We were silent for a while, picking at our food.

"Doc, no offense, but just what do you think youare going to find out about d.a.m.n feather parts?"

"Hopefully, their origin."

"I can save you the trouble. They came from birds, "he said.

I left Marino at close to seven P.M. and returned downtown The temperature had risen above forty, the night dark and lashing out in fits of rain violent enough to stop traffic. Sodium vapor lamps were pollen-yellow fudges behind the morgue, where the bay door was shut, every parking s.p.a.ce vacant. Inside the building, my pulse quickened as I followed the brightly lit corridor past the autopsy suite to Susanas small office.

As I unlocked the door, I did not know what I expected to find, but I was drawn to her filing cabinet and desk drawers, to every book and old telephone message Everything looked the same as it had before she died. Marino was quite skilled at going through someoneas private s.p.a.ce without disturbing the natural disorder of things. The telephone was still askew on the right corner of the desk, the cord twisted like a corkscrew. Scissors and two pencils with broken points were on the green paper blotter, her lab coat draped over the back of her chair.

A reminder of a doctoras appointment was still taped to her computer monitor, and as I stared at the shy curves and gentle slant of her neat script, I trembled inside. Where had she gone adrift? Was it when she married Jason Story? Or was her destruction setup much earlier than that, when she was the young daughter of a scrupulous minister, the twin left behind when her sister was killed? Sitting in her chair, I rolled it closet to the filing cabinet and began slipping out one file after another and glancing through the contents. Most of what I perused was brochures and other printed information pertaining to surgical supplies and miscellaneous items used in the morgue. Nothing struck me as curious until I discovered that she had saved virtually every memo she had ever gotten from Fielding, but not one from Ben Stevens or me, when I knew that both of us had sent her plenty. Further searching through drawers and bookshelves produced no files for Stevens or me, and thatas when I concluded that someone had taken them.

My first thought was that Marino might have carried them off. Then something else occurred to me with a jolt, and I hurried upstairs. Unlocking the door to my office, I went straight to the file drawer where I kept mundane administrative paperwork such as telephone call sheets, memos, printouts of electronic mail communications I had received, and drafts of budget proposals and long-term plans. Frantically, I rifled through folders adrawers. The thick file I was looking for was simply labeled "Memos," and in it were copies of every memo Iad sent to my staff and various other agency personnel over the past several years. I searched Roseas office and carefully checked my office again. The file was gone.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," I said under my breath as I headed furiously down the hall. "You G.o.ddam son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Ben Stevensas office was impeccably neat and so carefully appointed that it looked like a display in a discount furniture store. His desk was a Williamsburg reproduction with bright bra.s.s pulls and a mahogany veneer, and he had bra.s.s floor lamps with dark green shades. The door was covered with a machine-made Persian rug, the walls arranged with large prints of alpine skiers and men on thundering horses swinging polo sticks and sailors racing through snarling seas. I began by pulling Susanas personnel file. The expected job description, resume, and other doc.u.ments were inside. Absent were several memos of commendation I had written since hiring her and had added to her file myself. I began opening desk drawers, and discovered in one of them a brown vinyl kit containing toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, and a small bottle of cologne.

Perhaps it was the barely perceptible shift of air when the door was silently pulled open wider, or perhaps I simply sensed a presence the way an animal would. I happened to look up to find Ben Stevens standing in the doorway as I sat at his desk s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap back on a bottle of Red cologne. For a long, icy moment, our eyes held and neither of us spoke. I did not feel fear. I did not feel the least bit concerned by what he had caught me doing I felt rage "Youare keeping unusually late hours, Ben."

Zipping up his toilet kit, I returned it to its drawer. I laced my fingers on top of the blotter, my movements, my speech, deliberate and slow.

"The thing Iave always liked about working after hours is there is no one else around," I said. "No distractions. No risk of someone walking in and interrupting whatever it is you are doing. No eyes or ears. Not a sound, except on rare occasion when the security guard happens to wander through. And we all know that doesnat happen often unless his attention is solicited, because he hates coming into the morgue at any time. Iave never known a security guard who didnat hate that. Same goes for the cleaning crew. They wonat even go downstairs, and they do as little up here as they can get away with. But that point is moot, isnat it? Itas close to nine oaclock. The cleaning crew is always gone by seven-thirty.

