I looked around as we walked through the living room into his small kitchen. Of course, he had decorated the inside of his house, too. The tree was up and flickering by the fireplace. Presents, almost all of them fake, were piled high, and every window was framed by strands of red chili pepper lights.

"Bray called me," I said, filling the teakettle with water. "Someone gave her my home number."

"Guess who." He yanked open the refrigerator door, his good mood retreating fast.

"And I think I might know why that happened."

I set the kettle on the stove and turned on the burner. Lights flickered.

"Deputy Chief Carson resigned today. Or supposedly resigned," I said.

Marino popped open a beer. If he was aware of this news, he didn't show it.

"Did you know he quit?" I asked.

"I don't know nothing anymore."

"Apparently Major Inman is the acting deputy chief…"

"Oh, of course, of course," Marino loudly said. "And you know why? Because there're two majors, one in uniform, the other in investigations, so of course Bray sends her boy from uniform in there to take over investigations."

He'd finished the beer in what seemed three gulps. He violently crushed the can and threw it into the trash. He missed, and the can clattered across the floor.

"You got any. idea what that means?" he said. "Well, let me tell you. It means Bray now's running uniform and investigations, meaning she's running the entire fucking department and probably controlling the entire budget, too. And the chief's her biggest fan because she makes him look good. Tell me how this woman comes in and not even three months later can do all that?"

"Clearly she's got connections. Probably did before she took this job. And I don't mean just to the chief."

"Well, to who then?"

"Marino, it could be anyone. It doesn't matter at this point. It's too late for it to matter. Now we have to contend with her, not the chief. Her, not the person who might have pulled strings."

He popped open another beer, angrily pacing the kitchen.

"Now I know why Carson showed up at the scene," he said. "He knew this was coming. He knows how bad this shit stinks and maybe he was trying to warn us in his own way, or just signing off. His career's over. The end. Last crime scene. Last everything."

"He's such a good man," I said. "Goddamn it, Marino. There's got to be something we can do."

His phone rang, startling me. The sound of cars on the street out front was a steady rumble of engines. Marino's continuous tinny Christmas music was playing "Jingle Bells" again.

"Bray wants to talk to me about so-called changes she's instigating," I told him.

"Oh, I'm sure she does," he said, his stocking feet padding across linoleum. "And I guess you're just supposed to drop everything when she suddenly wants to have you for lunch, which is what she's gonna do, have you between rye with lots уf mustard."

He grabbed the phone.

"What?" he yelled at the poor person on the other end.

"Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah;" Marino said, listening.

I rummaged in cabinets and found one smashed box of Lipton tea bags.

"I'm here. Why the hell don't you talk to me?" Marino indignantly said into the phone.

He listened, pacing about.

"Now that's a good one," he said. "Hold on a minute. Let me just ask her."

He put his hand over the receiver and asked in a hushed voice, "Are you sure you're Dr. Scarpetta?"

He got back to the person on the phone. "She says she was last time she checked," and he irritably shoved the receiver my way.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Dr. Scarpetta?" an unfamiliar voice said. Here.

"I'm Ted Francisco, ATF field office in Miami"

I froze as if someone were pointing a. gun at me.

"Lucy told me Captain Marino might know where you are if we couldn't reach you at home. Can you speak to her?"

"Of course," I said, alarmed.

"Aunt Kay?" Her voice came over the line.

"Lucy! What is it?" I said. "Are you all right?"

"I don't know if you heard what happened down here…"

"I haven't heard anything;" I quickly said as Marino stopped what he was doing and stared at me.

"Our takedown. It didn't go right, too much to go into, but it went really, really bad. I had to kill two of them. Jo got shot."

"Oh, dear God," I said. "Please tell me she's all right."

"I don't know," she said with a steadiness that was completely abnormal. "They have her in Jackson Memorial under some other name and I can't call her. They've got me in isolation because they're afraid the others will try to find us. Retribution. The cartel. All I know is she was bleeding from her head and leg, unconscious when the ambulance got her."

Lucy registered no emotion at all. She sounded like one of the robots or artificial intelligence computers she had programmed at earlier times in her career.

"I'll get…" I started to say when Agent.Francisco suddenly was back on the line.

"I know you're going to hear about this on the news, Dr. Scarpetta, and I wanted to make sure you knew. Especially that Lucy's not hurt."

"Maybe not physically;" I said.

"I want to tell you exactly what will happen next."

"What will happen next," I interrupted him, "is I'm flying down there immediately. I'll get a private, plane if I have to."

"I'd like to ask you not to do that," he said. "Let me explain. This is a very, very vicious group, and Lucy and Jo know far too much about them, about who some of them are and how they do business. Within hours of the shooting, we sent a Miami-Dade bomb squad to Lucy and Jo's respective undercover residences and our bomb dog detected pipe bombs wired under each of their cars."

I pulled a chair out from Marino's kitchen table and sat down. I felt weak all over. My vision was blurred.

"Are you there?" he said.

"Yes, yes."

"What's happening right now, Dr. Scacpetta, is MiamiDade is working the cases, just as you might expect, and normally, we'd have a shooting review team on its way in addition to peer support guys-agents who have been involved in critical incidents and are trained to work with other agents going through things like this. But because of the threat level, we're sending Lucy north, to D.C., to wherever she's safe."

"Thank you for taking such good care of her. God bless you," I said in a voice that didn't sound like me.

"Look, I know how you feel," Agent Francisco said. "I promise you I do. I was at Waco."

"Thank you," I said again. "What will DEA do with Jo?"

"Transfer her to another hospital a million miles away from here as soon as we can:" ."What about MCV?" I asked.

"I'm not familiar…"

"Her family lives in Richmond, as you may know, but more to the point, MCV is excellent and I'm on the faculty," I said. "If you get her here, I'll personally make sure she's well taken care of."

He hesitated, then said, "Thank you. I will take that under advisement and discuss it with her supervisor."

When he hung up, I stood staring at the phone.

"What?" Marino asked.

"The takedown went haywire. Lucy shot two people to death..;'.

"Was it a good shooting?" he cut me off.

"No shooting is good!"

"Goddamn it, Doc, you know what I mean. Was it justified? Don't tell me she fucking shot two agents by accident!"

"No, of course not. Jo was shot. I'm not sure of her condition."

"Fuck!" he exclaimed, pounding his fist so hard on the kitchen counter dishes rattled in the drain board. "Lucy just had to go slug it out with somebody, didn't she? They shouldn't have even had her in a takedown like this! I coulda told them that! She's just been waiting to shoot the shit out of someone, to go in like a damn cowboy with pistols blazing to pay back everyone she hates in life…!"

"Marino, stop it."

"You saw what she was like at your house the other night," he railed on. "She's been a damn psycho ever since Benson got killed. There's no payback that's enough, not even shooting that damn helicopter out of the air and chumming the water with Carrie Grethen's and Newton Joyce's pieces and parts." 'That's enough;' I said, exhausted. "Please, Marino. This isn't helping anything. Lucy's a professional, and you know that. ATF would never have given her an assignment like this if she weren't. They know her story very well and evaluated and counseled. her extensively after what happened to Benton and all the rest of it. In fact, low she handled that entire nightmare only gave them more respect for her as both an agent and a human being:"