"Remains Silent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baden Michael)

PHILOMENA MANFREDA

Attorney-at-Law Her office space consisted of a small room for Kenneth, a larger room for herself, and a window with a view of other windows; when she looked outside she had a hard time telling if it was day or night.

It was, she realized now, night. After her meeting with Williams, she had worked for she knew not how many hours, barely conscious that Kenneth had bid her good night and that, though the lights were on in the building across the street, no people remained to make use of them. She looked at her watch. Jesus! She dialed Jake’s cell.

“I’m still at the office.”

He sighed. “I am, too. You got me just before I was going to call you. Do you mind if we cancel tonight? I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

Not see him? Well- good. She was too tired for banter or for the avalanche of emotions she felt whenever she was with him. Better to grab a salad, get home in time to walk Mycroft, and catch the late-night repeats of the news shows to watch the spectacle of the legal trial du jour.

She stood and stretched, fatigue searing every muscle in her back, and for the first time became aware of the silence. I must be the last person in the building.

Last week the thought wouldn’t have bothered her, but after Turner Psychiatric it produced a tremor in her stomach, and she hurriedly gathered up her purse and coat.

Someone’s in the corridor! She could see his silhouette against the frosted glass of her door. He was standing still- no, bending down now. To look through the glass? She imagined his breath on her neck, felt it again viscerally, as though she were still in the Solitude Room. Had he followed her? Did he know she’d met with Jake and Sam after his warning? Is he going to kill me now?

Listen! A noise was coming from outside her door. What is it? A motor. A machine? An electric saw! Manny stifled a sob and stood paralyzed, her pounding heart so loud she could hear it above the whir of the motor. The shadow moved again, away from her door and out of her vision.

Idiot! It’s not a saw; no one’s come to cut you to pieces. There’s no man outside. It’s a woman, the cleaning woman. And she’s using a floor polisher, like she does every night at this hour. My office is at the corner; it’s where she’d start. She bent down to turn it on.

Tears of gratitude sprang to her eyes. “Oh,” she said aloud, and again, “Oh.” She put on her coat, wound the straps of her purse firmly over her arm, and- not without a residual shiver of trepidation- opened the door.

Yes, there she was, the cleaning lady, polishing away in front of the office of Terrance Prescott, DDS.

“Good evening,” Manny said, proud of the firmness in her voice.

The woman turned. She was wearing a kerchief that covered her hair and face, a baggy floral dress, and-strange-Tod’s lizard boots. Expensive.

What kind of cleaning lady…? “Good evening,” the woman answered. She left the polisher where it was and walked toward Manny, holding something out as though it were an offering.

A knife!

The light was bright in the corridor; it ricocheted off the steel like sparks from a fire.

Manny whirled, ran, slipped on the polished floor. The woman stood above her, knife poised, hand drawn back behind her head. Manny screamed, screamed, screamed again, the sound reverberating through the corridor, until the woman plunged the knife and Manny could scream no longer.

She awoke to bright light and a searing pain in her right thigh. She was in a bed- no doubt about that- but it wasn’t her bed at home. Rather, it had the smell and feel of a bed in a-hospital?

She opened her eyes. A hospital indeed. “Where am I?” she asked nevertheless, having all her life wanted to say it.

“Saint Vincent’s,” a voice answered from the foot of the bed.

She raised her head. Dr. Jacob Rosen, in full hospital regalia, was smiling at her. Must be a nightmare.

Memories flooded her. Her office, the silhouette, the woman in lizard boots, and the knife-Oh, God, the knife! She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness pushed her back down. Her mouth felt funny, as though she had been chewing on tweed.

“Lie still,” Jake said. He moved to her side and took her hand. Maybe it’s a dream after all. “A cleaning woman found you and called nine-one-one.”

“A cleaning woman? She was the one who- black or white?”

“Black.” A different woman. “You were on the floor outside your office. You’d been stabbed. There’s a gash on your thigh, four-five inches long.”

“How’d you know I was here?”

“You had your PDA in your blazer pocket. The EMS called the emergency numbers you’ve listed and finally got Kenneth Boyd. He called me.” Jake shook his head in wonder. “It was quite a conversation.”

“Where is he? And has he taken care of Mycroft?”

“He’s taking Mycroft to your mother’s for the night. Said he can’t stand hospitals or the sight of blood. He’ll only see you if you’re well or if you’re dead.”

She closed her eyes. “Which am I?”

“Well- or almost well. You’ll be in a lot of pain when the drugs wear off, but it’s only a flesh wound. You can leave later this morning, and you’ll be walking fine in a couple of days.” He pulled up a chair. “Feel strong enough to tell me what happened?”

Her story was disjointed, partly because of the drugs but more because her mind remembered scattered images rather than a coherent sequence.

“Your attacker,” Jake said. “You sure it was a woman?”

“Not really. All she said was good evening, and it might have been a falsetto voice. There’s the dress, of course, but she wore men’s Tod’s lizard boots. Unmistakable.”

“Right. A man or a woman. Kenneth-”

“He didn’t do it!”

Jake laughed. “I’m not implying that he did. But I’m trying to find out whether it was the same person who scared you at Turner. Could have been two separate people.”

The comfort of his presence wore away, and she was once again assaulted by the horror of what had happened. The impact of his statement struck her hard. “Two attackers?”

“Say, Sheriff Fisk and Marge Crespy.”

“You think-?”

His face darkened. “My colleague, Wally Winnick, is in Baxter County trying to find connections. We’ll know more when he reports back. All I’m sure of is that he or she or they didn’t want to kill you.”

“The person at Turner didn’t, but the cleaning woman did.”

“If she’d wanted to, you’d be dead. The knife could just as easily have gone into your heart as into your thigh. They’re trying to scare you off, Manny, and, through you, me.” He banged the side of her bed with his fist. “God, how I wish she’d come after me!” It’s my fault she’s hurt. I didn’t have to get her involved. I wanted her along. I didn’t need her.

“I’m glad she didn’t,” Manny said softly. He sat with his head bowed; she stroked his arm. “It means I didn’t have to wait till tonight for our date to see you.”

He tried to smile and couldn’t. A nurse came in. “There are two policemen outside, Ms. Manfreda. They want to talk to you about the attack. Are you up to it?”

“I suppose so.” The drug was wearing off, she realized. The pain was worse but her mind was clearer. “How did the cops find out about this?” she asked Jake.

“From EMS. They have to report all suspicious injuries.”

“Nothing suspicious here. It was an out-and-out crime. What do I tell them?”

“Just say your screams scared the assailant off.”

MANNY KNEW, as Jake helped her out of the taxi, that she could have called Kenneth or asked her mother to come stay with her at her apartment, but Jake had invited her to his house-“You’ll be safest there”- and she’d accepted. Who wouldn’t? The EMS had cut off her clothes, so, with becoming modesty on both sides, Jake had bundled her into two hospital gowns and signed the discharge papers.

She was feeling something she had rarely felt before: vulnerability. It felt good to be taken care of. He sat her in one of his leather club chairs in the living room, propped up her feet on a mismatched ottoman, and made her tea.

“I’ll get you something else to wear,” he told her.

She was still in the hospital gowns. “Have you been hanging around with Kenneth?”

He glanced at her. “Huh?”

“Never mind. Whatever you’ve got.”

He went upstairs.

She sipped her tea and marveled at the fact that she was alive. Her attacker could have killed her-poof!-and she would have been just like Mrs. Alessis, her body empty of her being. That others could be responsible for her death was frightening. Control was her strength, and she was learning how little it meant. She’d spent her adult life dealing with human suffering and loss; she’d even assisted at an autopsy. But it was only now, when she’d come so close to her own death, that outrage overcame her. I’m a human being. How dare they? She wanted revenge.

Jake came back. Recompense. “Try these.” He dropped a pair of his pajamas on her lap.

“I thought for sure you’d have your girlfriend’s sweatpants.”

“No girlfriend. No sweatpants.”

Aha.

“I have to go back to the office for a few hours,” he said. “We’ll order out when I get back. I called Sam to see if he could come over”- Please, no. -“but he isn’t around. So you’ll be alone. Don’t open the door to anyone.” He looked at her, concerned. “Do you need help putting on the pajamas?”

“I can do it.” She tried to stand, fell back. “Ow! I can put on the top, but you better help me with the bottoms.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Lascivious scientist. She felt a throb of desire. “Turn around.”

“Why? I see naked bodies all the time.”

“Dead naked bodies. Turn around.”

“Okay, okay.”

Manny slipped out of the hospital gowns, put on the top, and buttoned it. It was maroon with little ivory diamonds on it-hideous-but the cotton was smooth, luxurious. She rolled up the sleeves and thought of lying next to him in bed. The codeine is messing with my head. “I need help now.”

Jake got down on one knee and placed her feet in the legs. Is he about to propose? “I think you need to roll them up,” she said.

He pushed them up discreetly so her feet stuck out of the bottoms. His hands touched her calves. She shivered.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she squeaked.

“Good. Lean forward and pull them up. Be careful not to put weight on that leg.”

She gave her tush a wiggle and tied the cord at the waist. “There.”

He looked at her like a man, not a physician.

“Go back to work,” she said. “There are bodies waiting for you.”

And another when you come back home.

Manny wasn’t in the club chair when he got home. The living room was empty.

Terror filled him like poison. I can’t lose her. She’s too important. He didn’t try to interpret what important meant; he was only aware that his breathing was labored, his panic was making him dizzy, and if she were kidnapped or dead he would have to get a new name, a new life. He could not live with the Jacob Rosen he was now.

“Manny?” he yelled. “Manny!”

A sound from upstairs. It took him a moment to identify it: running water. She’s taking a bath!

He raced up the stairs, laughing. Yes. The bathroom door was closed. It was definitely water he heard. Manny was singing Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” at the top of her lungs.

He pounded on the door. The singing stopped.

“Who is it?”

“Jake. How the hell did you get upstairs?”

“Rocket ship. I needed a bath.”

“Very funny. If you get water on those bandages, you’ll rip out the stitches. The wound’s probably bleeding now from the climb.”

She turned off the water. “Actually, no. And I’ve got my leg hanging over the side of the tub. If I ever decide to quit lawyering, there’s a job for me as a contortionist.” She giggled. “You should see me.”

“I’d like that very much.” He turned the doorknob.

“Don’t you dare!”

“It was your suggestion.” He stood by the door, listening to the sounds of her bathing. Then he heard water running out of the tub. “There are clean towels in the closet,” he told her.

“Found them.”

“Need help getting down the stairs?”

“I got up them, didn’t I?” She hesitated. “Although it might be fun.”

She appeared at the kitchen door wearing his pajama bottoms backward and holding a prescription bottle. Her eyes flashed fire.

“Been raiding the medicine cabinet?” he asked calmly.

“As my mother says, if you want to learn the truth about someone, look in their medicine chest and their refrigerator. And now I know the truth about you. The name on the bottle is Marianna Candler Rosen. Is there a little unscientific detail about your life you forgot to tell me? Like you’re married? I should have known when you opened my car door for me after the Terrell autopsy. I asked you then if you were married because you weren’t wearing a ring. Now I know what ‘not quite’ meant.”

“You’re angry,” he said.

“You’re so right, for a change. I should have known better than to get involved with a two-timing lying son of a-”

“Involved with?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Of course you did. Don’t you listen to yourself?”

“Then I didn’t mean it in the way you’re taking it. We’re involved in a case, not romantically. You, Dr. Rosen, have a good imagination.”

“And so, Ms. Manfreda, do you. If you look at the date on the bottle, you’ll see it’s at least two years old. It should have been thrown out. Marianna and I were divorced a year ago. We were separated a year before that. Do you want a glass of wine?” There was pain in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Nothing like making a fool of yourself. “Champagne would be nice. But I’ll settle for wine this time.”

“Our marriage fell apart in less than a year. It was a marriage of opposites, full of battles. She was funny and hotheaded and never reticent.” He smiled at her. “Like you. She worked for a financial newsletter but didn’t like it. ‘I could walk away from my job and never look back,’ she told me before we were married. That’s a fantasy of mine, too- walking away- but I know I couldn’t do it.”

“Neither could I,” Manny said, entranced. No opposites here.

“No, I suppose not. Anyway, she did walk away from her job after she left me. She met someone in California and lives with him. Cooks dinner, takes his suits to the dry cleaner- that sort of thing.”

“Your suits could use a trip to the dry cleaner.”

He looked down. Some blood from that afternoon’s autopsy had landed on his cuff. “Taking them would be a full-time job.”

“Maybe we could train Mycroft,” she said.

He looked at her hard. “I’ll open the Pellegrino and put the takeout in the oven. I hope you like souvlaki.”

She realized she was famished. The wound, the threat at Turner, Mycroft’s fear, the smells of the autopsy: they all retreated in the presence of the man who was responsible for them. Food, then sleep. For one night, normalcy. A warmth spread through her that reminded her of childhood. I’m comfortable with him.

Her cell phone rang. She had left it on the table, so she hobbled over to pick it up.

It was her mother, calling from New Jersey, worried. Kenneth had told her what happened and had brought Mycroft over, and of course she didn’t mind taking care of him.

Manny was conscious that Jake had returned with their wine and was standing in the doorway, listening. “Yes, I can keep food down,” she said in answer to her mother’s questions. “Yes, I’m with a doctor. I’m spending the night here.”

Jake handed her the wine. “Of course not!” she said. He watched her blush and guessed what her mother had asked.

Manny lowered her voice. “Mommy, please, I can’t talk about him now. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow. Kiss Mycroft good night for me and tell him I love him. I love you, too, Mommy. Sleep well. Your daughter’s fine.” She hung up.

“Mommy?” was all Jake said.

She wanted to kill him.

SHE SLEPT in a guest bedroom, waking in pain from time to time not wanting to take any more of the painkiller Jake had placed by her bedside. When she hobbled down to the kitchen in the morning, dressed in chinos and a work shirt he had left for her, her heart was buoyant. His expression was grave.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. He poured her coffee into a mug with fake red blood drops running down its front. Across the blood, black letters blared: CALL THE EXPERTS. SPATTER IS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE.

“Refreshed. Invigorated. Ready for action.”

