"What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?" I asked uneasily.

"What protrudes from the surface is but a fraction of what's really below," he answered. "This is not to be confused with keeping a low profile, even though you will be keeping a low profile for all practical purposes. Minimal statements to the press, making yourself as much a nonissue as possible."

He began fingering his watch chain again. "Inversely proportional to your invisibility will be your level of activity, or involvement, if you will."

"My involvement?"

I protested. "Is this your way of telling me to do my job, nothing but my job, and to keep the office out of the limelight?"

"Yes and no. Yes to doing your job. As for keeping the medical examiner's office out of the limelight, I'm afraid that may be out of your control."

He paused, folding his hands on top of his desk. "I'm quite familiar with Robert Sparacino."

"You've met him?" I asked.

"I had the distinct misfortune of making his acquaintance in law school," he said.

I looked at him in disbelief.

"Columbia, class of 'fifty-one," Ethridge went on. "An obese, arrogant young man with a serious character defect. He was also very bright and might have graduated top of the class and gone on to clerk for the chief justice had I not gotten compulsive."

He paused. "I went to Washington and enjoyed the privilege of working for Hugo Black. Robert stayed in New York."

"Has he ever forgiven you?" I asked, a cloud of suspicion gathering. "I'm assuming there must have been a lot of rivalry. Has he ever forgiven you for beating him out, graduating at the top?"

"He never fails to send me a Christmas card," Ethridge said dryly. "Generated from a computer list, his signature stamped, my name misspelled. Just impersonal enough to be insulting."

It was beginning to make more sense why Ethridge wanted all battles with Sparacino routed through the AG's office. "You don't think it's possible he's causing this trouble with me to get to you," I offered hesitantly.

"What? That the missing manuscript is all a ruse and he knows it? That he's causing a stink in the Commonwealth to indirectly give me a black eye and a lot of headaches?"

He smiled grimly. "I think it's unlikely this would be the whole of his motivation."

"But it might be added incentive," I commented. "He would know that any legal snafus, any potential litigation involving my office would be handled by the state's attorney. What I hear you telling me is he's a vindictive man."

Ethridge began slowly tapping his fingertips together as he stared off and said, "Let me tell you something I heard about Robert Sparacino when we were at Columbia. He's from a broken home and lived with his mother while his estranged father made a lot of money on Wall Street. Apparently, the kid visited his father in New York several times a year, was precocious, a prolific reader quite taken with the literary world. On one such visit he managed to persuade his father to take him to lunch at the Algonquin on a day that Dorothy Parker and her Round Table were supposed to be there. Robert, no more than nine or ten at the time, had it all planned, according to the story, which he apparently told to several drinking buddies at Columbia. He would approach Dorothy Parker's table, offer his hand, and introduce himself by saying, 'Miss Parker, it's such a pleasure to meet you/ and so on. When he got to her table, what emerged instead was 'Miss Parker, it's such a meet to pleasure you.' Whereupon she quipped, as only she could, 'So many men have said, though none quite as young as you.' The laughter that followed mortified Sparacino, humiliated him. He never forgot it."

The image of the little fatso offering his sweaty hand and saying such a thing was so pathetic I didn't laugh. Had I been that embarrassed by a childhood hero, I never would have forgotten it, either.

"I tell you this," Ethridge said, "to demonstrate a point that has been corroborated by now, Kay. When Sparacino told this story at Columbia, he was drunk and bitter and loudly promising he would get his revenge, show Dorothy Parker and the rest of the elitist world he's not to be laughed at. And what's happened?"

He looked appraisingly at me. "He's one of the most powerful book lawyers in the country, mingles freely with editors, agents, writers, all of whom may privately hate him but find it unwise not to fear him. Supposedly he regularly lunches at the Algonquin, and insists on signing all movie and book contracts there while he no doubt inwardly smirks at Dorothy Parker's ghost."

He paused. "Sound farfetched?"

"No. One doesn't need to be a psychologist to figure it out," I said.

"Here's what I'm going to suggest," Ethridge said, his eyes fixed on mine. "Let me handle Sparacino. I want you to have no contact with him at all, if possible. You mustn't underestimate him, Kay. Even when you think you've told him very little, he's reading between the lines, is a master at making inferences that can be uncannily on the mark. I'm not sure what his involvement with Beryl Madison, the Harpers, really was or what his real agenda is. Perhaps a mixture of unsavory things. But I don't want him knowing any more details about these deaths than he already knows."

