need to lighten up every once in a while. Otherwise, it could get depressing around here."

"Okay," said Sean. "I'll play along. Anything else of relevance?"

"Lady's had kids."

"We know that."

"Two C-sections." She indicated the old suture tracks on Pam's belly paralleling the Y-cut. They looked like faded zippers.

"And the third vaginally," added Sean.

"Impossible," said Magoulas.

"What?" Sean said sharply.

"The visual exam showed her pelvic bones were unusually configured and her birth canal was abnormally narrow: The X-ray film confirmed those conclusions. And while it's hard to tell at the autopsy level, she appears to have had an SI joint dysfunction; she was probably born with it. Bottom line, no ob-gyn would've gone the vaginal route with the lady unless they wanted to lose their malpractice insurance; way too risky. She'd have to deliver by C."

She glanced at Sean and Michelle, whose gazes were locked on Pam Dutton's savaged belly, as though the answers they craved would float from there and into them.

"Is that relevant?" asked Magoulas, looking at them inquisitively.

Sean finally pulled his gaze away from the old surgical scars and the more recent incision. "You could say it's of interest."