He scowled. “What can I do to persuade you to drop the case?”

“Drop it yourself.”

He had actually considered doing just that, to keep her safe. But they both knew so much already that, even if they quit, there would be no guarantee against further attacks. Besides, his obligation to Pete was too strong. He would have to protect her as best he could.

“I want you to take it easy today,” he told her. “Go home. Rest. Let your mother stay with you.”

She smiled at him. “Yessir, boss.”

“I’m serious. I don’t know who attacked you at your office, but I have the feeling it was your last warning. Next time they’ll strike to kill, particularly if either of us gets closer. So stay home, and for God’s sake be careful.”

His intensity sobered her. “You be careful, too. What’s your plan for the day?”

“I’ll see you home and then head for the office. Sometime or other, though, I’ll take the hair and bone samples to Hans Galt’s lab in Brooklyn. Maybe they can tell us something.”

“Will I see you tonight?”

He caught the appeal in her tone. “Of course, but I’m not sure when. I’ll call you. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Sam to check on you and relieve your mother if she wants to go back to Jersey. I don’t want you to move from your apartment.”

She bristled. “Look, I told you before. I don’t like anybody telling me what I can and can’t do.”

“I’m not telling you, it’s an order. If you don’t obey, the team’s dissolved.”

He means it. She bowed her head. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

Late that afternoon, Jake went to Galt’s lab. He could have done the work at the ME office, but he didn’t want Pederson to catch him at it. His boss had told him to use a private lab, so Galt’s it was. He took the bone samples down to the X-ray room.

He put on a lead apron, placed the bones on separate metal X-ray cassettes, and, one at a time, put the cassettes on the examining table, the one usually reserved for cadavers, and x-rayed them: the mandible from Skeleton Four, the metal plate from Skeleton Three, the humerus from Two, and the metacarpal and ulna from One. The metacarpal, he noticed for the first time, had an unusual bulge with a small hole in it. Funny, he thought, how even the best-trained eye- mine- can overlook something. He’d seen it happen to others a hundred times.

He shot the X-rays, developed the films, and examined them on the fluorescent viewing box. The bulge on the left metacarpal was an irregular, almost shaggy-lined bone cyst- osteomyelitis- from which pus would have oozed through the skin of the palm of the left hand during life. He’d have to take a culture- some bacteria and fungi stick around for decades- and then decalcify it, so it could be cut down and made into a slide for further examination under a microscope.

The X-ray of the humerus was obscured by a white blur. Damn. Something wrong with the film. He reshot the X-ray and developed it; the blur remained. Jake remembered Harrigan saying he needed to reshoot the X-rays on one of the skeletons because something had gone wrong. The same shot? Probably.

He studied the film. With the thousands of X-rays of bodies and bones he’d examined over the years, he’d never seen a white blur like this from any of his own autopsies. But I’ve seen it before, an X-ray from a bone in the ME museum on the sixth floor. His heart quickened. The museum’s X-ray dated from the 1930s and was of the mandible of a woman who had worked at the U.S. Radium Dial factory in New Jersey. She and her fellow workers licked the tips of their brushes to make the fine points they needed to paint the glow-in-the-dark watch dials the company featured. Yes! That was it! Many of the women developed jaw necrosis and leukemia. The woman had died of it. But this humerus had been taken out of the ground in rural Turner. Farms were there, not factories. Very strange. An idea was forming, one so sinister, so unthinkable, he tried to brush it aside, but it stayed with him.

He dialed Hans Galt in his upstairs office. Hans wasn’t there, but his assistant, Amy Fontayne, was.

“I need your help,” he told her.

“Of course.”

“Got any X-ray film? A new box, unopened?”

“A whole cabinet full.”

“Good. And bring me a fresh slide, would you?”

Amy came down moments later. She was not yet thirty, he guessed, but there were already lines around her eyes. Too much staring into microscopes. He put the humerus on the new cassette and asked Amy to change the settings on the X-ray machine to be more penetrating. He went out of the X-ray room and examined his other specimens, which gave her a chance to take the X-ray, then returned and took the cassette into the darkroom. There he removed the film and put it through the automatic developer and then put the X-ray on the viewing box again.

Weird. Worse than weird. The same white blur obscured the humerus, only it was more pronounced. “Did you change the setting on the X-ray machine?” he asked Amy.

“I didn’t touch it.”

“Didn’t touch it?”

“Did I screw up?”

“Tell me once more. You didn’t push the X-ray button?”

“No,” said Amy. “I’m sorry, Dr. Rosen. I was waiting for you to tell me to go ahead. When you took the film from me, I thought you wanted to see it before I x-rayed the bone.”

“My God,” he blurted. He pulled the film from the viewing table and held it to the fluorescent ceiling light, praying he’d see something different. “I can’t believe this,” he said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Amy, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Jake felt as if his head would burst. “You didn’t turn the X-ray machine on, yet here we have an X-ray of the humerus. Can you explain it?”

“No, sir.”

“It means the bone took a picture of itself. The radiation released by a radioactive bone is similar to the radiation released by the X-ray machine.” He turned to face her, aware that he must seem like a madman.

She took a step back. “You’re telling me that bone is-”

“Radioactive.” He stared at her, as though needing her verification of something he dared not believe. “That bone is radioactive.”

“THERE’S A GENTLEMAN here named Sam. Says you’re expecting him,” the doorman told her over the intercom.

Manny and her mother had long since finished breakfast and were reading the Times. “Send him up.” Damn Jake. One mother’s already here. I don’t need him to act like another.

Sam, dressed in military fatigues, marched in as soon as Rose Manfreda opened the door. “You must be Manny’s sister,” he said, kissing Rose’s hand.

Manny glared at them from the couch. “Oh, brother, Sam, cut it out.”

Rose glared back. “Where are your manners, young lady? Sam’s a gentleman.”

“Runs in his family, Mom, trust me. They have a Ted Bundy gene.”

“Now I know where Philomena gets her charm,” Sam said. “I’ve come to protect her, and all I want to do is murder her.” He winked at Rose. “Instead, I’ll walk the dog. Want to come with me?”

“I don’t think we should leave Manny alone.”

“We’ll double-lock the door. If anyone comes in, she’ll bite him and he’ll die of rattlesnake venom.”

“In that case…” Rose reached for her coat.

“Don’t come back, either of you,” Manny said. “Just give the key to Mycroft. He can let himself in.”

When they left, she called her office and asked Kenneth to field all phone calls and fax her the mail. She didn’t want to tell him Jake had grounded her, so she simply said she had a stomach flu. He seemed to accept it.

She stretched out on her bed. I’ll get to work in a minute, she thought- and fell asleep.

Wally called from Turner just as Jake was saying goodbye to Amy. “I’m coming home,” he announced, his voice alive with triumph.

“Find anything?”

“Lots. Fisk’s in bed with Reynolds Construction. He’s getting ten percent of everything Reynolds makes. Mayor Stevenson doesn’t seem to be involved, though he probably knows about it; he’s got other sources for kickbacks. Marge Crespy? Straight as a ruler. Anyway, Reynolds will get huge bonuses- all legal and aboveboard- from Wal-Mart and PriceChopper if the mall’s finished before next spring, and only under those circumstances does Fisk get his reward.”

I love this man. “What kind of money you talking about?”

“I don’t know the exact amount- the budget’s a greater work of fiction than The Da Vinci Code- but it’s multiple millions to Reynolds, a couple million to Fisk.”

Enough to kill for. “You sure of this? You’ve got proof?”

“Yes and yes. The figures on costs of the mall are public record, distorted downward though they may be. And there’s a written agreement between Reynolds and Fisk- a contract, Dr. Rosen- sitting in Fisk’s safe.”

“You’ve seen the contract?”

“I have a copy of it.”

“For God’s sake, how?”

“My foot. I knew it would come in handy someday. Seems Fisk’s deputy, a Mrs. Bonnie Geller, has a boy born with one leg shorter than the other. Guess who arranged for a specialist to perform the operation that made him all well?”

Of course. “Pete Harrigan.”

“Bingo! When I told her Dr. Harrigan was my teacher, that I owed my life to him, we became friends. Okay, I exaggerated his role- I owe my life to you-but in the interests of research-”

“Go on.”

“Not much more to tell. Bonnie hates Fisk but needs the salary to take care of her boy. Took me all this time to wear her down, but she finally opened up her heart- and his safe.” Wally laughed at his own ingenuity. “Proves two maxims of Dr. Harrigan’s: Over-confidence leads to carelessness and Never trust your assistant.” Another laugh. He’s sky-high. “That last is good advice for you. I can turn against you at any time.”

Pete wasn’t right all the time. I’d trust Wally with my life. “Better get back here,” Jake said. “If Fisk finds out-”

“I’m on my way. See you in the office tomorrow morning.” Wally hung up.

Jake stood in the vestibule of Galt’s lab. I can understand why they didn’t want the project held up, he thought, but it doesn’t explain radioactive bones.

Manny awoke to a gentle hand shaking her shoulder. Jake? She opened her eyes. Her mother was looking at her.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“What time it?”

“After seven. You’ve been asleep for nine hours.”

Manny sat up, pain coursing through her leg. “I’m not hungry.”

“You’re eating nevertheless.”

There’s something special about being babied. “Bring it on.”

They had pasta, salad, and a glass of wine, mother and daughter sitting side by side, comfortable in each other’s presence. “Best meal I ever ate,” said Manny, meaning it. She had been hungry after all.

Rose did the dishes while Manny tried to concentrate on the material Kenneth had sent. Impossible. Images of the attack crowded in on her; thank God she had only been warned, not executed. Next time…? She picked up her latest copy of Vogue. Fashion was the only thing that could get her mind off her fear.

At eleven, her mother and Mycroft had gone back to New Jersey with Kenneth, and Manny had turned on the news. A suicide bomber had killed seventeen Iraqi special forces and wounded forty-two others in Baghdad.

“Closer to home, a bombing has rocked New York’s Upper East Side,” the anchorman announced. “Here with that story is reporter Tim Minton. Tim?”

“Less than an hour ago, an explosion shook the house of City Medical Examiner Jacob Rosen-”

A pain sharper than any inflicted on her earlier shot through Manny’s system. No! Not Jake!

On the screen, Manny saw fire engines and police cars in front of what was surely Jake’s house.

“The ground floor is still too hot for firefighters to get inside,” Minton continued, “so there’s no way to know if Dr. Rosen was at home at the time of the blast. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Gould, a personal friend of Dr. Rosen’s, says that the cause might have been a faulty gas line, but he stresses that this is only speculation. Dr. Rosen testified recently in the trial of Mafia hitman Freddy “Big Ears” Francesca, but it’s far too early to tell if-”

Manny stood up, winced at the pain, grabbed her keys, and limped away as fast as she could.

THERE ARE MOMENTS in New York when hailing a cab is like finding water in the desert, Manny thought. Not even her doorman could work a miracle; every cab was occupied. Please, please, please! Please, cab, come!

Finally a cab pulled up. Manny got in. “I’m in a rush, sir,” she urged.

“Who isn’t?”

“A bomb went off at the home of a friend of mine-” She could barely get the words out.

He turned to look at her, suddenly interested. “The one uptown?”

“Yes.”

“Just heard about it on the radio.”

“Then please hurry!”

“You got it.”

They drove up the FDR Drive, heading north. Manny leaned back, picturing Jake. Please, God, not dead- I take back everything I said about him. Please, God, not dead! “Don’t tempt God,” her mother used to say. Well, she was tempting him now- begging him- and if he granted her wish she didn’t care about the consequences.

The cabbie left the drive on Ninety-sixth Street, went up First Avenue, and stopped at 103rd Street. “Can’t go any farther, lady. Street’s blocked.”

She threw him a twenty and scrambled out of the cab, ignoring the pain in her leg while she negotiated through a sea of people who had gathered near Jake’s house to watch the tragedy. By the time she got to the staging area, yellow police tape was already up and uniformed policemen had formed a cordon to make sure nobody got past. Behind them she could see fire engines, police cars, the mayor, the police commissioner, and-oh, Lord-an ambulance. Flashing lights and the wail of sirens gave the scene the feel of a war zone.

There was damage to the outside of Jake’s house and its front windows. Jake’s city-owned car, the driver’s side now crumpled metal, was sitting directly in front of the house. “Let me through!” she shouted. A stretcher sat next to the ambulance. There was a body on it. A corpse? With a wail, she pushed under the police tape. A policeman grabbed her arm. “You can’t come in here, ma’am.”

“I have to!”

“It’s a crime scene. No one’s allowed in.”

“I’m his wife!”

She pulled free and made her way to the stretcher. The man on it was covered in blood. She leaned down. Is he breathing?

She shrieked and stepped back. Sam! The body was Sam! “He got it worse than I did,” a voice from the side of the stretcher said, “but the doctors say he’ll be all right.”

Jake’s voice, calm and resonant and comforting and dear. She gave a little cry and hugged him, squeezing so hard he grunted.

“Hey,” he said. “Careful.” But he hugged her just as hard.

May he never let go. May we stay like this forever. After a moment, though, she stepped back to look at him. His face was covered in soot, giving his eyes a charred, hollow, ghostlike appearance. They were directed again toward his brother; she could see worry in them. “Took some shrapnel in the head,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You’re not hurt.” A command more than a question.

“Shaken up. Every bone’s gonna ache when the shock wears off.”

“What happened?”

“I was going to the front door to meet Sam when the bomb exploded. He was still outside. That’s why-” His voice broke, and he put a gentle hand on Sam’s forehead. “Just lucky. Both of us.”

The police commissioner, Lucas Melody, joined them, staring at Manny. “What’s she doing here? Who let her in?”

The policeman who had tried to stop her came over. “My fault, sir. She pushed past.”

“Actually, I’m to blame,” Jake said. “She was just following orders. I told her to get here no matter what.” He lowered his voice. “I was afraid my brother would need to make his last will and testament. She’s the family lawyer, and-”

“She’s his wife,” the patrolman said.

Jake looked at Manny, who shrugged. “Yes, my lawyer and my wife,” he confirmed.

“Congratulations.” Melody seemed dubious. “Talk about a shotgun wedding.” He took Jake’s arm. “I need to talk to you.”

