"And your father?"

"Away. He's very important."

"Tell me your home phone number, and let's find out what's going on," she says. "Or maybe you have your aunt's cell number? And what is her name?"

Albert tells her his aunt's name and his home number. Scarpetta calls. After several rings, a woman answers.

"Is Mrs. Guidon in, please?" Scarpetta asks as Albert holds her hand tightly.

"May I ask who's calling?" The woman is polite, her accent French.

"I'm not someone she knows, but I'm with her nephew, Albert. At the airport. It appears there is no one to pick him up." She hands the phone to Albert. "Here," she says to him.

"Who is it?" he asks, oddly. After a pause, he says, "Because you're not here, that's why. I don't know her name." He scowls, his tone snippy.

Scarpetta does not volunteer her name to him. Albert lets go of her hand and balls up his fist. He begins smacking it against his thigh, punching himself.

The woman talks fast, her voice audible but unintelligible. She and Albert are speaking French, and Scarpetta stares at Albert with renewed bewilderment as he angrily ends the call and returns the cell phone to her.

"Where did you learn French?" she asks him.

"My mom," he gloomily says. "Aunt Eveline makes me talk it a lot." Tears fill his eyes again.

"I tell you what, let's get my rental car, and I'll take you home. You can show me where you live, can't you?"

He wipes his eyes and nods his head.

107

BATON ROUGE IS A SKYLINE of black smokestacks of different heights, and a pearly smog hangs in a band across the dark horizon.

In the distance, the night is illuminated by the blazing lights of petrochemical plants.

Albert Dard's mood is improving as his new friend drives along River Road, not far from LSU's football stadium. Along a graceful bend in the Mississippi, he points to iron gates and old brick pillars up ahead.

"There," he says. "That's it."

Where he lives is an estate set back at least a quarter of a mile from the road, a massive slate roof and several chimneys rising above dense trees. Scarpetta stops the car, and Albert gets out to enter a code on a keypad, and the gates slowly open. They drive slowly to the classical-revival villa with its small, wavy glass windows and massive masonry front porch. Old live oak trees bend over the property as if to protect it. The only car visible is an old white Volvo parked in front on the cobblestone drive.

"Is your father home?" Scarpetta asks as her silver rental Lincoln bumps over pavers.

"No," Albert glumly replies as they park.

They get out and climb steep brick steps. Albert unlocks the door and deactivates the burglar alarm, and they enter a restored antebellum home with hand-carved molding, dark mahogany, painted panels and antique Oriental rugs that are threadbare and dreary. Wan light filters through windows flanked by heavy damask draperies held back with tasseled cords, and a staircase winds up to a second floor, where someone's quick footsteps sound against a wooden floor.

"That's my aunt," Albert says as a woman with bones like a bird's and unsmiling dark eyes descends the stairs, her hand gliding along the smooth, gleaming wooden banister.

"I am Mrs. Guidon." She walks with light, quick steps to the entrance hallway.

With her sensuous mouth and delicate nostrils, Mrs. Guidon would be pretty, were her face not hard and her dress so severe. A high collar is fastened with a gold brooch, and she wears a long black skirt and clumsy lace-up black shoes, and her black hair is tightly pinned back. She appears to be in her forties, but her age is hard to determine. Her skin is unlined and so pale it is almost translucent, as if she has never seen the sun.

"May I offer you a cup of tea?" Mrs. Guidon's smile is as chilly as the stale, still air.

"Yes!" Albert grabs Scarpetta's hand. "Please come have tea. And cookies, too. You're my new friend!"

"There will be no tea for you," Mrs. Guidon tells him. "Go up to your room right this minute. Take your suitcase with you. I will let you know when you can come down."

"Don't leave," Albert begs Scarpetta. "I hate you," he says to Mrs. Guidon.

She ignores him, obviously having heard this before. "Such a funny little boy who is very tired and cranky because it is very late. Now say good-bye. I'm afraid you won't see this nice lady again."

Scarpetta is kind to him as she says good-bye.

He trudges angrily up the stairs, looking back at her several times, his face painfully touching her heart. When she hears his footsteps on the wooden floor upstairs, she looks hard at her unpleasant and peculiar hostess.

"How cold you are to a little boy, Mrs. Guidon," she says. "What kind of people are you and his father, that you would hope a stranger would bring him home?"

"I am disappointed." Her imperious demeanor doesn't waver. "I thought a scientist of your renown would investigate before making assumptions."

108

LUCY AND MARINO connect by cell phone.

"Where's she staying?" she asks from her parked black Lincoln Navigator SUV.

She and Rudy figured out that the best way to be inconspicuous was to pull into the Radisson parking lot and sit with the engine and lights off.

"The coroner. I'm glad she ain't by herself in no hotel."

"None of us need to be in a hotel," Lucy says. "Damn, could you drive a louder truck?"

"If I had one."

"How does he check out? What's his name?"

"Sam Lanier. His background's clean as a whistle. When he called to check out the Doc, I got the impression he's an okay guy."

"Well, if he isn't, she'll be all right. Because he's about to have three other houseguests," Lucy says.

109

A FRAGILE WEDGEWOOD TEACUP lightly clinks against a saucer.

Mrs. Guidon and Scarpetta sit at a kitchen table made of a centuries-old butcher block that Scarpetta finds repulsive. She can't help but imagine how many chickens and other animals were slaughtered and chopped up on the worn, sloping wood with its hack marks, cracks and discoloration. It is an unpleasant by-product of her profession that she knows too much, and it is almost impossible to kill bacteria on porous materials such as wood.

"How many times must I demand to know why I'm here and how you managed to get me here?" Scarpetta's eyes are intense.

"I find it charming that Albert seems to have decided you are his friend," Mrs. Guidon remarks. "I try very hard to encourage him. He wants nothing to do with school sports or any other activities that might expose him to children his own age. He thinks he belongs right here at this table"-she taps the butcher block with her small, milky white knuckles-"talking to you and me as if he is our peer."

After years of dealing with people who refuse to answer questions or can't or are in denial, Scarpetta is skilled at catching truths as they subtly show themselves. "Why doesn't he associate with children his own age?" she inquires.

"Who knows? It is a mystery. He has always been odd, really, preferring to stay home and do homework, entertaining himself with those peculiar games children play these days. Cards with those awful creatures on them. Cards and computers, cards and more cards." Her gestures are dramatic, her French accent heavy, her English stilted and faltering. "He has been more this way as he gets older. Isolated and playing the card games. Often, he is home, stays in his room with the door shut and will not come out." Suddenly, she softens and seems caring.

Every detail Scarpetta observes is conflicting and disturbing, the kitchen an argument of anachronisms that seem a metaphor for this house and the people who live in it. Behind her is a cavernous fireplace, with formidable hand-forged andirons capable of bearing a load of wood large enough to heat up a room three times this size. A door leads outside, and next to it is a complicated alarm system keypad and an Aiphone with a video screen for the cameras that no doubt guard every entrance. Another keypad, this one much larger, indicates the old mansion is a smart house with multiple modems that allow the occupants to remotely control heating, cooling, lights, entertainment centers and gas fireplaces, and even turn appliances off and on. Yet the appliances and thermostats Scarpetta has seen so far have not been upgraded for what she estimates is at least thirty years.