'Like I'm going to fall down and suffocate.'

I was beginning to panic the way I had when I' d first learned how to scuba dive.

'You're not going to do either.' She was very patient, her hand steadying me. 'Relax. It's normal to be phobic at first. I'll tell you what to do. Now you stand still and take deep breaths. I'm going to put you in.'

She made adjustments, tightening the display around my head, then returned to the host computer. I was blind and off balance, a tiny TV in front of each eye.

'Okay, here we go,' she said. 'Don't know if it will do any good, but can't hurt to try.' Keys clicked, and I was thrown inside that room. She began instructing me about

what to do with my hand to fly forward or faster, or in reverse, and how to release and grab. I moved my index finger, made clicking motions, brought my thumb near my palm and moved my arm across my chest as I broke out in a sweat. I spent a good five minutes on the ceiling and walking into walls. At one point, I was on top of the table where the torso lay on its bloody blue cover, stepping on evidence and the dead.

'I think I might throw up,' I said.

'Just hold still for a minute,' Lucy said. 'Catch your breath.'

I gestured as I started to say something more, and was instantly on the virtual floor, as if I had fallen from the air.

'That's why I told you to hold still,' she said as she watched what I was doing on the monitors. 'Now move your hand in and point with your first two fingers toward where you hear my voice coming from. Better?'

'Better,' I said.

I was standing on the floor in the room, as if the photograph had come to life, three- dimensional and large. I looked around and did not actually see anything I hadn't before when Vander had done the image enhancement. It was what this made me feel, and what I felt changed what I saw.

Walls were the color of putty, with faint discolorations that until now I had attributed to water damage, which might be expected in a basement or garage. But they seemed different now, more uniformly distributed, some so faint I could barely see them. Paper had once covered the putty paint on these walls. It had been removed but not replaced, as had the cornice box or drapery rod. Above a window covered with shut Venetian blinds were small holes where brackets once had been.

'This isn't where it happened,' I said as my heart beat harder. Lucy was silent.

'She was brought in here after the fact to be photographed. This is not where the killing and dismemberment took place.'

'What are you seeing?' she asked.

I moved my hand and walked closer to the virtual table. I pointed at the virtual walls, to show Lucy what I saw. 'Where did he plug in the autopsy saw?' I said.

I could find but one electrical outlet, and it was at the base of a wall.

'And the drop cloth is from here, too?' I went on. 'It doesn't fit with everything else. No paint, no tools.' I kept looking around. 'And look at the floor. The wood's lighter at the border as if there once was a rug. Who puts rugs in workshops? Who has wallpaper and drapes? Where are the outlets for power tools?'

'What do you feel?' she asked.

'I feel this is a room in someone's house where the furniture has been removed. Except there is some sort of table, which has been covered with something. Maybe a shower curtain. I don't know. The room feels domestic.'

I reached out my hand and tried to touch the edge of the table cover, as if I could lift it and reveal what was underneath, and as I looked around, details became so clear to me, I wondered how I could have missed them before. Wiring was exposed in the ceiling directly above the table, as if a chandelier or other type of light fixture had once hung there.

'What about my color perception right now?' I asked.

'Should be the same.'

'Then there's something else. These walls.' I touched them. 'The color lightens in this direction. There's an opening. Maybe a doorway, with light coming through it.'

'There's no doorway in the photo.' Lucy reminded me. 'You can only see what's there.' It was odd, but for a moment I thought I could smell her blood, the pungency of old flesh that has been dead for days. I remembered the doughy texture of her skin, and the peculiar eruptions that made me wonder if she had shingles.

'She wasn't random,' I said.

'And the others were.'

'The other cases are nothing like this one. I'm getting double imagery. Can you adjust that?'

'Vertical retinal image disparity.' Then I felt her hand on my arm.

'Usually goes away after fifteen or twenty minutes,' she said. 'It's time to take a break.'

'I don't feel too good.'

'Image rotation misalignment. Visual fatigue, simulation sickness, cybersick, whatever you want to call it,' she said. 'Causing image blurring, tears, even queasiness.'

I couldn't wait to remove the helmet and I was on the table again, facedown in blood before I could get the LCDs away from my eyes.

My hands were shaking as Lucy helped me take off the glove. I sat down on the floor.

'Are you all right?' she asked, kindly.

'That was awful,' I said.

'Then it was good.' She returned the helmet and glove to a counter. 'You were immersed in the environment. That's what should happen.'

She handed me several tissues, and I wiped my face.

'What about the other photograph? Do you want to do that one, too?' she asked. 'The one with the hands and feet?'

'I've been in that room quite enough,' I said.

Chapter Eight

I drove home haunted. I had been going to crime scenes most of my professional life, but had never had one come to me. The sensation of being inside that photograph, of imagining I could smell and feel what was left of that body, had shaken me badly. It was almost midnight by the time I pulled into my garage, and I couldn't unlock my door fast enough. Inside my house, I turned the alarm off, then back on the instant I shut and locked the door. I looked around to make sure nothing was out of place. Lighting a fire, I fixed a drink and missed cigarettes again. I turned on music to keep me company, then went inside my office to see what might await me there. I had various faxes and phone messages, and another communication in e-mail. This time, all deadoc had for me was to repeat, you think you re so smart. I was printing this and wondering if Squad 19 had seen it, too, when the telephone rang, startling me.

'Hi,' Wesley said. 'Just making sure you got in okay.'

'There's more mail,' I said, and I told him what it was.

'Save it and go to bed.'

'It's hard not to think about.'

'He wants you to stay up all night thinking. That's his power. That's his game.'

'Why me?' I was out of sorts and still felt queasy.

'Because you're the challenge, Kay. Even for nice people like me. Go to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow. I love you.'

But I did not get to sleep long. At several minutes past four A.M., my phone rang again. It was Dr Hoyt this time, a family practitioner in Norfolk, where he had served as a state-appointed medical examiner for the last twenty years. He was pushing seventy, but spry and as lucid as new glass. I'd never known him to be alarmed by anything, and I was instantly unnerved by his tone.

'Dr Scarpetta, I'm sorry,' he said, and he was talking very fast. 'I'm on Tangier Island.' All I could think of, oddly, were crab cakes. 'What in the world are you doing there?' I arranged pillows behind me, reaching for call sheets and pen.

'I got called late yesterday, been out here half the night. The Coast Guard had to bring me in one of their cutters, and I don't like boats worth a damn, beaten and whipped around worse than eggs. Plus it was cold as hell.'