They moved aside.

“A Mafia hit,” the commissioner said. “Bomb in the car, meant to go off when you started the motor. The person planting it must have seen your brother arriving and tried to rush the job. He tripped the mechanism; it detonated prematurely.”

He’s probably right about the bomb but wrong about the hitman, Jake thought. He had testified against mob figures several times before with no aftereffects. The current case wasn’t high-level, nor was his testimony vital enough to provoke such violence. But it wasn’t worth arguing with Melody, at least not yet. First he needed irrefutable proof that the bombing was connected to the Turner skeletons.

He walked back to his brother, Manny next to him. Sam’s eyes were open, and his blood-caked lips managed a smile. “I said I’d like a cocktail when I came, but this is ridiculous.”

“They’re going to take you to Lenox Hill Hospital,” Jake told him. “Probably overnight, just for observation. The commissioner’s asked me to answer some more questions. I’ll come right over as soon as he’s finished.”

“Are you crazy?” Sam struggled to raise his head. “Is there something wrong with you? You’ve got a beautiful woman clutching your arm. There’s no way you can sleep at home tonight, so you’ll have to go to her place. And you want to look after me?”

Jake took a long look. Color had come back to his brother’s cheeks, and his eyes were bright. “Sam,” he said, “you just might be right.”

“What are you holding?” Manny asked. “You’ve had it clutched in your hands ever since I found you.” They were sitting on the stoop, waiting for Melody to finish questioning two witnesses about the bombing.

“X-rays.” He held an envelope out to her. “I didn’t get a chance to study them all at Galt’s lab.”

She shied away. “The commissioner might be right. This could be a Mafia hit and not have anything to do with the bones at all.”

His fingers played around the edges of the envelope. “I don’t think so. The bomb in the car was one-directional, a claymore mine. Only the person standing behind the mine would be hurt, because it exploded in that one direction only.”

“So our attacker’s a soldier? This weapon is military ordnance.”

“Ex-soldier, probably. Which narrows our suspect list to three hundred fifty thousand.”

“Or one. Is Wally still in Turner?”

“On his way home. Why?”

“We could ask him to look up Sheriff Fisk’s record. See if he fought in Vietnam.”

“Probably we can find out from here,” Jake said. “If not, I’m sure Wally’d be glad to go back.”

Melody had only a few more questions, and Jake had nothing to add. The police, having secured the area, were leaving; only two patrolmen were standing guard. A third was assigned to drive Manny and Jake anywhere they wanted to go.

Jake stood. “I’d better see about a place to stay.”

“Are you crazy?” Manny asked. “You heard your brother. You’re coming home with me.”

IT WAS AFTER midnight when they were dropped off at Manny’s building. “Good evening, Christopher,” Manny chirped to the night doorman, as if she waltzed through the lobby every evening with a tall, sooty man in torn jeans and bloody shoes.

“Nice night, Ms. Manfreda,” Christopher said, unfazed.

Jake and Manny took the elevator up. “You live on the thirteenth floor?” he said. “Not superstitious?”

“Very. Almost didn’t live here because of it. Are you?”

“Actually, no. I’m a scientist.”

They stood in front of her door. Key in hand, she hesitated. Let him in and my life changes. Do I really want that? She inserted the key and pushed the door open.

He stood on the threshold, taking in the room. “Small.”

“Would you be more comfortable sleeping with Sam at the hospital?”

“I slept with him in the same one-bedroom apartment through medical school, and that’s enough. Besides, I’m cold and hungry.”

“The Four Seasons has good heating and room service.”

“No, thanks. I’m a man of simple tastes.”

She glared at him. “When will men ever learn that size doesn’t matter?”

“It’s just that you have a lot of things in here.” Jake eyed wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling shoe boxes. “Where do you sleep?”

“There.” She pointed to a beach-colored panel upon which hung an oil painting by a lawyer-turned-artist of a half-full milk glass. “It’s called Optimism.” A small white round table piled carefully with fashion magazines stood in front of it.

“You sleep on a painting?”

“It’s a Murphy bed, dummy. The panel pulls down. The painting’s fastened to the bottom of the bed, and the bed sits on the table- it’s known as design.” She pulled down the bed, revealing a queen-sized mattress covered with a silk comforter. “Mycroft usually takes up most of the space.”

“He sleeps with you?”

“Where else?”

“Some dogs sleep on the floor, in baskets.”

“Not Mycroft.”

“What’d you do with him?”

“My mother took him back to New Jersey. She doesn’t want me walking him yet.”

He had forgotten her injured leg. “Oh, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be standing. I should be fetching for you.”

“You’re not a dog. Can I offer you something? A shower? Food?”

“Shower, then food.” Then? “Do you actually have a kitchen here?”

“Of course, this is my home.” She pulled the screen aside to reveal a bar sink in a small counter, with a microwave above, a picnic-sized refrigerator below, and a toaster.

“This is your kitchen? You have only a microwave?”

“With a microwave you need skill. It’s a precision instrument. Ten seconds one way or another and splat- we duplicate your explosion. Happened to my spaghetti squash last week.”

He walked past her to look in her refrigerator; then, remembering her discussion of refrigerators and medicine chests at his brownstone, turned and said, “May I?”

“Sure, Mi casa es su casa.”

“Peanut butter and champagne. That’s all you have?”

“Not just any peanut butter. It’s Skippy smooth and rosй champagne. Everything I need for a balanced meal: fruit juice with bubbles- the bubbles are so important- and protein.”

“But as a meal?”

“Try it for dinner- or are you a chunky person? You might like it instead of some two-pound bloody steak, charred on the outside by temperatures that cremate rather than merely cook the cow.”

“Your place is nice. It feels… freeing.”

“Freeing?”

“There’s order and not a lot of baggage.”

“I take it that’s supposed to be a compliment.”

“It is. But personally I’d rather be surrounded with my things. Did I tell you that whoever dies with the most stuff wins?”

“Had to get back to dead people, didn’t you?”

“Maybe I better take a shower before my luck runs out.”

While he showered, Manny located a pair of sweatpants and a large white T-shirt, once Alex’s. When she heard the water stop running, she knocked.

“Yup?”

“I have some clothes. They might not fit great, but-”

Jake opened the door, a towel wrapped around his waist. Manny took in hair, abs, muscles. Nice. Don’t stare. She handed him the clothes and shut the door quickly.

“Whose were these?” asked Jake, coming out of the bathroom. The sweatpants stopped at mid-calf.

“Old boyfriend.”

“And I was keeping back information?”

“I would have told you.” She turned on the TV.

Jake settled into one of the chairs and watched New York 1 News while she took a shower. There were shots of his town house. Francesca’s lawyers were asking for a mistrial because the attack had stirred up sympathy for the state’s witness. Garbage.

Manny came out of the bathroom wearing silver satin pajamas. She had left the top buttons open, but when she caught Jake’s stare she closed them. “Hungry?”

“Yes, but first may I use your bathroom?”

“Sure, but didn’t you just-”

“Not for that. I think I can make the vanity into a view box.”

“You’re going to work?” What is he, a neuter? A castrato? Get a life, man- only not with me.

“I need to talk to you about something before we… eat.”

Something more important than sex? “If you promise we’ll… eat afterward.” She sat down facing him.

“Promise. There’s something troublesome about the Turner bones. Skeleton Two, the humerus- it’s radioactive.”

His seriousness shook her. Desire dissolved in fear. “What does it mean?”

“Something strange happened to that person before he died. It’s a finding we might see in the victims of Hiroshima or Chernobyl, if they lived long enough. Come, I’ll show you.”

They squeezed into the bathroom. Jake switched off the overhead light, using the vanity bulbs for illumination. He opened his envelope, put the film of the humerus on the vanity table, and explained how radiation from the bone had developed the image on the film without the use of the X-ray machine. “It means that something radioactive was incorporated in this bone, and this happened before he died.” He switched pictures. “And here’s the mandible from Skeleton Four. The dental work is bizarre, amateurish. And look”- another picture-“here’s the metal plate from Skeleton Three. Lyons. I thought the initials were A.V.E., but that’s why I couldn’t locate the neurosurgeon. The middle letter’s abraded. The real initials are A.W.E.- we’ll be able to find him now!”

“Pretty amazing,” Manny said, in a flat voice. She had long ago stopped looking at the pictures but was staring at him, and all his words about X-rays and radiation and bones were feeble missiles that failed to reach their target. Now, she knew, he had caught her stare and understood it.

She was remembering something that had happened the year before, after she had hired Jake to do the second autopsy in the Terrell case. The local doctor had picked up the postmortem X-ray of her client’s chest and had clipped it onto the light box. Just as the doctor’s left hand had left the X-ray, Jake, without a word, had tugged the film off the light box, turned it around, and put it back correctly in one swift motion, simple yet powerful.

There was something in Manny’s tone of voice that made Jake look up from the film he was holding. He looked into her eyes and in the next second leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. With precision and skill, he undid the buttons of her silver pajama top- the buttons Manny had so carefully buttoned up- and started to massage her breasts.

“Wait!” Manny said, coming up for air.

“What?”

“Not what. Wait.”

“Why? We’re both grown-ups.”

The sight of the blood in the Alessis autopsy flashed in her head. “Did you wash your hands?”

“Manny!”

“Okay.”

He kissed her again. She remembered him holding Mrs. Alessis’s heart, drew away, and licked his ear, hoping the pleasure would erase her memory. Then there was the sound of the buzz saw cutting through the skull and the clouds of bone dust around his hands and face.

The movement of her hands had gone from the rpm of a propeller to the speed of a failing engine. “Manny, what’s the matter?” asked Jake.

“I’m fine. Do you get yourself checked for diseases?”

He looked down at her. She’s serious. “Everyone I autopsy is tested for AIDS.”

“That’s comforting,” she chirped, trying to restart the moment. But there was that autopsy image again, in front of her, as if she were hallucinating. “Aren’t you a little old for me?”

“You won’t be able to keep up.”

I love a challenge. “Okay,” she whispered, but he didn’t hear her.

She was awakened by the ringing of his cell phone. Jake leaped out of bed and grabbed it.

“Hello?… Hans… Yes, I’m fine… Now?… Brooklyn?… Can’t you tell me on the phone?… Okay, okay, I understand. The diner near the lab… Give me an hour… Bye.”

He sat next to Manny and kissed her hair, grateful to her in ways he knew he could never express. “How would you like to go to Brooklyn for breakfast?”

HANS GALT was seated at a back booth in the diner, drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. He was a tiny man with fierce eyes under steel-rimmed glasses, a face like a ferret, and graying black hair. He grunted a hello to Jake and glanced suspiciously at Manny, even when Jake said he could trust her with any secret. Before he spoke, he glanced around the room; it was deserted save for a waiter who took their orders for coffee.

He leaned toward them, a finger to his lips. “Experiments,” he said.

“What?” said Manny.

“The radioactivity,” Jake said, feeling a swell of anger. “Someone was using live people?”

Hans nodded. “It’s not just the radioactivity. There’s a lot more. But let’s start with the humerus.”

Jake looked at Manny, who was sitting with her mouth slightly open, breathing rapidly, entranced by this brilliant little man who had shared secrets with him on so many cases in the past. She’s beyond beautiful. “Okay, start there.”

“You know I worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The humerus contains a higher level of radiation than anything I saw there: strontium ninety. By the nineteen fifties we knew it was one of the most deadly carcinogens on the planet. It still is. Even a minuscule amount can cause bone cancer, leukemia, and soft-tissue malignancies called sarcomas.”

He addressed this last to Manny, professor to student. “And the humerus?” she asked.

“Contains more than a minuscule amount. It has a half-life of twenty-nine years, but it can be active in the body for many decades.”

“Terrifying,” she said. “Where would it come from?”

“Terrorists,” Jake answered, “governments-”

“And scientists who make bombs,” Hans finished. “It’s in the fallout of exploded nuclear devices.”

Manny was mystified. “But they weren’t making nuclear devices at Turner. It’s a mental hospital.”

“They weren’t making them there,” Hans said, “but maybe they were testing their effects.”

“Human guinea pigs,” she breathed.

Hans seemed almost pleased. “It gets worse. We found other things in the samples. The hair of Skeletons Two and Three contained mescaline- again, high levels- and also lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. And in the hair of Skeleton Four, the woman, there was no LSD but there was mescaline in an amount a hundred times greater than in the other two.”

Manny had some expertise. “I know mescaline occurs naturally in the peyote plant and can be synthetically made, and its mind-altering effects can be enhanced by the use of other chemicals. But why at Turner?”

“How do you know so much about drugs?” Jake asked.

“Represented a Native American in a freedom-of-religion case. Used drugs in their rituals.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He turned to Hans. “Did you do a segmental analysis?”

“What’s that?” asked Manny.

“Body hair is a storehouse for drugs,” Jake explained. “Head hair grows about half an inch a month, so we can determine not only if there are drugs or poison present but also when and how many times the substance was taken and in what quantities.” He picked off one of her long hairs from her sweat suit and held it to the light. “With this, I could find out every drug you’ve taken in the last two years.”

She threw up her hands. “Innocent!”

“The segmental analysis revealed that Skeletons Two and Three had been getting mescaline for months,” Hans continued, oblivious to the byplay. “But Skeleton Four only started receiving it within the last few weeks of her life. She must have been given massive doses.”

Manny shuddered. “Poor, poor woman. I’m calling Patrice. She’s got to let me go on with the investigation.”

“If she doesn’t agree, we have enough to go after them ourselves.”

“You have more,” Hans said. “In Skeleton One: osteomyelitis in the hand bone.”

“Bone infection,” Jake said.

“The DNA obtainable from the osteomyelitic cavity is from bacteria, Serratia marcescens, but a very virulent type of Serratia, one I’ve never seen before.”

“Holy shit!” Jake’s eyes were wide.

“Explain,” Manny said.

“It’s a natural bacterium. Scientists like to play with it in the laboratory, because it’s red when it grows in the laboratory and you can easily distinguish it from other bacteria.”

