"it may be a relief not being around Quantico right now, too." She paused, her face very serious when she turned back to me. "Aunt Kay, there's something I need to tell you. I'm not sure you're really going to want to hear this.

Or maybe it would be easier if you didn't hear it. I would have told you yesterday if Marino hadn't been here."

"I'm listening." I was immediately tense.

She paused again. "Especially since you may be seeing Wesley today, I think you ought to know. There's a rumor in the Bureau that he and Connie have split."

I did not know what to say.

"Obviously, I can't verify that this is true," she went on. "But I've heard some of what's being said. And some of it concerns you."

"Why would any of it concern me?" I said too quickly.

"Come on." She met my eyes. "There have been suspicions ever since you started working so many cases with him. Some of the agents think that's the only reason you agreed to be a consultant. So you could be with him, travel with him, you know."

"That's patently untrue," I angrily said as I sat up. "I agreed to be the consulting forensic pathologist because the director asked Benton, who asked me, not the other way around. I assist in cases as a service to the FBI and…"

"Aunt Kay," she interrupted me. "You don't have to defend yourself."

But I would not be soothed. "That is an absolutely outrageous thing for anyone to say. I have never allowed a friendship with anyone to interfere with my professional integrity."

Lucy got quiet, then spoke again. "We're not talking about a mere friendship."

"Benton and I are very good friends."

"You are more than friends."

"At this moment, no, we are not. And it is none of your business."

She impatiently got up from my bed. "It's not right for you to get mad at me."

She stared at me but I could not speak, for I was very close to tears.

"All I'm doing is reporting to you what I've heard so you don't end up hearing it from someone else," she said.

till, I said nothing, and she started to leave.

I reached for her hand. "I'm not angry with you. Please try to understand. It's inevitable I'm going to react when I hear something like this. I feel certain you would, too."

She pulled away from me. "What makes you think I didn't react when I heard it?"

I watched in frustration as she stalked out of my room, and I thought she was the most difficult person I knew. All our lives together we had fought. She never relented until I had suffered as long as she thought I should, when she knew how much I cared. It was so unfair, I told myself as I planted my feet on the floor.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I contemplated getting up and coping with the day. My spirit felt heavy, shadowed by dreams that were now unclear but I sensed had been strange. It seemed there had been water and people who were cruel, and I had been ineffective and afraid. In the bathroom I showered, then got a robe off a hook on the back of the door and found my slippers. Marino and my niece were dressed and in the kitchen when I finally appeared.

"Good morning," I announced as if Lucy and I had not seen each other this day.

"Yo. It's good all right." Marino looked as if he had been awake all night and was feeling hateful.

I pulled out a chair and joined them at the small breakfast table. By now the sun was up, the snow on fire.

"What's wrong?" I asked as my nerves tightened more.

"You remember those footprints out by the wall last night?" His face was boiled red.

"Of course."

"Well, now we've got more of them." He set down his coffee mug. "Only this time they're out by our cars and were left by regular boots with a Vibram tread. And guess what, Doc?" he asked as I already feared what he was about to say. "The three of us ain't going anywhere today until a tow truck gets here first."

I remained silent.

"Someone punctured our tires." Lucy's face was stone.

"Every goddamn one of them. With some kind of wide blade, it looks to me. Maybe a big knife or machete."

"The moral of the story is that it sure as hell wasn't some misguided neighbor or night diver on your property," he went on. "I think we're talking about someone who had a mission. And when he got scared off, he came back or somebody else did."

I got up for coffee. "How long will it take to get our cars fixed?"

"Today?" he said. "I don't think it's possible for you or Lucy to get your rides fixed today."

"It's got to be possible," I matter-of-factly stated. "We have to get out of here, Marino. We need to see Eddings' house. And right now it doesn't seem all too safe in this one."

"I'd say that's a fair assessment," Lucy said.

I moved close to the window over the sink and could plainly see our vehicles with tires that looked like black rubber puddles in the snow.

"They're punctured on the sides versus the tread, and can't be plugged," Marino said.

"Then what are we going to do?" I asked.

"Richmond's got reciprocal agreements with other police departments, and I've already talked to Virginia Beach.

They're on their way."

His car needed police tires and rims, while Lucy's and mine needed Goodyears and Michelins because, unlike Marino, we were here in our personal vehicles. I pointed all this out to him.

"We got a flatbed truck on the way for you," he said as I sat back down. "Sometime during the next few hours they'll load up your Benz and Lucy's piece of shit and haul them into Bell Tire Service on Virginia Beach Boulevard."

"It's not a piece of shit," Lucy said.

"Why the hell did you buy anything the color of parrot shit? That your Miami roots coming out, or what?"

"No, it's my budget coming out. I got it for nine hundred dollars."

"What about in the meantime?" I asked. "You know they won't take care of this speedily. It's New Year's Day."

"You got that right," he said. "And it's pretty simple, Doc. If you're going to Richmond, you're riding with me."

"Fine." I wasn't going to argue. "Then let's get as much done now as we can so we can leave."

"Starting with your getting packed," he said to me. "in my opinion, you should boogie right on out of here for good."

"I have no choice but to stay here until Dr. Mant returns from London."

Yet I packed as if I might not be coming back to his cottage during this life. Then we conducted the best forensic investigation we could on our own, for slashing tires was a misdemeanor, and we knew the local police would not be especially enthused about our case. III-equipped to make tread-pattern casts, we simply took photographs to scale of the footprints around our cars, although I suspected the most we would ever be able to tell from them was that the suspect was large and wore a generic-type boot or shoe with a Vibram seal on the arch of the rugged tread.

When a youthful policeman named Sanders and a red tow truck arrived late morning, I took two ruined radials and locked them inside the trunk of Marino's car. For a while I watched men in jumpsuits and insulated jackets twirl handjacks with amazing speed as a winch held the Ford's front end rampant in the air, as if Marino's car were about to fly. Virginia Beach officer Sanders asked if my being the chief medical examiner might possibly be related to what had been done to our vehicles. I told him I did not think so.

"It's my deputy chief who lives at this address," I went on to explain. "Dr. Philip Mant. He's in London for a month or so. I'm simply covering for him."

"And no one knows you're staying here?" asked Sanders, who was no fool.

"Certainly, some people know. I've been taking his calls."

"So you don't see that this might be related to who you are and what you do, ma'am." He was taking notes.

"At this time I have no evidence that there is a relationship," I replied. "in fact, we really can't say that the culprit wasn't some kid blowing off steam on New Year's Eve."