"What intrigues me is that I did not guess before now. It never crossed my mind. Maybe that is a sad comment about how preoccupied Iave been. You told the police you did not know Susan personally, yet you frequently gave her rides to and from work, such as on the snowy morning I autopsied Jennifer Deighton. I remember that man was very distracted on that occasion. She left the body in the middle of the corridor, and she was dialing a number on the phone and quickly hung up when I walked into the autopsy suite. I doubt she was placing a business call at seven-thirty in the morning on a day when most people werenat going to venture out of their homes because of the weather. And there was no one in the office to call - no one had gotten in yet, except you. If she were dialing your number, why would her impulse be to hide that from me? Unless you were more than her direct supervisor.

"Of course, your relationship with me is equally intriguing. We seem to get along fine, then suddenly you claim that I am the worst boss in Christendom. It makes me wonder if Jason Story is the only person talking to reporters. Itas amazing, this persona I suddenly have. This image. The tyrant. The neurotic. The person who is somehow responsible for the violent death of my morgue supervision. Susan and I had a very cordial working relationship, and until recently, Ben, so did we. But itas my word against yours, especially now, since any sc.r.a.p of paper that might doc.u.ment what Iam saying has conveniently disappeared. And my prediction is that you have already leaked to someone that important personnel files and memoranda have vanished from the office, thus implying that Iam the one who took them.

When files and memos disappear, you can say anything you want about the contents of them, canat you?"

"I donat know what youare talking about," Ben Stevens said. He moved away from the doorway but did not come close to the desk or take a chair. His face was flushed, his eyes hard with hate. "I donat know anything about any missing files or memos, but if itas true, then I canat hide that fact from the authorities, just as I canat hide the fact that I happened to stop by the office tonight to get something Iad left and discovered you rummaging through my desk."

"What did you leave, Ben?"

"I donat have to answer your questions."

"Actually, you do. You work for me, and if you come into the building late at night and I happen to know about it, I have the right to question you."

"Go ahead and put me on leave. Try to fire me. That will certainly look good for you right now."

"You are a squid, Ben."

His eyes widened and he wet his lips.

"Your efforts to sabotage me are just a lot of ink youare squirting into the water because youare panicking and want to divert attention from yourself. Did you kill Susan?"

"Youare losing your G.o.ddam mind." His voice shook.

"She left her house early afternoon on Christmas Day, allegedly to meet a girlfriend. In truth, the person she was meeting was you, wasnat it? Did you know that when she was dead in her car, her coat collar and scarf smelled like menas cologne, like the Red cologne you keep in your desk so you can freshen up before you hit the bars in the Slip after work?"

"I donat know what youare talking about"

"Who was paying her?"

"Maybe you were."

"Thatas ridiculous," I said calmly. "You and Susan were involved in some money-making scheme, and my guess is that you are the one who initially got her involved because you knew her vulnerabilities. She probably had confided in you. You knew how to convince her to go along, and Lord knows you could use the money. Your bar tabs alone have got to blow your budget. Partying is very expensive, and I know what you get paid."

"You donat know anything."

"Ben."

I lowered my voice. "Get out of it. Stop while thereas still time to tell me whoas behind It."

He would not look me in the eye.

"The stakes are too high when people start dying. Do you think ft you killed Susan that youall getaway with it?"

He said nothing.

"If someone else killed her, do you think youare immune, that the same thing canat happen to you?"

"Youare threatening me."

"Nonsense."

"You canat prove that the cologne you smelled on Susan was mine. Thereas no test for something like that.

You canat put a smell in a test tube; you canat save it;a he said.

"Iam going to ask you to leave now, Ben."

He turned and walked out of his office. When I heard the elevator doors shut, I went down the hall and peered out a window overlooking the parking lot in back. I did not venture out to my car until Stevens had driven away.

The FBI Building is a concrete fortification at 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of D.C., and when I arrived the following morning, it was in the wake of at least a hundred noisy schoolchildren. They brought to mind Lucy at their age as they stomped up steps, dashed to benches, and flocked restlessly about huge shrubs and potted trees. Lucy would have loved touring the laboratories, and I suddenly missed her intensely.

The babble of shrill young voices faded as if carried away from me by the wind, my step brisk and directed, for I had been here enough times to know the way. Heading toward the center of the building, I pa.s.sed the courtyard, then a restricted parking area and a guard before reaching the single gla.s.s door. Inside was a lobby of tan furniture, mirrors, and flags. A photograph of the president smiled from one wall, while posted on another was a hit parade of the ten most wanted fugitives in the land.

At the escort desk, I presented my driveras license to a young agent whose demeanor was as grim as his gray suit.

"Iam Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia."

"Who are you here to see?" I told him.

He compared me to my photograph, ascertained that I was not armed, placed a phone call, and gave me a badge. Unlike the Academy at Quantico, Headquarters had an ambience that seemed to starch the soul and stiffen the spine.