There was no pleasure left in Hans’s demeanor. “The American government played with Serratia bacteria during the forties and fifties to see if it could be used as a weapon. Sprayed it secretly over areas of San Francisco, painted it on doorknobs and banisters. Spraying didn’t work because too little was inhaled by people on the ground-”

“One of the reasons the anthrax scare is overblown,” Jake interrupted.

“- but over the years it’s sickened some people who inhaled it. One even died. It’s much more prevalent now than it was before the spray.”

“It was Serratia that infected the flu vaccine at the Chiron plant in England in 2004,” Jake pointed out. “They had to destroy the stockpile and couldn’t send any over here. Hence our shortage.”

“Some people think the Chiron contamination was part of another experiment,” Hans said, “but that’s conjecture. What we do know is that Serratia marcescens, the type in Skeleton One, is far more aggressive than the strain used in San Francisco. It’s a superbug, Jake, enhanced by humans, the kind that’s not supposed to exist. But it does. I saw it yesterday in my petri dish. My guess is the government was using Turner as a lab, with humans for rats. And they sometimes slipped up- hence the bones.”

The enormity of what she was hearing set off explosions in Manny’s brain. She vowed revenge- legal revenge.

“And it wasn’t just at Turner,” Hans continued. “The man who oversaw future testing, Sidney Gottlieb, testified about other tests- in secret and under a pseudonym- before the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee in 1975. A lot of doctors were involved, including many of the best-known psychiatrists of the day. The top New York State Health Department doctor approved the mind-control experiments, some done in conjunction with other countries. We know of at least two people who died as a result of these experiments: a CIA agent who had been given surreptitious doses of LSD and jumped to his death from a hotel window, and a tennis pro who was given huge doses of mescaline after checking himself into a hospital for depression. Doctors’ notes show he never consented to anything. He was clearly being experimented on against his will.”

“I remember the case!” Manny said. “The family sued the government, claiming it withheld the information that their son had died because of what they’d done to him.”

“Who won?” Jake asked.

“Guess. But damn it, if I’d been the lawyer, there’d have been a different verdict.”

“I found the same army mescaline, EA-1298, developed at the Edgewood Arsenal Military Base that allegedly killed that tennis pro in your skeletons,” Hans said. “It and other variations are delineated by code numbers that mean not to be used on humans. Ha! The world hasn’t changed, only the level of the cover-ups.”

“Didn’t President Nixon order all chemical and bacteriological weapons destroyed?”

Galt’s eyes shone. “Glad you asked.” He produced a copy of a memo regarding CIA activities at Fort Detrick in Maryland, signed by Donald F. Chamberlain, Inspector General of the United States, and read it aloud: “On 25 November 1969, President Nixon ordered the Department of Defense to recommend plans for the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. On 14 November 1970, he included all toxic weapons. It is our understanding that these materials were destroyed in compliance with President Nixon’s directives. We cannot, however, locate the records that establish this fact.”

“So for all we know, bacteriological experiments are still going on,” Jake said.

“But why?” Manny asked. “Our government’s not monstrous, at least not most of the time. And even if they were, how could they recruit the scientists to do it?”

“Self-preservation,” Hans said. “Enemies were doing mind-control experiments to get our secrets. We had to know how to counteract them. Again, it’s nothing new. In the seventeen hundreds, Lord Jeffrey Amherst gave American Indians blankets soaked in smallpox. You might argue that it led to a cure for the disease.”

“Or that it killed many Indians.” Manny was at her boiling point. She stood. “Come on, Jake. Time to go to work.”

“I don’t have to go in. Pederson’s concerned that since the mob missed me at home, they’ll try again at the office. He’s given me a few days off until they figure out what to do with me.”

“We have our own corpses to worry about. We’ll work on our investigation.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “First, though, home. I’m not going out again without makeup. Thank you, Mr. Galt. I haven’t had this much education since the autopsy.”

THEY BOUGHT CHINOS and a sweatshirt for Jake on the way home, then slept for three hours, made love, showered, dressed, and emerged into blazing sunlight. My idea of a perfect morning, Manny thought.

“Wouldn’t Pete be appalled if he knew the story behind the bones,” Jake said. “He took it hard that there was a young woman’s skeleton. Imagine how much worse if he’d realized she was poisoned.”

They were on the steps of the public library. Manny wanted to see if they could find anything in the Church Committee hearings that would lead back to Turner Psychiatric.

The librarian in the subbasement microfiche room told them she was required to log in any documents they reviewed or copied. “Courtesy of the Patriot Act,” she said. “In case you two are terrorists, the government can hunt you down.”

“The army sanctioned the mescaline and LSD experiments Hans told us about as early as 1952,” Jake said, reading through a file on the period. “Listen to this: “There is ample evidence in the reports of innumerable interrogations that the Communists were using drugs, physical duress, electric shock and possibly hypnosis against their enemies. With such evidence, it is difficult not to keep from becoming rabid about our apparent laxity. We are forced by this mounting evidence to assume a more aggressive role in the development of these techniques, but must be cautious to maintain strict inviolable control because of the havoc that could be wrought by such techniques in unscrupulous hands.

“Jesus, the guy was a physician. Hadn’t he heard of the Hippocratic oath?”

“They put LSD in cigarettes with a tuberculin needle and syringe,” Manny exclaimed, looking at the same disc over his shoulder. “Also in ice cream. They even specified the flavor: chocolate.”

“To hide the taste of the LSD,” Jake said.

Manny remembered the historical information she’d read at the Academie. “Turner had an ice cream parlor and a dairy farm. Do you think-?”

“Could be a coincidence,” Jake said. “We need more.”

They opened documents at random. Much of the information had been redacted with swipes of a black Magic Marker.

“Imagine what we’d find if we could see everything,” Manny commented. “Too bad the Freedom of Information Act doesn’t mean what it says.” She looked at Jake. He was frowning, preoccupied. “What is it?”

“I’m remembering Pete. He testified for the army in the case of a doctor accused of using curare on his patients, five of whom died. Harrigan was called by the prosecution. But under cross examination by the defense, he surprisingly said he didn’t think the curare caused the deaths. He later told me something I consider gospel: ‘Science doesn’t take sides.’ The doctor was acquitted. It says here that curare was one of the drugs the government used in experiments.

“No matter how angry you are, no matter how much it looks like there were secret experiments performed at Turner, we still need scientific evidence.”

She curtsied. “Yes, your lordship.”

They worked through the afternoon, Jake leaving only for a while, to make a brief visit to Sam. They found nothing that directly related to Turner. Jake’s cell phone rang. Manny couldn’t overhear the conversation, but Jake seemed pleased. He stood. “Commissioner Melody said I could go back home later today. There’s a mason coming to fix the wall at five. It won’t be habitable, but I’ll get some fresh clothes and pick you up for dinner around seven-thirty. Okay?”

She smiled to hide a spasm of alarm. I’ll be alone. Everyone I pass, everyone I talk to, will seem threatening now. “I’d like to meet you there instead. See that they put your house back right. We’ll eat dinner in your neighborhood then go back to my place.”

I like her place, Jake thought. “Sounds good.”

It’s as if nothing ever happened here, thought Manny, walking up the steps to the brownstone. The hole had been bricked in, the damaged cars had been removed, the air was clear of smoke, the street was quiet.

Jake opened the door before she had a chance to knock. “Looking for me out the window?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I was looking for anyone who might be looking for you. Melody released my building as a crime scene and removed the guards. This place is unprotected.”

She fought back an impulse to turn and run. “Then come home with me. My building has a doorman. We’ll be safer there.”

“Give me half an hour.”

“Why? Aren’t you scared?”

“We’ll be safe in the cellar.”

“The cellar?”

“When I saw Sam today- by the way, he’s okay and will be out of Lenox Hill in a day or two- he told me he made the sheriff wait outside for a few extra minutes before removing Harrigan’s items. As he was on the phone with me, he saw a box that caught his eye. Pete had written my name on it, so he figured it contained things he wanted me to have- mementos from our days together. So he put the box next to the safe, under the autopsy aprons. I want to go through it before we leave.”

Sometimes he can be infuriating. We’re in danger, and he wants to go through mementos? “Can’t it wait?”

“Maybe it isn’t just mementos. There may be something in it we need, some clue as to what Pete wanted to share with me before he died.”

“Why not take the box with us?”

“Too dangerous. Someone could be watching us even now. Besides, you want to walk into a restaurant carrying specimen jars?”

Stubborn but cute. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

The light in the cellar was harsh, reminding Manny of the autopsy room at Baxter Community Hospital. Jake put on a pair of gloves, pried open the box, and lifted out an opaque plastic container. Manny leaned in to read the label:

Specimen 2005, Adam Gardiner. ALCOHOLISM. TUBERCULOSIS. HIV/AIDS. Skin from anterior right thigh. Male, age 41. Date of autopsy 1-29-2005.

“Strange,” Jake said. “This is the name of someone who died decades ago, a case Pete and I were discussing when I last saw him alive.” He screwed open the top.

Manny jumped back. “What’s that smell? And what are those little creatures floating in the fluid?”

He reverted to professor mode. “The smell’s formaldehyde, and the creatures are maggots. Most people hate them, but God must like them- he made so many. Forensic scientists love them because they tell us a lot about decedents: what they were eating, time of death, what drugs they were taking, even their DNA. It’s pretty simple- you can grind them up in any kitchen blender and then do any laboratory tests needed.”

“I think that’s disgusting.” The hands that touched me last night touched maggots? I have to get over that? “Why aren’t they dead if they’ve been in formaldehyde?”

“For one thing, formaldehyde kills the bacteria that would normally kill maggots. That’s the reason it’s such a good preservative. For years, many brands of women’s nail polish contained formaldehyde.”

Manny looked at her once perfectly manicured fingers. Formaldehyde? “Charming picture, maggots in a blender. Remind me to bring my own Waring over if ever I should cook here in the future- now that I know what you do with yours.”

“Still,” Jake said, “it’s a peculiar thing for him to leave for me. Unless-”

His hands are trembling. Manny, about to make some wisecrack, changed her mind. “Unless what?”

“Unless he was hiding something he wanted me, and only me, to find after he died.”

“So he picked a place so disgusting no one else would look in it?”

“Precisely.”

“He was right. Only people named Jake or Damien would want to put a hand in there, even though gloved.” Jake’s gloved hand was already in. Manny turned away.

“I’ve got it!” His dripping hand emerged from the container holding a waterproof bag with an envelope inside it.

“Is it alive?” Manny asked, her head still averted.

“It’s a manila envelope. Look.”

She turned back. Jake had opened the bag and withdrawn the envelope.

“What’s in it?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Jake’s name was written on the envelope. “It was definitely meant for me. That’s Pete’s handwriting.”

Manny wished she shared Jake’s excitement. It won’t relate to Turner. Probably has to do with a case they shared. “Open it.”

Jake already had. Inside was a photograph and a folded piece of paper. He handed the picture to Manny and unfolded the paper. “There’s something stamped on the top.” He squinted. “PROPERTY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ACADEMIE FOR THE BETTERMENT OF LIFE.”

Now Manny’s hands were shaking. Excitement buzzed in her bloodstream like electricity. “Yes! Lorna told me I was the second person to visit the Academie. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But Harrigan must have been the first.”

“It’s a dental chart,” Jake said, his voice full of wonder, “signed by dental students from Columbia. Renko was right. They were apprentices. Timothy Iras and Martin Lowell.” He could barely breathe. “They performed four fillings at Turner: November and December, 1963. The patient’s name was Isabella de la Schallier, DOB 13 July 1945. Manny, the mandible showed four fillings. It can’t be a coincidence. This is her chart. The woman. Skeleton Four.”

Shock hit Manny with the force of a bomb blast. Isabella de la Schallier. I d la S. The initials on the wall in the Solitude Room. Harrigan found her bones! “But if that’s true, it means-”

Jake looked at her, his eyes dark with understanding. “Pete Harrigan knew the name of Skeleton Four but said nothing about it.” He shook his head, as though to rid it of demons. “What’s in the photograph?”

Manny looked at it for the first time. “It’s a picture of a picnic at Turner from the Baxter County Daily Gazette. I saw one like it when I went through the files at the Academie. There seem to be doctors and patients out for a stroll. Why would Harrigan hide something like that?”

“Let me see it.” Jake practically snatched the clipping from her hand to hold it under the light. His shoulders slumped and he covered his face with his hands. “I can’t believe it.”

“What? Tell me!”

Jake pointed to a young doctor walking by the side of a young woman. “That’s Pete in the picture. Pete was at Turner. He was there!”

“And the patient,” Manny whispered, as sure of this as she was of any hard evidence she had ever used in a trial, “is Isabella de la Schallier.”

“WELL, Lorna Meissen knows who I am,” said Manny, standing with Jake in front of a thin middle-aged woman who was guarding the reception desk as if it contained gold. “I was here early last week looking at the archives of the Turner Psychiatric Hospital.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Manfreda, but without written approval from our director, Mr. Parklandius, no one is allowed access to our records.”

“I went through this last time, ma’am, with Ms. Meissen. You are a designated governmental repository for public documents. I am entitled as a member of the public to see them.”

“Not anymore, Ms. Manfreda, and Ms. Meissen is no longer in our employ.” Cruella DeVille. “We have a new directive, confirmed by our lawyers, that all patient records, no matter how old, are confidential. None can be released without an authorization from the patient or a ruling from the Privacy Board in Washington, D.C.”

“But the records have been public a long time.”

“That’s irrelevant. Archival records are now subject to privacy laws. As a lawyer, you should know that.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Don’t hit her.

“Perhaps Mr. Parklandius can straighten this out,” Jake said benignly. “Is he here?”

“I’m afraid not.” Her desk phone rang. She listened to the caller silently, then reddened. “It seems Mr. Parklandius is in. He’s expecting you in the reading room.”

The ride up in the open elevator cage was as eerie to Manny as the last. She clutched the same Vuitton bag she had carried then as though it were a buoy. The papers she had borrowed were inside. “Wonder how he knew we were here,” she said. “And how they knew I was a lawyer.”

Jake grinned. “Lawyers have a special odor, even you. I can smell one coming from fifty feet.”

She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re a fine one to talk about smells. Why Parklandius’s change of heart, do you think?”