"He's already gotten a lot," I said. "Beryl Madison's police report, for example. Don't ask me how-"

"He's very resourceful," Ethridge interrupted. "I advise you to keep all reports out of circulation, send them only where you must. Tighten the lid on your office, beef up security, every file under lock and key. Make sure your staff releases no information about these cases to anyone unless you're absolutely certain the person calling in the request is who he says he is. Every crumb Sparacino will use to his advantage. It's a game to him. Many people could be hurt-including you. Not to mention what could happen to the cases come court time. After one of his typical publicity blitzes we'd have to change the damn venue to Antarctica."

"He may have anticipated that you'll do this," I said quietly.

"That I'd relegate myself to being the lightning rod? Step into the ring instead of letting an assistant handle it?"

I nodded.

"Well, perhaps so," he answered.

I was sure of it. I wasn't Sparacino's intended quarry. His old nemesis was. Sparacino couldn't pick on the attorney general directly. He would never get past the watchdogs, the aides, the secretaries. So Sparacino picked on me instead and was being rewarded with the desired result. The idea of being used this way only made me angrier, and Mark suddenly came to mind. What was his role in this?

"You're annoyed and I don't blame you," Ethridge said. "And you're just going to have to swallow your pride, your emotions, Kay. I need your help."

I just listened.

"The ticket that will get us out of Sparacino's amusement park, I strongly suspect, is this manuscript everyone's so interested in. Any possibility you might be able to track it down?"

I felt my face getting hot. "It never came through my office, Tom-"

"Kay," he said firmly, "that's not my question. A lot of things never come through your office and the medical examiner manages to track them down. Prescription drugs, a complaint of chest pain overheard at some point before the decedent suddenly dropped dead, suicidal ideations you somehow manage to get a family member to divulge. You have no power of enforcement, but you can investigate. And sometimes you're going to find out details no one is ever going to tell the police."

"I don't want to be an ordinary witness, Tom."

"You're an expert witness. Of course you don't want to be ordinary. It's a waste," he said.

"And the cops are usually better interrogators," I added. "They don't expect people to tell the truth."

"Do you expect it?" he asked.

"Your local friendly doctor usually expects it, expects people to tell the truth as they perceive it. They do the best they can. Most docs don't expect the patient to lie."

"Kay, you're speaking in generalities," he said.

"I don't want to be in the position-"

"Kay, the Code reads that the medical examiner shall make an investigation into the cause and manner of death and reduce his findings to writing. This is very broad. It gives you full investigative powers. The only thing you can't do is actually arrest somebody. You know that. The police are never going to find that manuscript. You're the only person who can find it."

He looked levelly at me. "It's more important to you, to your good name, than it is to them."

There was nothing I could do. Ethridge had declared war on Sparacino, and I had been drafted.

"Find that manuscript, Kay."

The attorney general glanced at his watch. "I know you. You put your mindto it, you'll find it or at least discover what's become of it. Three people are dead. One of them A Pulitzer Prizewinner whose book happens to be a favorite of mine. We need to get to the bottom of this. In addition, everything you turn up that relates to Sparacino you report back to me. You'll try, won't you?"

"Yes, sir," I replied. "Of course I'll try."

I began by badgering the scientists.

Documents examination is one of very few scientific procedures that can supply answers right before your eyes. It is as concrete as paper and as tangible as ink. By late Wednesday afternoon the section chief, whose name was Will, and Marino and I had been at it for hours. What we were discovering was a vivid reminder that not one of us is above being driven to drink.

I wasn't sure what I was hoping. Maybe it would have been a simple solution had we determined right off that what Miss Harper had burned in her fireplace was Beryl's missing manuscript. Then we might conclude that Beryl had relegated it to the safekeeping of her friend. We might assume that the work contained indiscretions that Miss Harper chose not to share with the world. Most important, we could conclude that the manuscript really had not, after all, disappeared from the crime scene.

But the amount and type of paper we were examining were not consistent with these possibilities. There were very few unburned fragments, none bigger than a dime or worth placing under the infrared-filter-covered lens of the video comparator. No technical aids or chemical tests were going to assist us in examining the remaining tissuey white curls of ash. They were so fragile we didn't dare remove them from the shallow cardboard box Marino had collected them in, and we had shut the door and vents of the documents lab to keep the room as airless as possible.