Anger.

It was the final and most persistent expression. The one that nobody liked to admit, the one that would surface in time as something else like shame or self-contempt. The child who loses a mother will blame himself for her disappearance while at the same time feel rage at her for deserting him, for no longer gratifying his needs. Paradoxically, she becomes the object of love and craving as well as hate for his unbearable deprivation. Eventually that anger is supposed to pass with the grief, to cool into a numbed acceptance.

But not with him.

For years to come he felt its heat just beneath the skin of things. And no matter how thick the skin grew, it was always there, like the magma beneath the cap of a dormant volcano.

Lila's remains were cremated according to her wishes, and he scattered her ashes in the sea. Because he was a minor, he moved in with his aunt and uncle in Fremont about fifteen miles away. That meant moving out of the neighborhood where he grew up. But since he was attending Markham Academy, a private school outside of Derry, he didn't have to change schools. And the commute was about the same.

Throughout the rest of his high school years he did not date anyone.

He still saw Becky Tolland, who encouraged him to emerge from his self-inflicted anguish and get back into acting. He did, and on her insistence, he stayed with the Drama Club and performed in two more plays with her, A Streetcar Named Desire and My Fair Lady. Although they remained casual friends, he did not date Becky again. She was a young woman of the sexual revolution, before AIDS and after the pill-which meant she was sexually active. He wasn't. So they went their separate ways.

As he grew older, his headaches got worse. So he was sent to a neurologist who conducted a battery of tests, concluding that he suffered minor temporal seizures as a result of the accident with Lila. Another piece of her legacy. Medication quelled the seizures as the years passed.

He attended college and did well. Throughout college he went to parties where he met women, even some with whom he had dinners. They made up a short "just friends" list. But he had no steady. Never had, and he knew classmates speculated that he might have been gay. He wasn't. Isn't. In the most pathetic of cliches, he could not find the right woman.

Looking back, he understood how she had affected his apprehension of other females. Lila's physical beauty had become a supreme template that made other women seem gauche. Even golden Becky-Juliet-pretty Becky Tolland-the girl who made him the envy of other boys. He liked her, had fun with her, admired her fresh clean beauty. But inside he became distracted by her frizzy yellow hair, her pointy catlike face, the skinny legs, and flat chest.

It was Lila who did that. Because Lila was perfect.

She had been the source of his passion, and he had enshrined her in his soul. He knew his was an obsession that bordered on worship. In fact, at times, he felt so lucid a connection to her that he sensed her presence, even her possession of him. It was as if her spirit had crossed the mortal divide and taken up residence in his body. For a spell he would walk around having full conversations with her but taking both parts-himself and Lila. He had even gone so far as to assimilate from recall the tone and pitch of her voice and manner of expression.

Of course, in more rational moments he recognized the delusion for what it was. Yet when the spells passed, he felt both relief and abandonment.

He still had her photo albums, which he regarded as sacred icons to a religious supplicant. Hers was the most exquisite face he had ever seen. As Harry Dobbs once said, Lila had a face with no bad angles. It was stunningly perfect in proportions and structure. Her skin was clear and moist, and her eyes indigo starbursts. The world was a lesser place without her in it.

There were times over the succeeding years when in hopelessness he contemplated suicide. Lila had taken him to the kingdom and then abandoned him at the threshold. She had taught him hideous loss, then blamed it on him. She had left him with a tortured apprehension of women, a tunnel vision that rendered others inferior. And the only way he could conceive of expelling her from his soul was his own death.

Like a deep inflammation, that realization stayed with him until he met Diane.

Almost perfect Diane Hewson with the heart-shaped face and sunset hair.

Part III.

77.

The call came at four that afternoon.

It was the eighteenth day that Steve had been alcohol-free. On his fifteenth, Dana had called to congratulate him. He suspected that she was dating other men, but she refused to elaborate or name names. And Steve no longer asked. With some things ignorance was bliss.

A month had passed since her operation. The swelling of her nose was no longer noticeable, and the discoloration was gone. The combined effects of the rhinoplasty with the earlier lid lift and other procedures were startling.

Dana looked like a different woman. Her skin had always been smooth. But the tightening around her eyes and the reduction of her nose had opened up her face, creating the eerie sensation that he was addressing someone with only a vague resemblance to the woman he had married. At once he was dazzled by the youthful beauty that her surgeon had fashioned and distracted by the transformation. She appeared, at moments, to have two faces superimposed.

When the call came in, Steve was writing a report on another case. The Farina investigation had yielded no new leads. A few weeks ago, the District Attorney had issued a statement that the death was being investigated as a possible ritual or serial crime linked to some cold cases. He invited the public to leave messages with the Boston Crime Stoppers tip line. Any information, no matter how small, could prove useful and, as usual, investigators took callers seriously. Tips could be submitted anonymously, although police promised better service if callers identified themselves. But either way, citizen tips were aggressively investigated.