“Because he found out you were a good lawyer?”

“Or because he knows what you’ll do to his corpse if I kill him.”

They walked past the closed door of Mr. Parklandius’s office and entered the reading room. It was empty, but the same files Manny had looked through before were again set out on the table. Jake opened the file for 1964 and riffled through it. “Here’s the picture of the picnic,” he said, comparing the one Pete had left for him, “only it’s been cropped. Pete and the woman aren’t in it.”

“Mysterious,” Manny said. “Somebody must have known Harrigan took the original and substituted the cropped one. Too bad there’s no photo credit. We might be able to lay our hands on an eyewitness.”

A tall lanky man with graying hair and yellow-tinted glasses marched into the room. “Ms. Manfreda, Dr. Rosen, so nice of you to visit.” He did not extend his hand. “I’m Charles Parklandius.”

“How did you know my name?” Jake asked.

“You were on the front page of the paper yesterday. You see, your notoriety has reached as far as Poughkeepsie.” There was no friendliness in his manner. “As for you, Ms. Manfreda, the board voted last night to authorize me to ask the police to issue a warrant for your arrest.”

She stared at him. He avoided her eyes. “Arrest? Whatever for?”

“Theft. There’s a picture missing from our files: a photograph from the Baxter County Daily Gazette. Another had been substituted, but it’s been cropped, and we want the original back.”

Jake extended the picture. “Ms. Manfreda didn’t take it,” he said. “The photograph was found among the belongings of Dr. Peter Harrigan, the former chief medical examiner for New York City who died at his home in Turner two weeks ago. We are returning it to you.”

“It’s true I took an architectural plan when I was last here,” Manny said, opening her tote bag. “I did so inadvertently, and I apologize.” She placed it on the table. “Call off the cops.” If there’s any satisfaction in this, it’s watching Parklandius sputter.

“Dr. Harrigan couldn’t have taken the photograph,” he said.

Jake shrugged. “I found it among his estate documents.”

Parklandius had regained his composure. “Dr. Harrigan had been a member of this foundation since 1963, Dr. Rosen. Indeed, we got him his first job. We placed him at Turner after his residency. Surely he knew we would have loaned him anything from the archives.”

Pete never mentioned he had been at Turner, and it wasn’t on his rйsumй. He took the clipping, never planning to give it back, and substituted the other. It was meant for me- as what? Jake closed his eyes, remembering Pete’s struggle to say something when they met in his house. Sadness swept him like biting wind. Of course. As a confession.

“So you see, it’s all a misunderstanding,” Manny said. “If you don’t have me arrested I won’t sue you for false arrest. You have everything back, no matter who took it, and no harm done. Nice how that works out, isn’t it?” She held out her hand: palm down, like a bleedin’ aristocrat. He looks like he wants to bite it.

Parklandius left, mumbling.

“Rude man,” Manny said. “He didn’t say goodbye.”

“Still, I don’t think we can stay here. I don’t think he’d be pleased if we continued to look through the files.”

Manny called Kenneth from her cell phone. “You didn’t know Kenneth was working for us, did you?” she asked Jake, when she’d finished. “We’re all of us sleuths. Isn’t that cozy?” She turned serious. “He’s been checking into Isabella’s dentists, Iras and Lowell. Both are dead- car accidents- one in seventy-two, the other in eighty-four.”

“Murdered, you think?”

“I don’t know why not. Whoever they are, everyone connected to Turner winds up dead before their time.”

“Including us if we don’t solve this thing.” He started for the door.

She ran after him. “Where are we going?”

“Turner. I want to see Marge Crespy at the Historical Society.”

JAKE SAT IN the car with his head bowed, staring ahead through pained eyes. Manny wanted to comfort him, hold him, but held back. He’s suffering. It wasn’t only Harrigan who died but Jake’s vision of him. He needs to bear this alone.

“Pete must have known about the experiments,” he said finally. “Known about them and performed them. He was too young to have acted on his own, but he was involved. My God, how it must have weighed on him! Forty years of keeping secret the worst sin a doctor can commit.” He turned to her. “I loved him, Manny. He was my teacher and my spiritual father. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.”

“He wanted to confess to you,” she said. “That’s why he called you back. Not to tell you he had cancer, but about this.”

“Cancer of the soul. I wonder if he’d have said anything if we hadn’t discovered the bones. He must have realized immediately whose they were and confirmed it by x-raying them. No wonder he didn’t send the X-rays to me. He must have destroyed them.”

“And somebody destroyed him,” Manny said quietly. “Don’t forget that. Someone must have known Pete Harrigan was ready to talk.”

Ms. Crespy, it turned out, lived on the top floor of the Historical Society. “You’re the doctor from New York,” she said to Jake. She was a wiry woman, plainly robust, looking younger than the fifty Jake had originally guessed. “I remember you working with dear Dr. Harrigan.” She looked at Manny. “And this is?”

“Philomena Manfreda. I’m a lawyer, helping the daughter of James Lyons, one of the patients whose bones were discovered at the construction site.”

Ms. Crespy led them upstairs to her residence, settled them in her living room, and provided them with coffee. “We think we’ve identified Skeleton Four,” Jake said. “The female.”

“Her name was Isabella de la Schallier,” Manny said, handing her the copy Jake had made of the uncropped photograph before returning it to the Academie. “She was another patient at Turner. She’s the one standing with-”

“Dr. Harrigan!” Ms. Crespy was clearly astonished. “I had no idea he was ever at Turner Psychiatric. My goodness, you’d think he’d have said something.”

Wally had said she had nothing to do with the kickbacks at the mall site, Jake thought. He was right. “Yes. Do you recognize the young woman?”

She studied the photograph. “No. But there’s no reason I should. I socialized with very few of the patients, and this picture was taken more than forty years ago.”

“Would the Historical Society have any information about her?” Manny asked. “Maybe something about her death?”

“I don’t remember seeing her name in our records. But we have only a few scraggly documents. The Psychoanalytic Academie for the Betterment of Life has more.”

“We went there this morning,” Jake said. “It’s where we got the photo.”

Ms. Crespy looked at it again. “I don’t know her, I’m afraid.” She brightened. “But look. On the path behind her and Dr. Harrigan. I recognize the girl walking by herself.”

Hope blazed in Manny’s brain. “You do?”

“My goodness, yes. That’s Cassandra Collier- when she was a teenager, of course.”

“Is she still alive?” asked Jake, his voice rising.

“Alive, if you can call it that. She’s a recluse. Lives in her daddy’s old house. People here think she’s loony, but she’s as sane as sunshine. I take food to her now and then, and we talk.”

“Will she talk to us?” Manny asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. She’s moody.”

“Why was she in Turner Psychiatric?”

“Her daddy- Timothy Collier, the well-known gynecologist- institutionalized her after her mother died. Mrs. C was a concert pianist until arthritis crippled her- died of grief, they say.”

Get on with it, Manny thought.

“Anyway, Cassandra was evidently a hellion when she was young. Promiscuous in an age when no good girl let a man touch her till she was married. Collier put her in Turner to tame her, not because she was crazy. He was a huge contributor to the hospital- there used to be a Collier Library on the grounds- and they took her in because they needed his patronage. The director wasn’t the most ethical man around-”

If you only knew.

“- but they kept the poor girl against her will until her daddy died. Then they couldn’t wait to get rid of her.”

“She’d know what was going on at the hospital when Isabella de la Schallier died,” Jake said, keeping his voice neutral.

“Suspect so.”

“But she might not talk to us?”

“I’ll bet she will if I introduce you,” Ms. Crespy said. She jumped up and started for the door. “Come on, I’ll take you. We can swing by the mall site; there’s been lots of progress. You seem like nice enough folk, and you were Dr. Harrigan’s friends.” She sighed. “Cassandra’s sure to be home.”

“Forgive me,” Cassandra Collier said. “I don’t entertain, so I can offer you only tea.”

It had not taken much of Marge Crespy’s persuasion to get her to agree to see Manny and Jake, and the three stood awkwardly in the large foyer of a once-splendid house now sagging in disrepair.

Cassandra was a small woman with luxuriant white hair down to her shoulders and the muscles, Jake noted, of a gymnast. Her eyes were bright, her skin ruddy and wind-tanned, and her hands, peeking out from the sleeves of a bright green wool turtleneck sweater, were those of a young woman.

“Actually, we just had coffee with Ms. Crespy,” Manny said, “and we don’t want to take much of your time.” If she’s insane, I’m a Martian.

“I have time to spare. Would you like to see the garden?”

We’ve no choice. She’ll talk if we’re patient.

Cassandra led them through a living room that seemed to Manny out of an English manor house. A large portrait of a man- her father?- hung over the fireplace; a chandelier blazed light; the leather chairs were scratched but otherwise not worn; the Oriental carpet- an original- had lost none of its opulence. A fraying couch, a pockmarked coffee table, and tattered lampshades over splendid Chinese lamps were the only signs of the passage of time.

“The house was once a showplace,” Cassandra explained. “I keep it up as best I can, but it’s the garden that gets my main attention. I’m happiest there. You’ll see, though, that in the battle between a single woman and nature, nature wins.” They went through the back door to the garden.

The trees were oaks, the vines wisteria, rose bushes, the flowers geraniums, impatiens. But there were weeds among them, and a gazebo in the center had partially collapsed.

Cassandra read Manny’s gaze. “There’s no beauty in destruction. Only sadists like my father think that.”

“Ms. Crespy told us something about him- and your history,” Manny said. “You’ve had a hard life.”

“He was a hard man. Marge told you he sent me to the mental hospital?”

“Yes. It must have been awful for you.”

“It’s what we’re here to talk to you about,” Jake said. “What was going on when you were there?”

She shied back as though he had slapped her. “No, sir. I won’t discuss it.”

“We think there were crimes committed. Crimes that reach into the present.”

“Yes, crimes,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to think about them.” She waved a hand. “Please go away.”

“But you’re the only one who can tell us-”

“Go away!” She fled toward the house.

“Isabella. Isabella de la Schallier,” Manny called.

Cassandra stopped, turned. “What did you say?”

“Isabella de la Schallier. She was at Turner when you were.”

“We found her bones,” Jake said. “Now we need you to help us find out what happened to her.”

She approached them, arms out as though sleepwalking, her face a portrait of grief. “You found her bones?”

“Secretly buried in the field behind the hospital.”

Cassandra’s voice was hushed. “Was anyone buried with her?”

“Yes. Three men.”

“Only grown men?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Isabella and three men. That’s all?”

“Yes. Why?”

Cassandra looked down, unwilling to meet their eyes. “Isabella-” she began, then stopped, her voice catching. “You see, Isabella… There was a child…” Her voice was a whisper as she gazed into a lost world. “Where is Joseph? Where are the bones of her baby?”

They went back to the living room. Cassandra made them tea and now sat with her eyes lowered, as if she had committed a sinful act herself. Manny and Jake faced her from the couch, both sensing that questions would be counterproductive.

At last Cassandra sighed, a sound of such regret that Manny had to fight back an urge to leave and bother her no longer. We’re subjecting her to something terrible. She’s reliving Turner. It’s too cruel. She could tell from his expression that Jake was having similar thoughts.

“It’s all right,” Cassandra said. “If I didn’t want to tell you I wouldn’t. A psychiatrist at Turner- one of the rare good men- said that to survive psychic pain you had to confront it.” She smiled weakly. “Perhaps better late than never.” She walked to the door opening into the garden and stopped there without turning back. When she spoke, her voice was steady and clear.

“I was eighteen when Dad sent me to Turner. The age of majority in the sixties was twenty-one, so I had no choice. It was a hellish place. The doctors and psychiatrists were mostly old men, interested in the patients only as specimens, clay to mold as they wished. The patients were mostly old, too, and most of them were genuinely crazy. One man, younger than the majority, was maybe the craziest of all. He had fought in the Korean War and thought all of us- doctors, nurses, and patients- were the enemy. Often he had to be restrained. When he was untied, he’d explode. And his screams in the night- dreadful.”

“James Lyons,” Jake said.

She looked at him in surprise. “That’s right. I’d forgotten his name. He was one of the few close enough to my age to talk to, but I was kept away from him for my own safety. The doctors didn’t want the child of their biggest benefactor hurt.

“God, I was lonely! I’m lonely here, too, sometimes, but I have my garden and the sunlight and I can move about as I please. The cries are the cries of birds; the howling is the wind. It’s a pleasant loneliness. No one bothers me.”

“And you have Ms. Crespy,” Manny said, too brightly.

“Yes. She’s someone I can trust. I lost all trust at Turner. The first six months there were so awful I wished for madness. To be imprisoned and sane in such a place is torture worse than a thumbscrew.”

She fumbled for control, regained it. “I was saved by Isabella. She was admitted in the summer- my age, and also sane. She was put there by her parents, as I was by my father, only in her case it was that they couldn’t afford to keep her and thought a hospital was a better place than their other option, a home for delinquent girls.

“Isabella cried for weeks, because she thought her parents didn’t want her and because she was in such great pain from her teeth. That turned out to be a simple thing; she got her cavities filled, and the pain went away. We were put in the same room and were friends from the first. We even learned to laugh.”

Her face clouded. “She met one of the new doctors. He was young, probably not ten years older than she was. He was kind to her; he was the one who arranged to have her teeth fixed. And soon they fell in love.”

Manny watched the blood drain from Jake’s face. He sat spellbound, his right leg jiggling up and down in his anxiety. “Go on,” he said hoarsely.

“I was happy for her, and jealous, too. I recognized their passion for each other and wished I could feel it, too- I never have, you see. When she found out she was pregnant, she was thrilled. She was going to call the baby Joseph if it was a boy, and that’s how she referred to it: Joseph.”

“What was the doctor’s name?” Manny asked, sure of the answer. Jake seemed incapable of speech. “Can you remember?”

“Of course I remember. He was an attractive man, the only doctor at Turner capable of laughter. Dr. Peter Harrigan. Is he still around?”

“He’s dead,” Jake managed.

