'It's me,' Lucy said.

'Thank God.' I was thrilled to hear her voice.

'Grans says hi. Rumor has it that you win the bad patient award.'

'The rumor is accurate. All the work in my office. If only I had it here.'

'You need to rest,' she said. 'To keep your defenses up.' This made me worry about Wingo again.

'How come you haven't been on the laptop?' She then got to the point. I was quiet.

'Aunt Kay, he's not going to talk to us. He's only going to talk to you.'

'Then one of you sign on as me,' I replied.

'No way. If he senses that's what's going on, we lose him for good. This guy is scary, he's so clever.'

My silence was my comment, and Lucy rushed to fill it.

'What?' she said with feeling. 'I'm supposed to pretend I'm a forensic pathologist with a law degree who's already worked at least one of this guy's cases? I don't think so.'

'I don't want to connect with him, Lucy,' I said. 'People like him get off on that, they want it, want the attention. The more I play his game, the more it might encourage him. Have you thought about that?'

'Yes. But think about this. Whether he's dismembered one person or twenty, he's going to do something else bad. People like him don't just stop. And we have no idea, not one clue, as to where the hell he is.'

'It's not that I'm scared for myself,' I started to say. 'It's all right if you are.'

'I just don't want to do anything to make it worse,' I repeated.

That, of course, was always the risk when one was creative or aggressive in an investigation. The perpetrator was never completely predictable. Maybe it was simply something I sensed, an intuitive vibration I was picking up deep inside. But I felt that this killer was different and motivated by something beyond our ken. I feared he knew exactly what we were doing and was enjoying himself.

'Now, tell me about you,' I said. 'Janet was here.'

'I don't want to get into it.' Cold fury crept into her tone. 'I have better ways to spend my time.'

'I'm with you, Lucy, whatever you want to do.'

'That much I've always been sure of. And this much everybody else can be sure of. No matter what it takes, Carrie's going to rot in jail and hell after that.'

The nurse had returned to my room to whisk the telephone away again.

'I don't understand this,' I complained as I hung up. 'I have a calling card, if that's what you're worried about.'

She smiled. 'Colonel's orders. He wants you to rest and knows you won't if you can be on the phone all day.'

'I am resting,' I said, but she was gone.

I wondered why he allowed me to keep the laptop and was suspicious Lucy or someone had spoken to him. As I logged onto AOL, I felt conspired against. I had barely entered the M.E. chat room when deadoc appeared, this time not as an invisible instant message, but as a member who could be heard and seen by anybody else who decided to walk in.

DEADOC: where have you been SCARPETTA: Who are you? DEADOC: I ve already told you that SCARPETTA: You are not me.

DEADOC: he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease pathophysiological manifestations viruses like hiv our darwinian struggle against them they are evil or are we SCARPETTA: Explain what you mean.

DEADOC: there are twelve

But he had no intention of explaining, at least not now. The system alerted me that he had left the room. I waited inside it a while longer to see if he might return, as I wondered what he meant by twelve. Pushing a button on my headboard, I summoned the nurse, who was beginning to cause me guilt. I didn't know where she waited outside the room, or if she climbed in and out of her blue suit every time she appeared and left. But none of this could have been pleasant, including my disposition.

'Listen,' I said when she got to me. 'Might there be a Bible around here somewhere.' She hesitated, as if she'd never heard of such a thing. 'Gee, now that I don't know.'

'Could you check?'

'Are you feeling all right?' She looked suspiciously at me.

'Absolutely.'

'They've got a library. Maybe there's one in there somewhere. I'm sorry. I'm not very religious.' She continued talking as she went out again.

She returned maybe half an hour later with a black leather-bound Bible, Cambridge Red Letter edition, that she claimed to have borrowed from someone's office. I opened it and found a name in front written in calligraphy, and a date that showed the Bible had been given to its owner on a special occasion almost ten years before. As I began to turn its pages, I realized I had not been to Mass in months. I envied people with a faith so strong that they kept their Bibles at work.

'Now you're sure you're feeling okay?' said the nurse as she hovered near the door.

'You've never told me your name,' I said.

'Sally.'

'You've been very helpful and I certainly appreciate it. I know it's no fun working on

Thanksgiving.'

This seemed to please her a great deal and gave her enough confidence to say, 'I haven't wanted to poke my nose into anything, but I can't help but hear what people are talking about. That island in Virginia where your case came from. All they do is crabbing there?'

'Pretty much,' I said.

'Blue crab.'

'And soft-shell crab.'

'Anybody bothering to worry about that?'

I knew what she was getting at, and yes, I was worried. I had a personal reason to be worried about Wesley and me.

'They ship those things all over the country, right?' she went on. I nodded.

'What if whatever that lady had is transmitted through water or food?' Her eyes were bright behind her hood. 'I didn't see her body, but I heard. That's really scary.'

'I know,' I said. 'I hope we can get an answer to that soon.'

'By the way, lunch is turkey. Don't expect much.'

She unplugged her air line and stopped talking. Opening the door, she gave me a little wave and went out. I turned back to the Concordance and had to search for a while under various words before I found the passage deadoc had quoted to me. It was Matthew 10, verse one, and in its entirety it read: And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

The next verse went on to identify the disciples by name, and then Jesus invoked them to go out and find lost sheep, and to preach to them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. He directed his disciples to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. As I read, I did not know if this killer who called himself deadoc had a message he believed, if twelve referred to the disciples, or if he was simply playing games.

I got up and paced, looking out the window as light waned. Night came early now, and it had become a habit for me to watch people walk out to their cars. Their breath was frosted, and the lot was almost empty because of the furlough. Two women

chatted while one held open the door to a Honda, and they shrugged and gestured with intensity, as if trying to resolve life's big problems. I stood looking through blinds

until they drove away.

I tried to go to sleep early to escape. But I was fitful again, rearranging myself and the covers every few hours. Images floated past the inside of my eyelids, projected like old movies, unedited and illogically arranged. I saw two women talking by a mailbox. One had a mole on her cheek that became eruptions all over her face as she shielded her eyes with a hand. Then palm trees were writhing in fierce winds as a hurricane roared in from the sea, fronds ripped off and flying. A trunk stripped bare, a bloody table lined with severed hands and feet.