I had never met Special Agent Minor Downey, though the irony of his name had conjured up unfair images. He would be an effete, frail man with pale blond hair covering every inch of his body except for his head. His eyes would be weak, his skin rarely touched by the sun, and of course he would drift in and out of places and never draw attention to himself. Naturally, I was wrong. When a fit man in shirtsleeves appeared and looked straight at me, I got up from my chair.

"You must be Mr. Downey," I said.

"Dr. Scarpetta."

He shook my hand. "Please call me Minor."

He was at the most forty, and attractive in a scholarly sort of way, with his rimless gla.s.ses, neatly clipped brown hair, and maroon-and-navy-striped tie. He exuded a prepossession and intellectual intensity immediately noticeable to anyone who has suffered through arduous years of postgraduate education, for I could not recall a professor from Georgetown or Johns Hopkins who did not commune with the uncommon and find it impossible to connect with pedestrian human beings.

"Why feathers?" I asked as we boarded the elevator.

"I have a friend whoas an ornithologist at the Smithsonianas Museum of Natural History," he said. "When government aviation officials started getting her help with bird strikes, I got interested. You see, birds get ingested by aircraft engines and when youare going through the wreckage on the ground, you find these feather parts and want to figure out which bird caused the problem. In other words, whatever got sucked in was chewed up pretty good. A sea gull can crash a B-1 bomber, and you lose one engine to a bird strike with a wide-bodied plane full of people and youave got a problem. Or take the case of the loon that went through the windshield of a Lear jet and decapitated the pilot. So thatas part of what I do. I work on bird ingestions. We test turbines and blades by throwing in chickens. You know, can the plane survive one chicken or two? But birds figure into all sorts of things. Pigeon down in p.o.o.p on the bottom of a suspectas shoes - was the suspect in the alleyway where the body was found or not? Or the guy who stole a Double Yellow Amazon during the course of a burglary, and we find down pieces in the back of his car that are identified as coming from a Double Yellow Amazon. Or the down feather recovered from the body of a woman who was raped and murdered. She was found in a Panasonic stereo speaker box in a Dumpster. The down looked like a small white mallard feather to me, same type of feather in the down comforter on the suspectas bed. That case was made with a feather and two hairs."

The third floor was a city block of laboratories where examiners a.n.a.lyzed the explosives, paint chips, pollens, tools, tires, and debris used in crimes or collected from scenes. Gas chromatography detectors, microspectrophotometers, and mainframes ran morning, noon, and night, and reference collections filled rooms with automotive paint types, duct tapes, and plastics. I followed Downey through white hallways past the DNA a.n.a.lysis labs, then into the Hairs and Fibers Unit where he worked. His office also functioned as a laboratory, with dark wood furniture and bookcases sharing s.p.a.ce with countertops and microscopes. Walls and carpet were beige, and crayon drawings tacked to a bulletin board told me this internationally respected feather expert was a father.

Opening a manila envelope, I withdrew three smaller envelopes made of transparent plastic. Two contained the feathers collected from Jennifer Deightonas and Susan Storyas homicides, while a third contained a slide of the gummy residue from Eddie Heathas wrists.

"This is the best one, it seems," I said, pointing out the feather I had recovered from Jennifer Deightonas nightgown.

He took it out of its envelope and said, "This is down a breast or back feather. Itas got a nice tuft on it. Good. The more feather youave got, the better."

Using forceps, he stripped several of the branchlike projections or "barbs" from both sides of the shaft and, stationing himself at the stereoscopic microscope, placed them on a thin film of xylene that he had dropped on a slide. This served to separate the tiny structures, or float them out, and when he was satisfied that each barb was pristinely fanned, he touched a corner of green blotting paper to the xylene to absorb it. He added the mounting medium Flo-Texx, then a coverslip, and placed the slide under the comparison microscope, which was connected to a video camera.

"Iall start off by telling you that the feathers of all birds have basically the same structure," he said. "Youave got a central shaft, barbs, which in turn branch into hairlike barbules, and youave got a broadened base, at the top of which is a pore called the superior umbilicus. The barbs are the filaments that result in the featheras feathery appearance, and when theyare magnified youall find theyare actually like minifeathers coming out of the shaft."

He turned on the monitor. "Hereas a barb."

"It looks like a fern," I said.

"In many instances, yes. Now weare going to magnify it some more so we can get a good look at the barbules, for it is the features of the barbules that allow for an identification. Specifically, what weare most interested in are the nodes."