“Oh. Too bad.” There was no sympathy in her voice. “Soon after Isabella told me she was pregnant, my father died. He left money to the hospital in his will, but not for my upkeep, so I was released, thank God. I visited Isabella a few times right after. Her parents had been killed, died in a grain explosion on the farm upstate where they worked. Dr. Harrigan broke the news to her. She wanted to leave Turner, and had to be restrained and sedated. They put her away, and I never saw her again.”

“Put her away?”

“Yes. There was a Seclusion Room at the hospital. Lieutenant Lyons was kept there a lot. They used it for violent patients, though I can’t imagine Isabella being violent.”

Manny felt chilled. They wanted to hide what they were doing to her. “Do you remember who authorized putting her in solitary?”

“Only one man could do that: Dr. Henry Ewing. He was the chief doctor. Mean as all get-out. The other doctors were terrified of him. He’s head of the Catskill Medical School now. Talk about rising to the top on the backs of the people you’ve tormented.”

“And Dr. Harrigan?” Manny asked, watching Jake wrestle with what they’d heard.

“Left soon afterward. He never did marry her, never did take her with him. That miserable son of a bitch.”

MANNY DROVE them back to the city. When she tried to talk to Jake, he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’m thinking.”

“Granted there’s lots to think about, but I don’t like feeling I’m only your chauffeur. Would the Great Man care to share his thoughts?”

He turned to her, his face haggard and gray. It’s what he’ll look like in twenty years, Manny thought, if I can’t get him on a diet and exercise regimen and if this case doesn’t kill him first.

“I’m thinking there’s a disconnect. The Pete Harrigan whom Ms. Collier described isn’t the Pete I knew.”

“He was young then. Couldn’t he have simply matured?”

“Not so profoundly. I’m willing to grant he was involved in those experiments, even complicit in the deaths of the people whose bones we found. He might have thought the experiments were necessary, or he was afraid to lose his job, or he was on the track of a cure- flimsy excuses, indefensible but conceivable. What’s inconceivable is that he would treat Isabella de la Schallier that way- impregnate her and then rush off without taking responsibility for her or the baby.”

“Men can be assholes,” Manny said, thinking of her own wounds. “At least most men. That’s typical behavior. Why, if you hooked up with me-”

“Don’t. No jokes. I knew Pete inside out. He was fundamentally decent. Goodness was part of his genetic makeup.”

“Maybe he was scared off by the threat of loss of his medical license or even jail.”

“Maybe, but he was a fighter. If he loved Isabella and she was carrying his baby, he’d have died protecting them.”

Manny glanced at him quizzically. “Then how come he left?”

Jake was sitting up straight, resolute, the fire back in his eyes. “Pete will tell us.”

She almost swerved off the road. “What are you talking about?”

“Ever since we left Ms. Collier, I’ve been wondering why Pete never left a clue about the baby. He left us Isabella’s dental records and the Gazette picture- clear enough that he and Isabella were together- and a road map to the experiments at the hospital. A full confession of guilt. But silence when it came to the baby.”

“Maybe he was too ashamed of what he’d done to admit it even to you.”

“Or maybe he wanted to admit it only to me. When I opened the box, there’d probably be other people present: Sam or Wally- he didn’t know about you, of course. But maybe he wanted to tell me alone, a confession to his best friend and to no one else. Manny, he’s left me another clue. I’m sure of it.”

By the time they reached the outskirts of New York City, they had devised a plan of action. Manny would go to the Catskill Medical School to speak to Dr. Ewing; Jake would stay in New York and look for the information he was convinced Pete had left.

He’s probably deluded, poor man, Manny thought, but she said nothing. The change in him was so profound, his excitement so great, his beauty so remarkable, that she wanted him to stay undeterred by doubt. There would be plenty of time after the case was closed for her to assess her feelings- and for him to determine his.

The next morning, after Manny left, Jake called Wally. “Can you meet me for lunch?”

“Delighted, Dr. Rosen. The usual place?”

“No, I don’t want to be anywhere Pederson might see me. How about the Carnegie Deli? It won’t kill you to eat real food for one meal.”

Every time Jake saw Wally, he felt a tingle of pride; this time it was especially true. With Pete’s death, Wally was now his closest medical confidant, and he looked forward to a developing relationship during which his colleague’s shyness would dissipate and his brilliance would become obvious not only in Jake’s office but throughout the forensic pathology community. There are lots of good brain surgeons and heart surgeons, Jake told Wally, but very few top forensic pathologists. The future, he told Wally over pastrami, could be anything Wally wanted to make it.

“I’m flattered, Dr. Rosen,” Wally said. “Truly. But you could have saved the praise until you got back to the office. Why’d you ask me to come downtown?”

Jake leaned back, enjoying himself. “Ever spied on anybody?”

Wally’s face crimsoned. “When I was in high school, I peeked into the girls’ locker room. It was a big deal then. Can you imagine?”

Jake laughed. “No, I mean really spied. Like followed somebody without being seen?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I am now an experienced private dick. And I have the finesse of a ballerina.”

“You may be overqualified.” Jake considered. “This time you will mostly be in a car.”

“But I don’t have a car, remember? You had to rent one when I drove to Turner.”

“And very expensive, too. This assignment may take a few days, and I don’t want to spring for a rental. You could take mine, though. Manny’ll drive me if we have to go upstate. Otherwise, I’m not leaving the city.”

Jake leaned forward to take another bite of his sandwich; then his body jerked back. He stood, fumbled in his pocket, and plunked fifty dollars on the table. “That’s where it is!” he shouted. “Of course!”

“Where are you going?” Wally asked, looking at Jake as though he were certifiable.

“Out.”

“But what about the assignment? Who’m I supposed to follow?”

Jake was already halfway to the door. “This is more important.”

The more he thought about it, the surer he was that he had guessed Pete’s hiding place. Hide in plain sight. Well, almost plain. His mind retraced the day they had discovered the other bodies. He had grown ill at the sight of them, particularly the mandible of Skeleton Four- Isabella de la Schallier. It wasn’t because of the cancer. It was because he must have suspected after the top of her skull was dug up Friday morning. He must have had her dental records with him on Saturday and confirmed it was her when the buried jawbone was disinterred. He had pleaded heat exhaustion, then forgetfullness, gone back to the car twice. My car.

Jake willed the subway to go faster. He’d seen Manny’s skepticism. Now he wanted her with him, wanted to share his exaltation. He got out at 103rd Street and raced to his parking garage. “I’ve left something in the car,” he told the surprised attendant. “I have to get it.”

“You know that’s not permitted, Dr. Rosen. I’ll have to get it for-”

Jake darted past him and ran down the ramp. He saw his beat-up Olds enclosed in a thicket of new foreign cars. He made his way through, skinning an ankle. He didn’t care. He opened the passenger door and with his spare key unlocked the glove compartment. He reached in, rummaged. Tucked in back was something Jake had handled a thousand times, only never in so crucial a moment: an evidence bag.

He drew it out. Pete had left him a letter.

DR. HENRY EWING was in his eighties, Manny figured, but looked nearer sixty. His trim figure, when he rose to shake her hand, was ramrod straight, his face was rosy, his shoes and fingernails polished to the highest gloss. Now he was back behind his desk, Manny sitting across from it.

“You told my assistant it was an emergency, Ms. Manfreda,” he said, “but you seem to be in excellent health. I’ve made room for you in my schedule, but if you’re merely here to sell me something-”

“Oh, it’s an emergency all right.” Manny loathed the man from the moment she introduced herself. She watched him intently. Spring it on him. “I’m here at the recommendation of Dr. Peter Harrigan.”

A muscle twitched under Ewing’s left eye. He selected a paper clip from a bowl on his desk and toyed with it. Not a bad cover-up but not good enough. “I haven’t heard from Dr. Harrigan in decades. Strange that he would recommend me.” Got him. He talked to Harrigan the Monday before Harrigan died.

“But you were once colleagues, were you not?”

He shrugged. “Forty years ago. He worked for me.”

“Then you’re the right Dr. Ewing. It’s forty years ago I’m interested in.” I’ve interrogated tougher witnesses than this. That paper clip’s scrap metal. He’s limp pasta. “You see, I’ve been retained to investigate the death of one Lieutenant James Albert Lyons.”

Not a twitch, not a flicker. “Never heard of him. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

She bore in. “You might not know the name, but you’ll surely remember the circumstance. He was one of at least four patients- there may have been more- who died at your hands. For him the murder weapon you used was electroshock experiments. He died of a fracture of the cervical spine.”

Touchdown! The hatred in those eyes could burn asbestos. She pressed on. “Still, if you don’t remember him, perhaps the name Isabella de la Schallier is familiar. You killed her with mescaline, I believe. But here’s a question that puzzles me: How come you decided to save her baby? You can tell me, or you can tell the police.”

He faced her squarely. “I will not have you sully my reputation at this stage of my life. We weren’t in the business of killing people, Ms. Manfreda. Especially not babies.”

“So the deaths were accidents? Unfortunate results of vital government testing? Human experiments?”

“Yes.”

“And one patient died of strontium poisoning. Didn’t you know what would happen if you fed someone strontium ninety?”

“Dr. Harrigan handled the strontium ninety. He fed it to patients in breakfast cereal in different doses.”

“And the mescaline?”

“Harrigan wouldn’t touch that. He refused. A different doctor did it.”

“On whose orders?”

Look at him. He’s broken. “I can’t tell you that.”

“On your orders, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, on your orders because you yourself were ordered.”

He seemed to shrivel before her eyes. Like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I had no choice,” he said. “It was a government program. I was a patriot.” He laid his head on the desk and closed his eyes. Waiting for the guillotine.

“I’m not much of a government fan,” Manny said calmly, though her heart was a trip-hammer, “and I’ve seen more than my share of injustice, but what you did in the government’s name at Turner is beyond despicable.”

Ewing raised his head. His eyes were vacant. “It wasn’t only at Turner, it was all over the country. Remember, this was the Cold War. We were afraid the Russians might use their bombs. We had to know the levels of radiation a person could survive. It was self-defense.”

Bullshit. “And the mescaline?”

“The North Koreans used drugs in fifty-two, the Japanese throughout the Second World War, mescaline and all sorts of other mind-benders. Again, we had to know the levels, what a person could be subjected to before he gave up secrets, before he’d betray his country.”

“Of course you would never have used radiation or drugs or Serratia as weapons.”

A hesitation. “Never. This is America!”

Righteous jerk. “So you experimented on people whose minds were already gone. I’m afraid I don’t understand the logic.”

“Isabella wasn’t insane.”

“No, she was just pregnant. I guess that makes it all right. Did you try mescaline on nonpregnant women too? A kind of comparison shopping?” Manny stood, shaking with rage. “This has been really informative, Dr. Ewing. I thank you.”

He reached out a hand. “Where are you going?”

“To New York. I’m just a simple civil rights attorney, but I suspect a great many people will want to know what happened at Turner- or all over the nation, if you’re right in what you say. If I were you, I’d hire a good lawyer. Somebody from the Justice Department would probably be best. His boss’s interests might coincide with yours.”

She looked at him for one last time, feeling her stomach heave. “Tell me, was it only four?”

He hesistated, then shook his head.

“And their bodies?”

“Buried in the field with the others.”

No special day ends without a treat. “I suppose, then, they’ll have to stop construction while we dig them up. But don’t worry, you probably won’t have to give back your Nobel Prize.”

When she’d left, he picked up the phone and made a long distance call.

Jake had guessed right. If Pete was carrying something with him, something that would explain the existence of the child, what better place to hide it- where no one but Jake could find it- than in the glove compartment of Jake’s car? Why not give it to me that night? Because he didn’t want to be there when I discovered it. He was too ashamed. He opened the letter. The voice of Isabella de la Schallier rang out across the decades.

My dearest beloved,

This is the most painful letter I’ll ever write. When you finish it, I ask only for two things: that you do what I ask, agony though I’m sure it will be, and that you keep this letter always as a reminder of my love.

Dr. Ewing told me yesterday that I will be given mescaline. He told me it was for my benefit, that it will help me with my depression, but I know that’s a lie. I’m not depressed- you have brought me joy. And I’m not sick, except sick in love. So I will be another of the Turner victims, like Lyons and Millen, Tedesco, Ryan and Cochran, and three others whose names I don’t know. The ones who disappeared into the Seclusion Room before me. At worst, I will go mad. At best, I shall die.

Of course I refused. I pleaded, begged on my hands and knees. He told me that if I did not cooperate, he would kill the baby- our Joseph. He said that in exchange for my participation, he would let me find a couple to adopt Joseph when he’s born- he would even help me if I didn’t know anyone myself.

My “treatment” will be long and hard. It’s even possible I will survive it, though I doubt that very much. The tragedy is that you will not be at my side to guide me through it. The other condition that Dr. Ewing imposed is that we are never to see each other again. I know you’re going to try to save me, and I can’t prevent you from trying, except to urge you to heed me. Be at peace. I’m at peace. You are my Godsend, my light, my soul, and my life, and losing you is a different death, a more painful one.

You must promise, my heart. For Joseph’s sake and for mine, you must accept what is inevitable. God is more powerful than Dr. Ewing. I believe it is His will to take me to His bosom and to leave you and Joseph on this frail earth to live out your lives in happiness. You are forgiven- by me and by God.

So this is goodbye. It is the heart that animates life. When the murmur of the heart finally ceases, the rest remains silent. I cover you with a thousand million kisses and feel yours in return.

Your Isabella

Pete had attached a note:

Jake,

For God’s sake show this to no one. It is a sacred treasure, and I entrust it to your care.

P

A treasure indeed, Jake thought. After Pete guessed who the bones belonged to, he must have swiped the dental records and the photographs from the Academie on Friday afternoon. Maybe he was still hoping it wasn’t her, but when the mandible was unearthed Saturday afternoon- bingo. When we discovered the other bones, he had his proof that she had not died in childbirth but had been killed, so he left the note in my glove compartment and hid the dental chart and pictures in “Gardiner’s” samples for dual protection. The poor shell of a man. What a shock it must have been. No wonder he was so sick that day. His sins had come back to claim him.

MANNY CALLED Jake’s cell phone and told him everything she’d discovered. “I’ll go to Haskell Griffith,” she said. “He’s the best lawyer I know. Fought the government a number of times- even won a few. I’ll co-counsel with him. I want to get back at those roaches, those who are still alive. It’s personal.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Home.”

