"I told you, I was just cutting through."

"@utting from where to where at that hour?" She kept her tone casual.

Angie hunkered over her rum and c.o.ke and took a long pull on the straw.

Tense. Forcing the anger back up to replace the fear.

"Angie, I've been around. I've seen things even you wouldn't believe,"Kate said. "Nothing you tell me could shock me."

The girl gave a humorless half-laugh and looked toward the televisionthat hung above one end of the bar. Local news anchor Paul Magers waslooking grave and handsome as he related the story of a madman run amokin the county government center. They flashed a mug shot and told aboutthe recent breakup of the man's marriage, his wife having taken theirchildren and gone into hiding in a shelter a week before.

Precipitating stressors, Kate thought, not surprised.

"n.o.body cares if you were breaking the law, Angie. Murder overruleseverything-burglary, prost.i.tution, poaching squirrels-which I personallyconsider a service to the community," she said. "I had a squirrel in myattic last month. Vermin menace. They're nothing but rats with furrytails."

No reaction. No smile. No overblown teenage outrage at her callousdisregard for animal life.

"I'm not trying to lean on you here, Angie. I'm telling you as youradvocate: The sooner you come clean about everything that went down lastnight, the better for all concerned-yourself included. The countyattorney has his shorts in a knot over this case. He tried to tellSergeant Kovac he should treat you as a suspect."

Alarm rounded the girl's eyes. "f.u.c.k him! I didn't do anything!"

"Kovac believes you, which is why you're not sitting in a cell right now.

That and the fact that I wouldn't allow it. But this is serious s.h.i.t,Angie. This killer is public enemy number one, and you're the onlyperson who's seen him and lived to tell the tale. You're in the hotseat."

Elbows on the table, the girl dropped her face into her hands andmumbled between her fingers, "G.o.d, this sucks!"

"You've got that right, sweetie," Kate said softly. "But here's thedeal, plain and simple. This nut job is going to go on killing untilsomebody stops him. Maybe you can help stop him."

She waited. Held her breath. Willed the poor kid over the edge.

She could see through the bars of Angie's fingers: the girl's face goingred with the pressure of holding the emotions in. She could see thetension in the thin shoulders, feel the antic.i.p.ation that thickened theair around her.

But nothing in this situation was going to be plain or simple, Katethought as her pager began to shrill inside her purse. The moment, theopportunity, was gone. She swore silently as she dug through the bag,cursing the inconvenience of modern conveniences.

"Think about it, Angie," she said as she rose from her chair.

"You're it, and I'm here to help you."

That makes me IT by a.s.sociation, she thought as she headed to the payphone in the alcove by the bathrooms.

No. Nothing about this would be plain or simple.

Chapter 6.

"What did you do with my witness, Red?" Kovac leaned against the wall ofthe autopsy suite, the receiver of the phone jammed between his shoulderand his ear.

He slipped a hand inside the surgical gown he wore over his clothes,pulled a little jar of Mentholaturn from his jacket pocket, and smeareda gob around each nostril.

"I thought it'd be nice to treat her like a human being and feed her areal meal as opposed to the c.r.a.p you give people at the cop shop," Katesaid.

"You don't like doughnuts? What kind of American are you?"

"The kind who has at least a partial grasp of the concept of civilliberties."

"Yeah, fine, all right, I get it." He plugged his free ear with a fingeras the blade of a bone saw whined against a whetstone in the background.

"Sabin asks, I'm gonna tell him you nabbed her before I could throw herin the slammer-which is true. Better your lovely t.i.t in a wringer thanmy johnson."

"Don't worry about Sabin. I've got his okay on a memo."

"Do you have a picture of him signing it? Is it notarized?"

"G.o.d, you're a raving paranoid."

"How do you think I've lived this long on the job?"

"It wasn't from kissing a.s.s and following orders. That's for d.a.m.n sure."

He had to laugh. Kate called a spade a spade. And she was right.

He handled his cases as he thought best, not with an eye to publicity or

promotion. "So where are you taking the angel after this grand feast?"

"The Phoenix House, I'm told. She belongs in a juvie facility, but there you go. I've got to put her somewhere, and her ID says she's an adult.

Did you get a Polaroid of her?"

"Yeah. I'll show it around juvenile division. See if anyone knows her.

I'll give a copy to Vice too."

"I'll do the same on my end of things if you get me a copy."

"Will do. Keep me posted. I want a short leash on that chick." He raised

his voice briefly as water pounded into a stainless steel sink. "I gotta go. Dr. Death is about to crack open our crispy critter."

"Jesus, Sam, you're so sensitive."

"Hey, I gotta cope. You know what I'm saying."

"Yeah, I know. Just don't let the wrong people hear you doing it. Is the task force set up?"

"Yeah. As soon as we get the bra.s.s out of our hair, we'll be good togo." He looked across the room to where Quinn stood in discussion withthe ME and Hamill, the agent from the BCA, all of them in surgical gownsand booties. "So what's the story with you and the Quantico hotshot?"

