"It happened in May of 1995 and required two months to repair the damage, then her husband traded it in on a new one for her."

"That wasn't her last blackout, though." Scarpetta flips to another page in her legal pad, writing quickly and illegibly.

"No, the last one-two weeks before her death-was in the fall. September first, 1995. On that occasion, she took a razor of some sort to paintings valued at more than a million dollars. Supposedly."

"This was in her home?"

"In a parlor, as I understand it."

"Witnessed?"

"Only the aftermath, based on what I'm told. Again, this is according to what her sister and husband said way back when."

"Certainly her drug abuse could cause blackouts. Another possibility is temporal lobe epilepsy. Any record of her having suffered a head injury?"

"None that I'm aware of, and no old fractures or scarring showed up on X ray and gross examination. Hospital records indicate that after her second blackout, which, as I've said, was September first, 1995, she went through the gamut of tests: MRI, PET scan and so on. Nothing. Of course, temporal lobe epilepsy doesn't always show up, and maybe she did suffer some sort of head injury and we just don't know about it. Hard to imagine. I'm inclined to think her drug abuse was to blame."

"Based on the information I have, I agree. Her findings correlate with chronic abuse and not from one single overdose of OxyContin. Sounds like the only answer as to manner of death is investigation."

"Jesus God. That's the problem. The cops who worked the case didn't do shit and sure as hell aren't going to do shit now. Hell, everything's a problem down here. Except the food."

"Mrs. Dard is probably a heart death with chronic drug abuse as a contributing factor," Scarpetta tells him. "That's the most I can offer you."

"Doesn't help that we've got an idiot of a U.S. Attorney, Weldon Winn," Dr. Lanier continues to complain. "Since this damn serial killer's been on the loose, a lot of people are sticking their noses in everything. Politics."

"I presume you're on the task force," Scarpetta interrupts him.

"No. They say I'm not needed, since no bodies have turned up."

"And if a body does turn up, you don't need to know anything about the investigation? Even though it's believed that each of the women was murdered? Everything you're telling me goes from bad to worse," Scarpetta says.

"You're absolutely right. I haven't been invited to look at the scenes of their abductions. I haven't looked at their homes, cars, not a single crime scene."

"Well, you should have," Scarpetta replies. "When a person is abducted and assumed to be a homicide, the police should ask you to look at everything and know every detail. You should be fully informed."

"Should doesn't mean crap down here."

"How many of the abducted women are-or were-from your parish?"

"So far, seven."

"And you haven't been to a single scene of an abduction? I'm sorry to keep asking you the same questions. But I'm incredulous. And now those scenes no longer exist, am I right?"

"Cases are as cold as an ice block," he replies. "I guess the cars are still impounded, and at least that's a good thing. But you can't secure a parking lot or house forever, and I have no idea what's happened with their homes." He pauses to cough. "It's going to happen again. Soon. He's escalating."

62

THE SKY IS TURNING A dirty blue with haze, and the wind picks up.

Scarpetta picks through paperwork as she talks to Dr. Lanier. Just now she finds a copy of the death certificate, folded up inside an envelope. The document isn't certified and should not have been released by Dr. Lanier s office. Only vital records would be authorized to send Scarpetta or any other requesting party a copy-a certified one. When Scarpetta was Chief, it would have been unthinkable for one of her clerks to make such an egregious error.

She mentions the problematic copy of the death certificate, adding, "I'm not trying to interfere with how you run your office, but thought you should know…"

"Goddamn!" he exclaims. "Let me guess which clerk. And don't assume it was a mistake. Some people around here would love nothing better than to get me into serious trouble."

The maiden name on her death certificate is De Nardi, her father Bernard De Nardi, her mother Sylvie Gaillot De Nardi.

Charlotte De Nardi Dard was born in Paris.

"Dr. Scarpetta?"

She vaguely hears his hoarse voice and coughing. Her mind locks on the abducted women, on Charlotte Dard's suspicious death and the information blackout that keeps the coroner clueless. The Louisiana legal system is infamous for corruption.

"Dr. Scarpetta? You there? Did I lose you?"

Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is scheduled to die soon.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Lanier," she finally says. "Let me ask you something. How did you hear about me?"

"Oh, good. I thought we'd gotten disconnected. An indirect referral. A rather unorthodox one suggesting I contact Pete Marino. That led me to you."

"An unorthodox referral from whom?"

He waits for another coughing fit to pass. "A guy on death row."

"Let me guess. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne."

"I'm not surprised you would figure that out. I've been checking, I admit it. You have a pretty scary history with him."

"Let's don't go into that," she says. "I also assume he's the source of information about Charlotte Dard. And by the way, Rocco Caggiano, the lawyer who represented our mysterious pharmacist who allegedly fled to Palm Desert? He's also Chandonne's lawyer."

"Now that I didn't know. You think Chandonne had something to do with Charlotte Dard's death?"

"I'm betting that he or someone either in his family or associated with it did," she says.

63

LUCY ISN'T SHOWERED, her usual demeanor in the office fractured by exhaustion and by post-traumatic stress that she will not acknowledge.

Her clothes look slept in because they were-twice. Once in Berlin, when the flight was cancelled, and the next time in Heathrow, when she and Rudy had to wait three hours to board an eight-hour flight that landed them at Kennedy Airport not even an hour ago. At least they had no baggage to lose, their few belongings stuffed into one small carry-on duffel bag. Before leaving Germany, they showered and disposed of the clothing they had worn in room 511 of the Szczecin Radisson Hotel.

Lucy wiped all prints off her tactical baton, and without a pause in her step, tossed it through the slightly open window of a dented Mercedes on the side of a quiet, narrow street crowded with parked cars. Certainly the Mercedes's owner would puzzle over the baton and wonder who deposited it inside his or her front seat and why.

"Merry Christmas," Lucy muttered, and she and Rudy briskly walked off into the dawn.

The morning was too dark and cool for blow flies, but with the afternoon, when Rudy and Lucy were long gone, the flies would awaken in Poland. More of the filthy winged insects would find Rocco Caggiano's slightly open window and heavily drone inside to feed on his cold, stiff body. The flies should be busy depositing hundreds-maybe thousands- of eggs.

Lucy's chief of staff, Zach Manham, needs but one piece of evidence to deduce that his boss is not herself and that something very bad happened wherever she's just been. She reeks of body odor. Even when Manham has spent hours in the gym or run miles with Lucy, she doesn't stink, not like this. Hers is the strong odor of fear and stress. Its secretion requires little perspiration, which is clammy and concentrated in the armpits and strongly permeates clothing, becoming more unpleasant and noticeable with time. Accompanying this acute reaction is an elevated heartbeat, shallow breathing, pallor and constricted pupils. Manham doesn't know the physiology of a response he learned to recognize early in his former career as a detective for the New York District Attorneys Office, but he doesn't need to know.