"Why don't you put both Andy and me on a special mission, and I'll help him solve crimes and get bad people off the streets?" Regina suggested as the last solid ball spun across felt, banked several times, and sank out of sight. "Maybe he can teach me to fly, too."

"Maybe Miss Regina and Mister Andy should help out with that fisherman who just burned up," Pony said from the doorway. "I hear things aren't going too well. Some old woman ran over the body, a bicycle, and a tackle box. The troopers are talking about it. They say a mean Hispanic's on the loose and will probably kill some other poor black person the same way."

"And what way might that be?" the governor inquired.

"Spontenuous consumption."

"Well, I 'spect Doctor Sawamatsu will be the judge of that," was Crimm's response.

He had appointed the most recently hired medical examiner himself, and he had the utmost confidence in the infallibility of Dr. Sawamatsu, who had originally come to Virginia for the sole purpose of studying gunshot wounds. His intention had been to take his training back to Japan, but the traffic was so bad there and he was so tired of living in a crowded house with people he didn't know that he lingered in the Commonwealth well beyond the completion of his internship. Then the governor, who was always trying to attract Japanese businesses and tourists to Virginia, called Dr. Sawamatsu one day.

"Doctor Sawamatsu," the governor said, and the doctor would never forget what followed, "let me get your honest opinion about something. As you know, the chief medical-examiner is a woman I'm not especially fond of. All of her staff are Americans, and I'm wondering if I had a Japanese medical examiner in Virginia, would that make a difference?"

"To whom?"

"To these Japanese Fortune 500 companies who keep relocating or never relocate here to begin with-and to

Japanese citizens in general who have yet to discover Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, our many amusement parks and plantations and resorts and so on. As long as they speak English, and all of them do."

Dr. Sawamatsu had to think quickly. He wanted to be a medical examiner in America more than anything else, but he was keenly aware that his patients were not important players in tourism or the business community and rarely had any influence whatsoever, either before they were carried into the morgue or after they left.

"When you have especially sensational cases, it most certainly would make a difference," was Dr. Sawamatsu's reply. "Because of the publicity and the message it would send if the medical examiner were Asian. In such a case, I believe my people would reciprocate and locate their companies and tourists here, providing you give them a tax incentive."

"A tax incentive?"

"A big one."

"What an unusual idea," the governor said, and the minute he got off the phone, he told his cabinet that he planned to make all Japanese businesses and individuals exempt from state taxes. The result was stunning. Within a year, tourism flourished. Railways and Greyhound had to double their staffs and buses, and camera stores began popping up on every corner. Dr. Sawamatsu became an assistant chief medical examiner and received a personal thank-you note from Governor Crimm, which the young doctor framed and hung in his living room, next to the display case of souvenirs he had collected from dead patients who no longer had any need of artificial body parts, suicide or threatening notes, or the wreckage of whatever they had died in or the weapons that had killed them.

We need to get this body out of here," Dr. Sawamatsu was telling the police as he crouched in the dark, pulling on surgical gloves. "Please do not let anyone else run over it."

"Where's the chief?" asked Detective Slipper, who did not share the governor's high opinion of Dr. Sawamatsu. "Why isn't Doctor Scarpetta here? She almost always responds personally to complicated, sensational crime scenes."

"She went to court in Halifax and will not be back until very late," Dr. Sawamatsu replied rather testily. "Now, we must get this body to the morgue right now."

"I'm not sure we can retrieve the stretcher out of the river," Detective Slipper hated to tell him. "We'd have to bring in divers."

"No time. We wrap him in sheets and carry him to the ambulance," Dr. Sawamatsu ordered. "I look at him in the morning. I can't see anything out here."

"Glad I'm not the only one," Lamonia grumpily agreed.

She was in handcuffs and standing by her dented Dodge Dart, not sure what she had done to irritate everybody so much. Trader, of course, was not put out with Lamonia in the least. He was watching the activity through his shattered windshield after a fruitless hour of standing on a bridge, shining a powerful flashlight down into the water, trying to find the crabs and the trout. Trader was deeply grateful that Lamonia had virtually destroyed the crime scene. He watched the medical examiner and paramedics cover the dead fisherman with sheets and carry him away, tucking him into the back of the ambulance, which had a crunched-in tailgate. How could Trader's luck have changed so dramatically, all in one day?

Major Trader's career and entire life were in shambles and always had been, if he were honest with himself. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and was faced with a reflection that might as well have been his maternal grandfather, also named Major. All of the men in his mother's lineage had been called Major since Anne Bonny had had sex with a pirate and given birth to a son she named Major because it was a higher rank than captain, and she'd never met a pirate ranked higher than captain.

All the Major men bore a resemblance to one another. They were a sturdy lot with ruddy faces, big girths, pale, shifty eyes, and thinning hair. As a child, Trader had enjoyed a spree of pyromania and had never been caught. To this day, no one on Tangier Island knew that little Major was the one who torched a shed on stilts that turned out to be a soft-crab plantation. Thousands of crabs in the midst of molting had been killed, the year's harvest lost, the economy ruined. To make matters worse, the fire could not be contained and spread up several creeks, incinerating scores of bateaus before the blaze was finally extinguished alarmingly close to Hilda Crockett's Chesapeake House, known for its long family-style tables, crab cakes, clam fritters., home-baked bread, ham, and more.

Young Major Trader also became adept at sneaking the family flare gun out of the wading boot where his father hid his liquor. By experimenting with lighter fluid, gasoline, and bourbon, Major realized he could torch places from a distance by filling a milk jug with a flammable liquid and, when nobody was looking, fire a flare at the jug and cause a small explosion, much like what he had done to the fisherman.

Pony also had led a lawless life as a young one, but unlike Trader, Pony lived with remorse and an overwhelming sense of shame and regret. Having grown weary of watching Regina play pool while her father stood idly by, tapping cigar ashes wherever he thought he saw an ashtray, Pony and Andy had wandered out into the garden. They sat on a granite bench in the cold and began to talk.

"May I get you anything, Mister Andy?"

"No. You're really nice to keep asking, but why don't you just take it easy for a while and tell me about yourself. Why do you call yourself Pony?"

"I don't," Pony replied, his breath smoking out and reminding him he longed for a cigarette. "You mind?" He pulled a pack out of his white jacket. "My daddy called me Pony because when my sister was born-she's older than me-she used to tell my daddy she wanted a pony. We couldn't afford a pony, so when I was born a few years later, my daddy named me Pony and says to my sister, 'Now you got a pony.' "