There was the briefest of hesitations on the other end of the line.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? What's the deal? What's the story?

What's the history?"

Another pause, just a heartbeat. "I knew him, that's all. I was working

on the research side in Behavioral Sciences. The people in BSU and Investigative Support regularly cross paths. And he used to be a friend of Steven's-my ex."

This tossed in at the end, as if he might believe it was an

afterthought.

Kovac filed it all away for future rumination. Used to be a friend of Steven's. There was more to that story, he thought as Liska came toward him from the crowd around the corpse, looking impatient and nauseated.

He gave Kate his pager number and instructions to call, and hung up.

"They're ready to rock and roll," Liska said, pulling a travel-size jar of Vicks Vaporub from the pocket of her boxy blazer. She stuck her nose over the rim and breathed deep.

"G.o.d, the smell!" she whispered as she turned and fell in step with him,heading back toward the table. "I've had floaters. I've had drunks inDumpsters. I once had a guy left in the trunk of a Chrysler over theFourth of July weekend. I never smelled anything like this."

The stench was an ent.i.ty, a presence. It was an invisible fist thatforced its way into the mouths of all present, rolled over theirtongues, and jammed at the backs of their throats. The room was cold,but not even the constant blast of clean, frigid air from theventilation system or the cloying perfume of chemical air freshenerscould kill the smell of roasted human flesh and organs.

"Nothing like posting Toasties," Kovac said.

Liska pointed a finger at him and narrowed her eyes. "No internalorganjokes or I puke on your shoes."

"Wimp."

"And I'll kick your a.s.s later for calling me that."

There were three tables in the room, the ones at either end occupied.

They walked past one as an a.s.sistant eased a plastic bag full of organsback into the body cavity of a man with thick yellow toenails. A scalehung over each table, like the kind for weighing grapes and sweetpeppers in the supermarket. These were for weighing hearts and brains.

"Did you want me to start the party without you?" the ME queried with anarch of her brow.

Maggie Stone was generally considered by her staff to have a few nutsrattling loose in the mental machine. She suspected everyone ofeverything, rode a Harley Hog in good weather, and had been known tocarry weapons. But when it came to the job, she was the best.

People who had known her in her tamer years claimed her hair wasnaturally mouse brown. Sam had never been good at remembering suchdetails for long, which was one of many reasons he had two exwives. Hedid notice Dr. Stone, on the far side of forty, had recently gone fromflame-red to platinum. Her hair was chopped short and she wore it in astyle that looked as if she'd just rolled out of bed and gotten a bad scare.

She stared at him as she adjusted the tiny clip-on microphone at theneck of her scrub suit. Her eyes were a spooky translucent green.

"Get this b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she ordered, pointing a scalpel at him, theimplication in her tone being that if he didn't, she would. She thenturned her attention to the charred body that lay on the stainless steeltable, curled up like a praying mantis. A deep calm settled over her.

"Okay, Lars, let's see if we can't straighten her out a bit."

Moving to one end of the table, she took hold of the corpse firmly butgently while her a.s.sistant, a hulking Swede, took hold of the ankles andthey began to pull slowly. The resulting sound was like snapping friedchicken wings.

Liska turned away with a hand over her mouth. Kovac stood his ground.

On the other side of the table, Quinn's expression was granite, his eyeson the body that had yet to give up its secrets. Hamill, one of twoagents from the BCA a.s.signed to the task force, cast his gaze up at theceiling.

He was a small, tidy man with a runner's wire-thin body and a hairlinethat -was rapidly falling back from a towering forehead.

Stone stood back from the table and picked up a chart.

"Dr. Maggie Stone," she said quietly for the benefit of the tape, thoughshe appeared to be addressing the deceased. "Case number 11-7820, JaneDoe. Caucasian female. The head has been severed from her body and iscurrently missing. The body measures 55 inches in length and weighs 122 pounds."

The measurement and weight had been obtained earlier. A thorough set ofX rays and photographs had been taken, and Stone had gone over the bodycarefully with a laser to illuminate and collect trace evidence. She nowwent over every inch of the body visually, describing in detaileverything she saw, every wound, every mark.

The burned clothing remained on the corpse. Melted to the body by theheat of the fire. A cautionary tale against wearing synthetic fabrics.

Stone made note of the "severe trauma" to the victim's neck, speculatingthe damage had been done by a blade with a serrated edge.

"Postmortem?" Quinn asked.

Stone stared at the gaping wound as if she were trying to see down intothe dead woman's heart. "Yes," she said at last.

Lower down on the throat were several telltale ligature marks-not asingle red furrow, but stripes that indicated the cord had been loosenedand tightened over the course of the victim's ordeal. This was likelythe manner of death-asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation -thoughit would be difficult to prove because of the decapitation.

The most consistent indicator of a strangulation death was a crushedhyoid bone at the base of the tongue in the upper part of the trachea-above the point of decapitation. Nor was there any opportunity to checkthe eyes for petechial hemorrhaging, another sure sign of strangulation.