"Let me see if Iave got this straight," I said. "Nodes are features of barbules, barbules are features of barbs, barbs are features of feathers, and feathers are features of birds."

"Right. And each family of birds has its own peculiar feather structure."

What I saw on the monitoras screen looked, unremarkably, like a stick figure depiction of a weed or an insect leg. Lines were connected in segments by three dimensional triangular structures that Downey said were the nodes.

"Itas the size, shape, number, and pigmentation of nodes and their placement along the barbule that are key," he patiently explained. "For example, with starlike nodes youare dealing with pigeons, ring like nodes are chickens and turkeys, enlarged f.l.a.n.g.es with prenodal swelling are cuckoos. These" - he pointed to the screen - "are clearly triangular, so right away I know your feather is either duck or goose. Not that this should come as any great surprise. The typical origin of feathers collected in burglaries, rapes, and homicides are pillows, comforters, vests, jackets, gloves. And generally the filler in these items comprises chopped feathers and down from ducks and geese, and in cheap stuff, chickens.

"But we can definitely rule out chickens here. And Iam about to decide that your feather did not come from a goose, either."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, the distinction would be easy if we had a whole feather. Down is tough. But based on what Iam seeing here, there are, on average, just too few nodes. Plus; they arenat located throughout the barbule but are more distal, or located more toward the end of the barbule. And thatas a characteristic of ducks."

He opened a cabinet and slid out several drawers of slides.

"Letas see. Iave got about sixty slides of ducks. To be on the safe side Iam going to run through all of them, eliminating as I go."

One by one he placed slides under the comparison microscope, which is basically two compound microscopes combined into one binocular unit. On the video monitor was a circular field of light divided down the middle by a fine line, the known feather specimen on one side of the line and the one we hoped to identify on the other. Rapidly, we scanned mallard, Muscovy, harlequin, scoter, ruddy, and American widgeon, and then dozens more. Downey did not have to look long at any one of them to know that the duck we sought was being elusive.

"Am I just imagining it, or is this one more delicate than the others?" I said of the feather in question.

"Youare not imagining it. Itas more delicate, more streamlined. See how the triangular structures donat flare out quite as much?"

"Okay. Now that youave pointed it out."

"And this is giving us an important hint about the bird. Thatas whatas fascinating. Nature really does have a reason for things, and Iam suspicious that in this case the reason is insulation. The purpose of down is to trap air, and the finer the barbules, the more streamlined or tapered the nodes, and the more distal the location of the nodes, the more efficient the down is going to be at trapping air. When airas trapped or dead, itas like being in a small, insulated room with no ventilation. Youare going to be warm."

He placed another slide on the microscopeas stage, and this time I could see that we were close. The barbules were delicate, the nodes tapered and distally located.

"What have we got?" I asked.

"Iave saved the prime suspects for last."

He looked pleased. "Sea ducks. And top in the lineup are the eiders. Letas b.u.mp the magnification up to four hundred."

He switched the objective lens, adjusted the focus, and off we went through several more slides. "Not the king or the spectacle. And I donat think itas the stellar because of the brownish pigmentation at the base of the node. Your feather doesnat have that, see?"

"I see."

"So weall try the common eider. Okay. Thereas consistency in pigmentation," he said, staring intensely at the screen. "And, letas see, an average of two nodes located distally along the barbules. Plus, the streamlining for extra good insulating quality - and thatas important if youare swimming around in the Arctic Ocean. I think this is it, the Somateria mollissima, typically found in Iceland, Norway, Alaska, and the Siberian sh.o.r.es. Iall run another check with SEM, " he added, referring to scanning electron microscopy.

"To scan for what?"

"Salt crystals."

"Of course," I said, fascinated. "Because eider ducks are salt.w.a.ter birds."

"Exactly. And interesting ones at that, a noteworthy example of exploitation. In Iceland and Norway, their breeding colonies are protected from predators and other disruptions so that people can collect the down with which the female lines her nest and covers her eggs. The down is then cleaned and sold to manufacturers."

"Manufacturers of what?"

"Typically, sleeping bags and comforters."

As he talked, he was mounting several downy barbs from the feather found inside Susan Storyas car.

"Jennifer Deighton had nothing like that in her house," I said. "Nothing filled with feathers at all."

"Then weare probably dealing with a secondary or tertiary transfer in which the feather got transferred to the killer who in turn transferred it to his victim. You know, this is very interesting."

The specimen was on the monitor now.

"Eider duck again," I said.

"I think so. Letas try the slide. This is from the boy?"

"Yes," I said. "From an adhesive residue on Eddie Heathas wrists."

"Iall be d.a.m.ned."