As with the hundreds that had poured in with the murder of Terry Farina seven weeks ago, each one had been investigated. And most turned out to be duds. As the weeks passed, the calls became infrequent.

In the meantime, Steve worked on other cases but kept the case alive by occasionally sending out alerts to state and local police departments throughout southern New England, requesting any information on cold cases that might assist in the investigation of the serial stocking murders. For weeks nothing had come in until that afternoon.

The message that afternoon was forwarded to Steve. It came from a forensic anthropologist at Harvard named James Bowers. He was leaving for a conference that afternoon but would be back in his office on Monday to speak to him in person.

He had called to say that ten years ago the Massachusetts State Police had asked him to help identify a woman whose skeletal remains had been discovered off Hogg Island at the mouth of the Essex River. Divers looking for lobsters had discovered her skull, vertebrae, and partial rib cage entangled in an abandoned lobster pot. Despite the fact that the remains had yielded DNA markers, no identity had been made with any known missing person on record. Yet it was determined that the remains were those of a Caucasian female in her thirties or forties. Nothing else of the woman had been found-no clothing, affects, boat, or life jacket-except for scraps of material enmeshed with the bones and chemically identified as containing 87 percent nylon and 13 percent Lycra. Her death had been ruled suspicious.

Steve called the return number and left a message that he would like to talk with Bowers when he returned on Monday. Perhaps it was the credentials of the caller. Perhaps it was his sixth sense kicking up. But Steve felt a flicker of promise that took him through the weekend.

78.

Aaron Monks seemed particularly animated that night.

It was their fourth date since her operation. The swelling was gone, and her nose had taken on the definition it would have permanently. And Dana loved it.

Even after so many weeks, she could still not get used to the transformation. For more than three decades she had looked at her face, known every angle, every possible expression, each nuance of emotional projection. Each wrinkle, blemish, and displeasing slant. There were no surprises. But the postop change had been so marked, so jarring, that she still saw someone else looking back at her from the mirror.

Lanie carried on as if she were a magazine model, and that she should start seeing herself as such and get out there and date. Because he wanted to keep their relationship discreet, Dana had said nothing about seeing Aaron Monks.

Since her yacht date on the Fourth of July, she had seen him on two follow-up visits at his office. Again he had apologized for getting carried away in the limo, blaming it on the champagne and the craziness of the moment. She understood and forgave him. Then he had called last week to ask if she wanted to join him for dinner tonight. He was leaving soon for a month in the Caribbean and wanted to see her one more time before he left. Because he was publicity-shy, he took her to a restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to be away from any local newspeople. Again he asked that she not mention it to anyone. And she respected that.

They drove to a waterfront restaurant whose decor boasted an elegant nautical theme. They were led to a table by a corner window with a view of the harbor. Aaron ordered a bottle of champagne. "You're so beautiful that I feel invisible next to you."

"You're too kind."

"Really, your skin is perfectly smooth and bilaterally symmetrical. In fact, you're one of the few women I've known whose face is a perfect phi."

"A perfect phi?"

"The so-called golden ratio or divine proportion-the mathematical proportions found to recur in all things deemed beautiful like flowers and seashells, also music, paintings, and architecture. In the human face, it's the various ratios between the width of the cheeks and the length of the face, the width of the nose and the width of the mouth, the width of the nose and the width of the cheek, et cetera. But it's a constant: out to one to one point six one eight. Philosophers say it's the ideal that beauty aspires to. The closer a face fits that ratio, the more attractive the face. And you've got it."

"Well, if that's so, you're the one who deserves the credit."

When the champagne came, he raised his glass to hers. "To the new Dana."

"Thank you."

"So, are you enjoying the change?"

"I'm still getting used to it."

"But no conflict between the physical transformation and your inner self?"

"No, but it still feels like a stranger's face."

He nodded. "In time you'll grow into it."

Their meals came and they chatted pleasantly while Dana worked up the nerve to ask a question that had been with her since the first day. "I have a personal question, if you don't mind."

He smiled in anticipation.

"For a lack of a better term, most of your professional life is dedicated to human vanity-to people dissatisfied with their physical appearance."

"You mean," he interjected, "how come I haven't had plastic surgery myself. Right? The rough skin, the mole, the crow's-feet, the scar, et cetera, et cetera."

Her face flushed and she started to formulate an apology, but he made a wave of dismissal.

"A perfectly natural question and one I've heard before. I'll give you the answer I give to all patients conflicted about aesthetic enhancement." He tapped the side of his head with his finger. "The need is more on the inside than it is on the outside. Frankly, I'm not at a place where I feel ready for cosmetic surgery. Yes, I have all the signs of aging. My own eyelids droop and the chin is beginning to sag. And there's the pocked skin and the mole. But I've not felt the compulsion. And should I reach that point someday, then I'll have something done." He picked up a spoon and examined his reflection. "And probably sooner than later." He chuckled.