“You’re back in the city?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“Why? I’m lying here in bed, dressed in a diaphanous La Perla nightgown, waiting for my lover to get his ass across town and fill my bedroom with the intoxicating odor of eau de formaldehyde.”

“You’ll have to call a different ME,” Jake said. “I’m on my way to Albany. I thought if you were still upstate, you could do the investigation with me.”

“What investigation?”

“To find Isabella’s baby’s adoptive parents.”

Manny sat up, electrified. “You mean the child’s alive?”

“Hardly a child anymore. And I’ve no idea if he’s alive. Still, it’s worth a try. Maybe Pete found him, kept in contact with him, supported him.”

“Talk about a needle in a haystack. Couldn’t you at least wait to go until tomorrow morning?”

“I want to get there first thing. I’ll find a motel for the night. Maybe pick up a hot tootsie to keep me company.”

“Try it and I’ll know. I have the nose of a bloodhound.”

“But not, thank goodness, the looks.”

“I still say it’s a waste of time.”

“How many babies were adopted in this area in 1964? It shouldn’t be that difficult.”

“If the adoptive parents lived in the area, and if they still live there, and if they’re still alive, and if it was a legal adoption. You’re right: shouldn’t be difficult at all.”

“If I can’t find him, it’s not so terrible. I’ll have only wasted a day.”

“Worse,” Manny said. “You’ll have wasted a night.”

It was a huge haystack. Jake sat in the Hall of Records cursing himself; the task seemed formidable. The Baxter County clerk had been a friend and admirer of Dr. Harrigan- knew him when he worked at Turner. Harrigan had told him nice things about Jake. So when Jake called him and told him he needed to look through the records as a part of a murder investigation, he readily permitted it. There were over twelve thousand adoptions recorded for the year 1964. How would I know the right couple even if I found them? Did Isabella use Pete’s last name? He looked up “Baby Harrigan.” Nothing. Mostly the babies were listed by their first name. “Baby Joseph.” He riffled through the pages. Twelve Baby Josephs, though he might have missed a few. Slowly he matched them with their adoptive parents; if necessary, he’d contact them all. He took out his notebook and began to jot down names and addresses.

Abbot, Cohen, Fronz, Giordano, Levine, McAuliffe, Murray, Pavlin, Rodgers, Snell, Tracy… He raised his head and threw down the pen. The truth hit him with the force a pilot feels when his plane breaks the sound barrier. He raced through the remaining pages, skipping U and V.

There it was. Baby Joseph.

Winnick.

Manny had slept with her previous best lover, Mycroft. Kenneth had brought the precious poodle home from Rose’s, and their mutual delight with the reunion was expressed in an orgy of kisses, hugs, and exclamations of delight.

Now, rested and healing nicely, she was determined to spend the day on her own work. She had the Martin settlement conference on her schedule this morning, and it couldn’t be adjourned. Kenneth had called early to make sure she wasn’t going to be late for court; he would bring the file in the car with him.

The phone rang as she was going out the door.

“Ms. Manfreda?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Lawrence Travis in the ME’s office. Dr. Rosen called from upstate. He wants to apologize for not calling you himself, but he’s at a crime scene where there’s no cell service. He needs to show you something important, and then he wants to take you to dinner. He wants you to meet him at Bellevue later- around six o’clock.”

Manny would be finished with the Martin hearing by three; it would give her the rest of the afternoon to catch up.

“No problem. In his office?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Manfreda, could you repeat what you just said?”

“Where does he want me to meet him? At his office?”

“In the morgue. He says he’s found something relevant to the bones. I have no idea what he meant, but he said you’d understand.”

“I sure do.”

The morgue. How exciting.

Dora and Joseph Winnick lived in a small but neatly kept and freshly painted two-story house on a modest farm in Hillsdale, New York, not forty miles from Albany. Jake had no trouble finding it, having been given precise driving instructions. He had called, told them his name, and was greeted with the honor accorded to the Queen of England. Wally’s boss? They had heard so much about him; Wally had never been so happy or so fulfilled. Dr. Rosen was welcome. On such short notice, would it be acceptable if they served a simple salad for lunch?

It was more than acceptable, he had assured them, and arrived to find a platter of chicken, meats, and cheeses along with greens, radishes, mushrooms, cucumbers, spectacular bread, and a homemade apple pie, still warm from the oven.

Wonderful people, Jake thought, touched by their generosity and warmth. No wonder Wally’s so kind, so giving. He spent much of the meal answering questions about himself; only when he had forced down a second portion of pie was he able to ask about Wally.

“Joseph’s brother William- deceased now, alas- worked as a groundskeeper at Turner Hospital,” Dora said. She was a birdlike creature in her late seventies with a face, skin, and stance as testaments to a life lived mainly outdoors. “Joseph and I couldn’t have children of our own. One day a Dr. Ewing called- the dearest man- and asked if we were interested in adopting a newborn baby.”

Joseph, tall, lean, and equally weathered, took his wife’s hand. “Seems William had mentioned our plight to Dr. Ewing. Warned us that the child had a physical defect, a clubfoot, but was sound of mind and heart. Would we like to visit the hospital and see him?”

Dora’s eyes sparkled at the memory. “He had the sweetest face! Couldn’t have been a month old, but he waved his little hands at us, as though to say hello, and I picked him up, and- well, he just seemed to fit.”

“We didn’t care about the clubfoot, and even if we did, we didn’t have the money to fix it,” Joseph said, continuing the narrative seamlessly, as though the two had rehearsed it. “We knew the boy’d have some problems, but is there a human being in the world who doesn’t?”

Dora looked at Jake, almost daring him to disagree. “It made us cherish him all the more. He got teased at school something awful- made him a loner, I think- leastways he didn’t have many friends when he was little and no girlfriends in high school, but he was always so good-natured, so uncomplaining, that we didn’t really worry about him.”

It was Joseph’s turn. “It was his brains saved him. Wally could read by the time he was five, and I don’t think he’s stopped reading since. But he was at loose ends when he finished Columbia Medical School. I think he wanted to get even farther away from people, so he went out to Santa Fe and worked there with kids less fortunate than he.”

With children more handicapped than he was.

“Then he got enough gumption to come back to New York City,” Dora said. “Think how brave that was. Not only to come back but to practice medicine in a city environment, surrounded by other health-care professionals.”

Brave indeed. “Did you ever locate his birth parents?”

“My goodness, yes!” Dora exclaimed, as though the question surprised her. “His birth father, that is. The mother died in childbirth.”

Jake held his breath. “What was his name?”

“Why, Peter Harrigan. Didn’t Dr. Harrigan tell you Wally was adopted?”

“He did, only he didn’t tell me he was the father.”

“Strange,” Joseph said. “Pete was right fond of the boy. Maybe he was afraid you’d tell Wally.”

Pete? “Then you knew Dr. Harrigan personally?”

“Of course! He was Wally’s teacher when Wally came to New York. He contacted us then but made us promise not to tell Wally who he was until he had passed his class. Pete had married and had a daughter. He didn’t want his new family to know about his past life, or Wally to know he was his father’s pupil. He’s the one who told us about Wally’s birth mother. He loved her, he said, and, as I say, she died in childbirth before they could be married. He and Wally got along real well. They didn’t see each other all that often, but when Pete came, he and Wally’d have these long talks about medicine and about life. And of course he got him the job with you. Said you were his best friend.”

I was. We had those same talks. Pete must have found the Winnicks the same way I did. And his lie was a gentle one. Jake felt a catch in his throat. The emotion he had held in abeyance since his arrival threatened to overflow, and he asked his hosts to direct him to the bathroom, where he washed his face and stood with his hands on the sink until he had mastered his feelings. Ewing kept his promise; there’s humanity even in monsters. And Pete- Pete was a good man. At least he tried to make up for his sins in the only way he could- through Wally. He’s served his penance. I can love him again, even if I can’t forgive him for the experiments at Turner.

He returned to the dining area. Dora had cleared the dishes; Joseph had stepped outside for a cigarette but reentered when he saw Jake.

“I’m afraid I’ve terrible news,” he told them gently. “Pete’s dead.”

“No!” Dora covered her mouth with her apron. “When? And why didn’t Wally tell us?”

“Two weeks ago. Pete had cancer, and maybe Wally didn’t want to upset you.”

“Did Dr. Harrigan suffer?” Joseph asked.

“Only at the end. I saw him just before he died. We talked about Wally.”

“God rest his soul,” Dora whispered. “Thank you for telling us.”

Jake shook Joseph’s hand and kissed Dora. “And thank you,” he said as he left, “for being such good parents.”

It was after two. Jake called Manny. Kenneth picked up and told him the Martin hearing was lasting longer than expected and he wasn’t sure what time she’d get back. “But she’s definitely coming in. You wouldn’t believe the pileup of papers.”

“As a matter of fact, I would,” Jake said, thinking with horror about his own desk and what awaited him when Pederson gave him clearance to return.

Should I tell Elizabeth about the child? Pete never told her. Why should I play messenger? He sat in his car without starting the motor. Because she could be hurt by this professionally, if it’s revealed publically and she’s in the dark. Pete would have wanted me to take care of her. She’s Wally’s half sister, but she’s Pete’s daughter, first. He called her office. She hadn’t come in today, a woman with the voice of a drill sergeant told him. In fact, she hadn’t been in all week. Ever since her husband had been hurt in an automobile accident.

Good. It’ll be easier to talk to her at home.

The Markis house, fronted by a circular driveway cut through immaculate grass, looked as much like feudal England as twenty-first-century New Jersey. Jake had never been here before; Elizabeth had been living far more modestly when he dated her. Now he registered only that it seemed far too grand to be inhabited by anyone he knew except the mayor, an impression verified by a marble foyer, circular stairs leading to the heavens, and a butler in uniform who asked him if he was expected.

“No,” said Jake, who had purposely not heralded his arrival, fearing she would not let him come, “but this is an emergency. I’m Jacob Rosen, a friend of her late father’s and medical examiner for New York City.”

This last seemed to work, for the butler gave a little bow and went upstairs. Soon Elizabeth appeared, dressed in a simple black sheath. Manny would know the designer. “Jake,” she said, her tone frosty. “This is a surprise.”

“I’m sorry to intrude. Truly. But I’ve found out things about your father you ought to know.”

“About his death? I told you I’m not-”

“About his life. His early life.”

She sighed. “I can’t spare much time. Daniel is hurt, you know.”

“Your office told me. An automobile accident?”

“Yes. A truck exploded on the Jersey Turnpike. He got caught in the blast. A broken rib, cuts and bruises- he can hardly walk- and the noise temporarily deafened him. He still can’t hear.”

“I’m so sorry. Do you want me to take a look at him?”

She glanced at him scornfully. “We have our own doctor. Why don’t we go into the library? It’s comfortable there.”

He followed her through heavy oak doors into a room that seemed to Jake larger than the reading rooms of most New York branch libraries, where they sat facing each other in two identical wing chairs.

“Did your father say anything to you when you visited him before he died?” Jake asked. “Anything he hadn’t told you before?”

She hesitated. “No. Why?”

“Because when I saw him I thought he wanted to confess to me.”

“Confess what?”

“I didn’t know. It’s what prompted my question to you.”

“He only told me he was dying of cancer.”

I’ll bet that’s not all.

Her eyes were steely, suspicious. “Yes. Mom told us. Her name was Isabella. She was a nurse at a hospital where he worked in upstate New York.”

“Turner.”

“That’s right. Died of pneumonia, Dad said.”

“Did you know Pete and Isabella had a child?”

Her head snapped back. “A child?”

“Yes, a boy. Congratulations. You have a brother- a halfbrother.”

Her expression grew fearful. I wonder why. “The boy’s alive?”

“The man’s alive, very much so.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. He works for me. Would you like to meet him?”

“He- he works for you?”

“Yes. He’s a doctor. His name’s Dr. Walter Winnick- Winnick’s the name of his adoptive parents. Pete recommended him to me, and I took him on. He’s loyal and hard-working. Invaluable.”

She bit her lip so hard it turned white, but she met his eyes. “I’d love to meet him. Maybe after the Monmouth case is closed, and after the elections.”

“That would be fine. You intend to run for governor?”

“I don’t know. The feelers are out. It’s a question of fundraising.”

“Good luck, Elizabeth. I mean that sincerely.”

“Thanks. Is that all you have to tell me?”

“For the moment. Whatever else can wait.”

She stood. “Then-”

The door behind them opened. Elizabeth wheeled, her face red with fury. “Not now!” she shouted.

Too late. Jake had turned also. Daniel Markis was at the door, and Jake got a good look at him. His face was unblemished, his stance upright. He was dressed in slacks and a sports shirt. Can hardly walk? I’ve never seen a man beat it so fast in all my life. Markis isn’t bedridden, but he may be deaf; Elizabeth had to shout. He faced her. She cowered. All right. Gloves off. He grabbed her arm.

“Let go!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

“Making you listen. When you see your half brother, Elizabeth, don’t be too upset. He has a clubfoot, you see. When you give a pregnant woman mescaline, deformities to the fetus are inevitable. Pete didn’t tell you the whole truth. She wasn’t a nurse, she was a patient. And she didn’t die of pneumonia. She died of mescaline poisoning. And your father was involved with the program that administered it.”

She screamed again, the sound reverberating through the room. He heard a car door open and close, the sound of tires on gravel. If you set off a claymore mine from behind, the unidirectional balls don’t hit you but the blast’ll damage the auditory nerve. That’s what happened to Markis! He raced past Elizabeth, pushed aside the butler who appeared in the doorway, and dashed to his car. Markis was that “woman.” Elizabeth must have known. My God.

He called Manny’s office from the car.

“Ms. Manfreda’s office.”

Shit. Kenneth. “Where’s Manny?”

“She came back from court early and left half an hour ago. Went to do some shopping- she says her clothes are rags- and then she was going to meet you, as requested, at the morgue. Another romantic rendezvous among the corpses, I gathered. She was so excited about her afternoon- she could make the trunk shows at Bergdorf’s- she left her cell phone on her desk.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“She said someone from your office called and told her to meet you at Bellevue, in the morgue, later this afternoon. Said you’d found something and wanted to show it to her there.”

