'Wish the Bureau had gotten that hit a little sooner,' I said. 'I'll see the agents at the door.'

'What did you say?' I got off the phone.

'I communicated with you because I knew you would pay attention.' Crowder kept talking at a higher pitch. 'And to make you try and for once finally lose. The famous doctor. The famous chief.'

'You were a colleague and friend,' I said.

'And I resent you!' Her face was flushed, bosom heaving as she raged. 'I always have! The way the system's always treated you better, all the attention you get. The great Dr Scarpetta. The legend. But ha! Look who won. In the end I outsmarted you, didn't I?'

I would not answer her.

'Ran you around, didn't I?' She stared, reaching for a bottle of aspirin and shaking out two. 'Brought you close to death's door and had you waiting in cyberspace. Waiting for me!' she said triumphantly.

Something metal loudly rapped on her front door. I pushed back my chair.

'What are they going to do? Shoot me? Or maybe you should. I bet you've got a gun in one of those bags.' She was getting hysterical. 'I've got one in the other room and I'm going to get it right now.'

She got up as the knocking continued, and a voice demanded, 'Open up, FBL' I grabbed her arm. 'No one's going to shoot you, Phyllis.'

'Let go of me!'

I steered her toward the door.

'Let go of me!'

'Your punishment will be to die the way they did.' I pulled her along.

'NO!' she screamed as the door crashed open, slamming against the wall and jarring framed photographs loose from their hooks.,

Two FBI agents stepped inside with pistols drawn, and one of them was Janet. They cuffed Dr Phyllis Crowder after she collapsed to the floor. An ambulance transported her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where twenty-one days later she died, shackled in bed, covered with fulminating pustules. She was forty-four.

Epilogue

I could not make the decision right away but put it off until New Year's Eve

when people are supposed to make changes, resolutions, promises they know they'll never keep. Snow was clicking against my slate roof as Wesley and I sat on the floor in front of the fire, sipping champagne.

'Benton,' I said, 'I need to go somewhere.'

He looked confused, as if I meant right now, and said, 'There's not much open, Kay.'

'No. A trip, in February, maybe. To London.'

He paused, knowing what I was thinking. He set his glass on the hearth and took my hand.

'I've been hoping you would,' he said. 'No matter how hard it is, you really should. So you can have closure, peace of mind.'

'I'm not sure it's possible for me to have peace of mind.' I pulled my hand away and pushed back my hair. This was hard for him, too. It had to be.

'You must miss him,' I said. 'You never talk about it, but he was like a brother. I remember all the times we did things together, the three of us. Cooking, watching movies, sitting around talking about cases and the latest lousy thing government had done to us. Like furloughs, taxes, budget cuts.'

He smiled a little, staring into flames. 'And I would think about what a lucky bastard he was to have you. Wonder what it was like. Well, now I know, and I was right. He

was lucky as hell. He's probably the only person I've ever really talked to, besides you. Kind of strange, in a way. Mark was one of the most self-centered people I've ever

met, one of these beautiful creatures, narcissistic as hell. But he was good. He was smart. I don't think you ever stop missing someone like him.'

Wesley was wearing a white wool sweater and cream-colored khakis, and in firelight he was almost radiant.

'You go out tonight and you'll disappear,' I said. He gave me a puzzled frown.

'Dressed like that in the snow. You fall in a ditch, no one will see you until spring. You should wear something dark on a night like this. You know, contrast.'

'Kay. How about I put on some coffee.'

'It's like people who want a four-wheel-drive vehicle for winter. So they buy something white. Tell me how that makes sense when you're sliding on a white road beneath a white sky with white stuff swirling everywhere.'

'What are you talking about?' His eyes were on me.

'I don't know.'

I lifted the bottle of champagne out of its bucket. Water dripped as I refilled our glasses, and I was ahead of him, about two to one. The CD player was stacked with hits from the seventies, and Three Dog Night was vibrating speakers in the walls. It was one of those rare times I might get drunk. I could not stop thinking about it and seeing it in my mind. I did not know until I was in that room with the wires hanging out of the ceiling and saw where gory severed hands and feet had been lined in a row. It was not until then that the truth seared my mind. I could not forgive myself.

'Benton,' I quietly said, 'I should have known it was her. I should have known before I got to her house and walked in there and saw the photographs and that room. I mean, a part of me must have known, and I didn't listen.'

He did not answer, and I took this as a further indictment.

'I should have known it was her,' I muttered again. 'People might not have died.'

'Should is always easy to say after the fact.' His tone was gentle but unwavering.

'People who live next door to the Gacys, the Bundys, the Dahmers of the world are always the last to figure it out, Kay.'

'And they don't know what I do, Benton.' I sipped champagne. 'She killed Wingo.'

'You did the best you could,' he reminded me.

'I miss him,' I said with a sad sigh. 'I haven't been to Wingo's grave.'

'Why don't we switch to coffee?' Wesley said again.

'Can't I just drift now and then?' I didn't want to be present. He started rubbing the back of my neck, and I shut my eyes.

'Why do I always have to make sense?' I muttered. 'Precise about this, exact about that. Consistent with, and characteristic of. Words cold and sharp like the steel blades I use. And what good will they do me in court? When it's Lucy in the balance? Her career, her life? All because of that bastard, Ring. Me, the expert witness. The loving aunt.' A tear slid down my cheek. 'Oh God, Benton. I'm so tired.'

He moved over and put his arms around me, pulling me into his lap so I could lean back my head.

'I'll go with you,' he quietly said into my hair.

We took a black cab to London's Victoria Station on February 18, the anniversary of a bombing that had ripped through a trash can and collapsed an underground entrance, a tavern and a coffee bar. Rubble had flown, shattered glass from the roof raining down in shrapnel and missiles with terrible force. The IRA had not targeted Mark. His death had nothing to do with his being FBI. He simply had been in the wrong place at the wrong time like so many people who are victims.

The station was crowded with commuters who almost ran me over as we made our way to the central area where Railtrack ticket agents were busy in their booths, and displays on a wall showed times and trains. Kiosks were selling sweets and flowers, and one could get a passport picture taken or have money changed. Trash cans were tucked inside McDonald's and places like that, but I did not see a single one out in the open.

'No good place to hide a bomb now.' Wesley was observing the same thing.

'Live and learn,' I said as I began to tremble inside.

I silently stared around me as pigeons flapped overhead and trotted after crumbs. The entrance for the Grosvenor Hotel was next to the Victoria Tavern, and it was here that it had happened. No one was completely certain what Mark had been doing at the time, but it was speculated that he had been sitting at one of the small, high tables in front of the tavern when the bomb exploded.