He trotted over to the van.

"Here, let me help, " he said to the female attendant.

"That's mighty nice of you, " she replied, and gave him her end of the stretcher.

"I thought you got this thing fixed, Sammy, " she irritably said to her partner as she tugged on the stuck stretcher legs.

"It just needed oiling, Maybeline. "

"Then why ain't it working? These legs are froze stiff and one of the wheels was sticking the other day. Bet you didn't get that fixed, neither. "

Sammy was silent as Andy held on with one hand and tried the van door with the other.

"How many times I got to tell you, don't say you getting something fixed and then I find out you didn't. " Maybeline was furious. "Breaking my back doing this stinking job and you sitting around all the time watching the TV. "

"I think the tailgate's locked, " Andy said as the stretcher fishtailed and moved around perilously. "I think it's best you forget the legs and let's unlock the van. Then we can just slide the body in. We won't need to roll it. "

"Can't roll it anyway, not with that stuck wheel Sammy couldn't bother to fix. What did you do with the keys?" Maybeline yanked at the stretcher's legs.

"In my pocket. I can't get 'em right this minute. I don't exactly have a hand free. " Sammy was about to lose his temper. "Quit tugging on the legs before we drop the damn body on the floor!"

Regina, sensing an emergency, made her way over to the stretcher at the same time the buzzer sounded and the bay door began to screech open.

"I'll get the keys out for you, " she told Sammy as she began to pat him down the way she saw cops search people on TV.

Regina had no reason to know that Sammy was extremely ticklish. When she started digging in the right front pocket of his pants, he shrieked and jumped six inches into the air. What Macovich witnessed when he drove into the bay was a crazy white man in a dark suit screaming with laughter and begging that ugly Crimm daughter to "Stop!" Next, the man grabbed himself, and the end of the stretcher he had been holding crashed to the floor and the huge black body pouch thudded on concrete. Andy, meanwhile, was shouting at Regina, and a woman attendant howled in pain as the stretcher pinched her hand and knocked her in the face, leaving her bleeding and holding her nose and a finger.

Macovich thought it wise to remain inside his unmarked car and observe the altercation, which was quickly turning violent. Let's see what the pretty white boy does about this, he unkindly thought. That's what you get for being the teacher pet and babysitting the guv's nasty daughter. Ha. Ha. Yeah, I ain't seen a good fight in a while. Wait 'til Doc Sca'petta sees what you doing out here. Huh. She kick your butt to the moon and complain to Sup'intendent Hammer.

"You idiot!" Andy shouted at Regina.

"You're the idiot!" she fired back at the top of her lungs.

"Now look at what you did!" Sammy bellowed at her. "You better hope this dead lady's family don't see her body all banged up! Wait 'til the funeral home find it with bruises and busted bones!"

"Dead bodies don't get bruises, " Andy told him. "And I doubt any bones were broken. "

Sammy was enraged by the sight of Maybeline bleeding, and he shoved Regina against the van and snatched his keys from her. She shoved him back and kicked his ankle. Then she socked him in the eye and bit his hand when he grabbed her by the arm. Andy got between them and was putting Sammy in a chokehold as the door leading inside the building flew open and Dr. Scarpetta, dressed in a surgical gown and gloves, emerged to see what all the commotion was about.

"That's enough, " she announced in a voice that commanded attention. "Stop it right now!"

Twenty-four

By high noon, Fonny Boy had finally figured out how many turns to the left and right would spring open the padlock if he used the combination 7360, which was nautical, he supposed, for 7-Up.

As he had expected, the secret compartment contained a pint of Bowman's vodka, a pack of cigarettes, and, thank goodness, an Orion flare gun that was made of plastic and had a range of twenty-one miles. There were three cartridges, each with a candlepower of 15, 000, and Fonny Boy fired all of them straight up into the air. He and Dr. Faux held their breath for a minute as they drifted in the bateau, still out in the middle of nowhere, the crab pot doggedly following them.

"You shouldn't have shot them all at once, " Dr. Faux said, discouraged and peckish. "Why did you do that, Fonny Boy? It would have made more sense to fire one and wait for a while, then try a second round and eventually the last one. Now we're right back where we started from, lost at sea with no food or water. Put that pint of vodka back. All it will do is make you silly and more dehydrated. "

What neither he nor Fonny Boy could possibly know at the time was that three Coast Guard pilots and an engineer were out in a bright orange Jayhawk helicopter on routine maneuvers. They were flying at an altitude of five hundred feet when three small fiery rockets streaked past their windshield and startled them considerably.

"Jesus Christ! What was that?" the pilot in command exclaimed into his microphone.

"Someone's shooting at us!" the engineer blurted out over the intercom from his bench seat in back.

"No, no, I think they're distress signals. Flares. " The copilot calmed down his buddies. "Did you see how bright they were, like they were phosphorous?"

"We're not in a restricted area, are we?"

"No way. "

"Gotta be flares, then. "

The flares went out quickly but left rapidly fading white streaks across the sky that were easy to trace back to the source, providing one moved fast. The huge helicopter turned on an eastern heading and within minutes spotted a bateau with two people on board, who began waving their arms frantically. The Coast Guard pilots and crew also noticed a buoy that most likely was attached to a crab pot.

"Shit. Tangierians, " the co-pilot said.

"Yup. And guess what? They're in the crab sanctuary, " retorted the engineer. "Look at that bright yellow buoy. A crab pot. "

At the same time they spotted the buoy, Fonny Boy and the dentist heard the unmistakable thudding of helicopter blades. Fonny Boy had been conditioned to resent the Coast Guard, which, he thought, did nothing but persecute watermen. But he was feeling unusually optimistic because of the rusting piece of iron in his pocket. Didn't his mother always say there was a reason for things? Had he not helped the dentist escape, run out of gas, and been rescued by the Coast Guard, he never would have discovered a sunken ship that was plainly marked with a crab pot that, unbeknownst to Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux, was drifting with the current because the rope was too short.

"Thank God, " the dentist said as he stared up at the fast-approaching Jayhawk. "We've been found! And it's a good thing because it doesn't look to me as if we're moving at all-the crab pot is right here next to the bateau and it would be farther away from us by now if we were moving. "

"I can't believe the nerve of them to so blatantly fish in the crab sanctuary, " the Coast Guard engineer said, shaking his head.

The pilot steadied the helicopter into a low hover that whipped up a whirlpool of water around the bateau. The two stranded men lowered their heads and covered their eyes, their clothing flapping like a scarecrow in a hurricane as the rescue basket was lowered.

Cruz Morales also needed to be rescued and was becoming desperate. Maybe he should turn himself in to the authorities. At least he could get out of the chilly morning and eat a hot meal. He was exhausted from walking around Richmond's West End, having wisely decided to ditch his car since all the police in Virginia and the military seemed to be looking for him. On top of everything else, he worried that he was going to be blamed for the 7-Eleven robbery and murder he had witnessed late last night.