Jake felt cold fear settle in the pit of his stomach.

A MAN IN A hospital coat came up to her in the Bellevue lobby, wearing a Secret Service-type transmitter in his ear. “Ms. Manfreda?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lawrence Travis. Dr. Rosen asked me to escort you to the morgue. He’s in an urgent meeting he couldn’t avoid, but he’ll meet you as soon as he’s finished.”

He’s probably with Pederson, deciding his fate. “I can find the morgue easily enough. No need to come with me.”

“It’s no trouble. It’s the old morgue, a creepy place. I promise you’ll be grateful for the company.”

She smiled. “Thank you. That’s very nice of you.”

They took the elevator to the basement, where he led her down a cheerless, brightly lit corridor until they came to a door. She shivered. “It’s cold down here.”

“It’ll be warmer inside,” Travis said. He opened the door. Manny saw a wall of numbered silver metal boxes, four boxes high and about fifteen rows wide.

A gurney holding a corpse stood in front of them.

“This is where we keep the bodies until the funeral director picks them up or they go to potter’s field,” Travis explained as they entered. “We refrigerate the bodies that have to remain here for a while. They’re on trays in the drawers at the back. One body per tray, about half of them in use at any one time, unless there’s been a disaster and the corpses pile up.”

He’s enjoying himself. Creepy is right.

“All unidentified and unclaimed bodies in Manhattan end up here before going to Hart Island for burial. Can’t recognize most of them- they’re too decayed. Many are old people who’ve outlived their friends and relatives. The police have a Missing Persons Bureau office in the back there, next to the old autopsy room. It’s hardly ever manned, though.”

“The old autopsy room? Is that where Dr. Rosen wants to meet me?” He didn’t answer her. She asked again.

“I guess so. He just told me the old morgue.”

“Since there’s an old one, there must be a new one. Why wouldn’t he meet me there?”

Travis shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. This used to be the ME morgue, but now they’re across the street in their own building, where Dr. Rosen works.”

Suspicion leeched into her brain. “Have you been working for Dr. Rosen a long time?”

“No, ma’am. Three-four weeks is all. I heard him give a lecture on blood splatter and decided he was the person I wanted to be transferred to.”

Manny’s ears tingled. “A lecture on what?”

“Blood splatter.”

Blood splatter. Jake’s laughed a dozen times at laymen who make that mistake: “Splatter is a sound, not the description of blood evidence. Spatter is the word for evidence.“ This man’s never been to Jake’s lecture. This man’s not with the ME’s office. She turned to face him, fear whipping at her like a cold wind. She looked intently at his feet. Through his paper booties she could see lizard boots. It’s the same person who attacked me outside my office! “I warned you, Ms. Manfreda, not to continue your investigation.”

She had felt his breath before- at Turner. “Who are you?” she whispered.

“Daniel Markis.” His voice was unnaturally loud.

“Elizabeth’s husband!” Manny understood. Jake had told her Markis was in Elizabeth’s thrall, so much in her shadow he was practically invisible. She must have sent him to Turner; he was the “cleaning lady” outside her office. “Jake says you’re a high school football coach.”

“What?”

She raised her voice. “A high school coach.”

He grinned. “Among other things. Mostly, I work for my wife.”

A knife glinted in his hand. She recognized it with a spasm of terror. “I spared you on Elizabeth’s orders,” he said. “We had to kill Pete- he knew-but she thought you and Jake should live. Just so long as you dropped the investigation. A sentimental mistake. A mistake we aren’t prepared to make twice,” he hissed, stepping toward her.

“Help!” Her shout echoed off the trays. “Help!” Jake, Rose, Kenneth, Mycroft- their faces were vivid in her brain, and Manny was empowered by their love.

She screamed and slammed the gurney into him, and he fell to the ground backward, momentarily dazed.

“You little bitch!” he howled, as he struggled to stand up.

She ducked behind the first row of metal boxes, stumbling on her high heels. She took off her shoes, barely registering that they were the same ones she had worn to the Carramia trial, and held them as she edged toward the body refrigeration unit. She grabbed the handle of one of the boxes, opened it, climbed onto the tray, then pulled it closed from the inside. A corpse stared at her through decomposing eyes, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from screaming.

She could hear Markis approach. “Where are you, bitch?”

Inside it was one big cold storage refrigerator with no barriers. She could move between the many trays in the massive refrigeration unit, impeded only by dead bodies. Maybe Markis didn’t know this. She moved to another tray, its inhabitant covered by a sheet. Markis pulled out the drawer she had just left, then another and another. “You can’t hide for long,” he muttered. She felt the anger of his frustration.

She crawled to another tray, one level up, the hum of the refrigerator unit masking the noise. Her clothes were wet with decomposition fluids from the bodies; the stench of decaying flesh was awful.

She could hear Markis coming closer and darted to an empty drawer on the other side of the unit. She heard another drawer open and slam shut. She moved to another tray. As the drawer was opened she was unable to see him in the gloom.

Then his hands were around her throat- ice-cold hands, a corpse’s hands- and he was choking her. “This way is better,” he whispered. “No knife wound, no marks. I’ll put you in a body bag and you’ll be no different from any of the other bodies. You’ll be buried in potter’s field with the rest of them.”

Markis’s fingers tightened. Dizzy, unable to breathe, she let one of her shoes drop from her hand but gripped the other with desperate strength and slammed it into the top of his skull. Metal heel met bone. He groaned and she felt his hands relax; warm blood dropped from his head across her face. He stepped back into the light and slowly crumpled, her prized stiletto sticking out of the top of his head. She gulped air, gulped again, closed her eyes.

A sound. A gust of warm air. His breath? No, air from the outside corridor. A doctor limped to her side, two Bellevue security guards in tow. “Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes wide with anxiety. “Dr. Rosen told me to follow you, but I went to the new morgue, not this one.” She managed a smile. Wally, she realized.

Kenneth rushed in, mouthed the words “product placement,” then fainted dead away. Then, finally, Jake was at the door, his joy fresher than the air they breathed. He took a step toward her, arms outstretched. She fended him off with a mock glare.

“I know you’d be late for your own funeral. But couldn’t you have tried to be on time for mine?”

“SPINOSA HAD IT RIGHT: Ambition is a species of madness,” Jake said. “In Elizabeth’s case, the madness was extreme- it led to patricide.” Proud of his erudition, Jake glanced at Manny to see if she was impressed.

“Didn’t he say the same thing about lust?” she asked, keeping her eyes steadfastly on the road.

One-upped. “God knows my lust is madness.”

She gave his knee a squeeze. “Mine seems to me perfectly sane.”

They were driving to Turner once more, Manny at the wheel, Mycroft in Jake’s lap: “For a date with Sheriff Fisk,” he had announced when he’d asked her if she wanted to come along, “only he doesn’t know we’re coming.” She had wholeheartedly agreed.

“It was more than just ambition,” Jake went on. “She’s about the coldest woman I’ve ever met, and my guess is it stemmed from her childhood. She probably got the mothering she needed, but not the fathering.”

“That doesn’t jibe. He was compassionate, loving, a good husband to Dolores, a marvelous friend to you, and he never forgot he was Wally’s father.”

Jake had spent the previous night thinking it through. “I think he poured all his love onto his son, even before he traced him to the Winnicks, as compensation for his shame. Another child, even of a different sex, was tough for him. He might have been afraid of loving her too much when she was little, afraid he’d lose her like he lost Isabella and Wally, so he kept distant and she turned against him. It made it easier for her to kill him. After all, he was dying anyway. She just hurried it along.”

They had reached the outskirts of Turner. The autumn leaves still retained their color, but today she was too engrossed in his words to notice them. “You could be right; it makes psychological sense.”

“There’s one thing more. Let’s assume Hans Galt is right and bacteriological experiments, at least, are still going on. Elizabeth spent much of her career at the Justice Department. She could have known about the experiments or covered them up by sitting on the evidence. Pete’s discovery of the radioactive bones- her father’s discovery- might have quickly led to her.”

She shuddered. “It’s too horrible, but possible all the same. Dr. Ewing told me he was following government orders. Maybe she was, too. You know how I am about government conspiracies.”

“Or maybe, Manny, it was only about family. Poor Wally. He’s taken a leave of absence after learning about all of this. Gone back to Santa Fe for a while.”

She glanced at him. His expression was the same as it had been in the autopsy room with Mrs. Alessis’s body; now she realized he could dissect facts as well as flesh. Not a geeky scientist- a sexy scientist! “Why did she ask you to clean out Pete’s study? Anybody could have done it, and look what it led to.”

Jake had asked himself the same question. “To deflect me. I was the only person who might not have bought the cancer story, so to her, asking my help was an indication of her innocence. Remember, she didn’t know Pete had the bones in his possession.” He smiled at her, noting how relaxed she was-amazing, after all she’s been through-and felt a warrior’s urge to keep her from further harm.

“But she did know about the bones themselves,” Manny said.

“Yes. Pete must have told her about them when she visited him just before he died. He was going to confess to me; surely he confessed to her, his child. It was a last-minute attempt to get close to her.”

“So she poisoned him.”

“She knew about the experiments, about Isabella, maybe even about Wally. If any part of the story got out about her own involvement, her cover-up, her political career was finished. She was afraid it would destroy her future.” He looked at Manny again. She was frowning, but her hair- black today- shone in the morning sunshine, and he thought she’d never been so beautiful. She’d told him she’d decided on black hair to go with her black Sevens jeans and cropped-leather Gaultier jacket over a black T-shirt.

“We may never know if she put the poison in the scotch bottle or if Markis did,” he continued. “Both Markis and Elizabeth knew that the jaundice in Pete’s eyes from the cancer would conceal the jaundice created by the poison. My guess is she did it after Markis went home. She had a lot of experience learning the ‘how-to’ of murder because of her position as a prosecutor for so many years. For sure Markis was the ‘son’ who showed up at Shady Briar, and certainly she used Markis to scare you. Among other things, you didn’t know what he looked like and you might have recognized her face, however disguised, from television.”

“I’ll see his face in my nightmares. And Ewing’s. The press is already clammering for a new, full investigation. The fact that they’ve embraced the story may cause the Senate to open new hearings. That phone call he made to Elizabeth’s private line after I left his office may just damn him. They won’t rest until Ewing does a perp walk on murder charges. And if we find other bones…

“And I’m positive I can persuade Patrice to reopen the Lyons case. There’s nobody to threaten her now, and she deserves every penny she can get.”

A good brain in a great body, Jake thought. “As do you,” Jake said. “You’re in desperate need of new clothing.”

She didn’t take the bait.

“Mycroft’s discovery of that bone in my study really caused a hulabaloo, huh?”

“Mycroft, Daddy’s complimenting you!”

Daddy? I’m now the dog’s daddy, Jake thought.

“What’ll happen to Markis when he gets unhandcuffed from that hospital bed- and to Elizabeth?”

“You’re the lawyer; you tell me.”

“With our testimony, Markis will be in the pen for the bombing and stabbing for years. Elizabeth is another story. It’ll be damn hard to prove she’s guilty of murder unless Markis dimes her out. So far, he’s not talking or can’t talk. Her political career’s finished, of course, but full justice- well, we’ll have to wait and see.”

“Don’t you want to go after her? After all, you’re well known in New Jersey now because of the Carramia case; any judge will be glad to hear you out again.”

“I lost that case, you turncoat!”

He grinned. “I know. But this time I’ll be your star witness.”

Manny parked at the mall site. State troopers were combing through the area while several people, including Ms. Crespy, stood to the side, watching. “They’ll use ground-penetrating radar to find the other victims,” Jake said. “Needless to say, the mall’s been postponed indefinitely.” He helped Manny out of the car. “See that fat fellow with the badge and the steam coming out of his ears? That’s Sheriff Fisk. Payoff Fisk, I like to call him.” He waved. “Sheriff!”

Fisk approached, a Rottweiler who’d gone without his breakfast. “Rosen,” he snarled. “You have some gall, being here.”

“And this woman with equal gall is Ms. Manfreda, my trusty associate. She’s a trial attorney, so watch what you say. She gets real mean when provoked.”

Manny studied the nails on her left hand. “Charmed.”

“Ms. Manfreda and I are upset,” Jake said. “Last time we were in Turner, you were downright ungracious. Knew we were there before I called you- probably the night watchman saw us at the hospital and alerted you. You refused to see us or even listen to what I had to say. Demanded we get out of town. But we’re forgiving folk.” He marched to within a foot of Fisk and stared into his eyes. “You can stay in Turner; it’s welcome to you. And you won’t go to jail like you should. But you’ll resign as sheriff as of this instant, you’ll sever all ties with Reynolds Construction and contribute to Baxter Community Hospital whatever moneys you accrued during that relationship, and you’ll issue a public apology to the citizens you used to serve.” He took Manny’s arm. “Come, Ms. Manfreda. You’re averse to maggots, I know, and I don’t want you exposed any more than necessary.” He turned back to Fisk. “I have complete documentation on all your dealings with Reynolds. So not a peep out of you. We’re straight, right? We understand each other, don’t we, Fisk?”

If Fisk were a balloon, all the air would go out of him. But he’s just as full of himself as ever. He staggered off, muttering, to join the others at the edge of the field.

“You were magnificent,” Manny told Jake. “It was the neatest evisceration I’ve seen since we shared that autopsy room.”

Marge Crespy, noticing them, blew them a kiss. A shout arose from the far side of the field, and a trooper ran toward them. “I found something!”

Jake and Manny hurried over. It was a bone. “A tibia,” Jake breathed. “And this one’s from a different part of the field.” He gazed in wonder at the dirt-covered object in the trooper’s hand. “There are other bodies, Manny, and we’re going to find them. Every family has the right to know what happened to their loved one.”

She remembered his enthusiasm the first time she saw him, jumping from the helicopter to look at Terrell’s body. The same intensity was in him now, electric and dynamic and- there was no other way to describe this dear cutter-up of corpses- full of life.

“If by we you mean you, me, and Mycroft, you’re right,” she promised. “Even if it takes a lifetime.”