"Hardly."

Back in the spring he had received a humanitarian award for helping develop new procedures for attaching a new facial "flap" to recipients' nerves and blood vessels, as well as pharmaceutical strategies for reducing the risks of rejection and infection and, thus, a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs to fight rejection. According to the media, the success rate was so high that candidates with serious disfigurements had lined up as recipients of new faces from cadavers at his clinic and others where his procedures had been instituted. "You must get great satisfaction from your humanitarian work."

"Yes, very. And it wasn't simply the medical issues we had to surmount but ethical ones. Some people had argued, perhaps rightfully so, that a facial disfigurement was not life-threatening and therefore wasn't worth a lifetime on immunosuppressant drugs. For organ transplants-liver, heart, kidneys-yes, but not for faces. But, of course, disfigured patients are tormented by depression and shame. And that's the justification. We're seeing people returning to their normal lives, being able to smile again, raise their eyebrows, move their facial muscles, and regain full mobility and sensation. Yes, it's very satisfying."

"Do you ever get patients worrying that they may look like the faces of the donors?"

"You mean like in that movie Face/Off?" He shook his head. "The underlying bone structure remains the same. Unless the two are very similar, that's not possible."

"Like the Elvis impersonator."

"Yes, but we still had to make fat injections to get the chin right. But he did come out looking like a double. The important thing is that the procedure touches upon fundamental human aspects of identity. People identify with their appearance. They become how they look."

"They change inside."

"Yes. I see it all the time. There's no need for someone to be tormented by their appearance especially when something can be done. And that's what you're beginning to experience. At least, I hope."

They were quiet for a while as Dana's mind tripped over the possibilities. She had a new face, but did not feel any differently inside. Not yet. And she wondered if she ever would.

"Since we're asking personal questions," Aaron said. "I have one for you."

"Okay."

"Your marriage."

"What about it?"

"Well, that's actually my question. If I may be so blunt, you've been separated for several months. I'm just wondering if and when you're taking the next logical step?"

"Well, I don't quite know just yet. I'm still working that out."

He nodded and took a sip of his champagne. "Well, as you know I'm leaving for the islands next week and will be having some guests over this weekend at the summer place as a kind of farewell party. Until I return, that is. A way to say adieu to the summer. I'm just wondering if you'd like to join us."

"I'd love to."

"Wonderful," he said as he raised his glass to her.

She wasn't clear on what they were toasting, but she clicked his champagne glass. "Where is your summer place?"

"The Cape. We'll go by boat if that is all right."

He was being mysterious again, understating matters. He probably lived in a mansion in Wellfleet or Osterville. It was probably because of his celebrity status and the fact that Boston Magazine had listed him as one of the top twenty-five most eligible bachelors in Boston that he maintained a self-protective mystery about himself. "Sounds like fun."

"It will be. But I have one request: that you not let others know, including friends. People talk, and if it gets out the newshounds will be all over us. And I want to spare us both from that."

"Mum's the word."

Then he took another sip of his drink, his eyes fixed on her face. He put the drink down and moved his face closer to hers.

"What?" she said, feeling a silly smile spread on her face as if he were about to share a secret.

"In the light your hair has auburn highlights. Given your lovely coloring, and your glorious new face, have you ever considered becoming a redhead?"

79.

James Bowers was a forensic anthropologist who worked at the Peabody Museum at Harvard. He was a tall man with a long, thin, tanned face and salt-and-pepper hair. Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt he looked more like someone who was going to spend his day on a golf course than in trays of bones. Steve found him in a lab with benches and rows of chemical containers. Two complete human skeletons hung from stands, and students were working, some examining specimens through microscopes. The back wall had green chalkboards with notes and diagrams on them.

"You said you'd been hired to reconstruct the remains of the Essex River case."

"Yeah, about ten years ago. She'd been found off of Hogg Island." Bowers led Steve to the rear of the lab, passing a student at a table reconstructing a face with modeling clay. There were pegs looking like baby fingertips sticking out of the base at various lengths.

Bowers explained that reconstruction began with a plaster copy of the skull to which a couple of dozen pegs were attached at key points and cut to various thicknesses to aid the sculptor's filling in of the clay for the flesh, guided by charts on thickness samples. "The hardest are the eyes, which are almost entirely tissue. The same with the ears, nose, and lips, because their size and shape is impossible to determine."

"So, all you can really recapture is the general facial structure."

"Exactly. The rest is guesswork."

"But you guys sometimes are dead-on in identifying people."

"Only because the guesswork was dead-on. It's as much luck as science."

They sat at a free bench. On it sat two skulls and some line illustrations of facial types drawn according to three generic face templates: ectomorph, ectomesomorph, and endomorph. Steve picked one up and held it to his face. "What do you think?"