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rest. Looks like I’d better dig back into this thing.” He hesitates. “And as you might suspect, I don’t have much of a budget . . .”
    â€œNobody who calls me has consultants built into the budget,” she interrupts him. “I didn’t either when I was in Virginia.”
    She tells him to FedEx her the case and gives him her address.
    She adds, “Do you happen to know an investigator in Zachary named Nic Robillard?”
    A pause, then, “Believe I talked to her on the phone a few months back. I’m sure you know what’s going on down here.”
    â€œI can’t help but know. It’s all over the news,” Scarpetta cautiously replies over the noise of the taxi and rush-hour traffic.
    Neither her tone nor her words betray that she has any personal information about the cases, and her trust of Nic slips several notches as she frets that perhaps Nic called Dr. Lanier and talked about her. Why she might have done that is hard to say, unless she simply volunteered that Scarpetta could be a very useful resource for him, should he ever need her. Maybe he really does need her for this cold case he’s just told her about. Maybe he’s trying to develop a relationship with her because he’s not equipped to handle these serial murders by himself.
    â€œHow many forensic pathologists work for you?” Scarpetta asks him.
    â€œOne.”
    â€œDid Nic Robillard call you about me?” She doesn’t have time for subtlety.
    â€œWhy would she?”
    â€œThat’s no answer.”
    â€œHell no,” he says.

A N AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT rattles in a dusty window, the afternoon hotter than usual for April, as Jay Talley hacks meat into small pieces and drops them into a bloody plastic bucket below the scarred wooden table where he sits.
    The table, like everything else inside his fishing shack, is old and ugly, the sort of household objects people leave at the edges of their driveways to be picked up by garbage collectors or spirited away by scavengers. His work space is his special place, and he is patient as he repeatedly adjusts torn bits of clothing that he jams under several of the table legs in his ongoing attempt to keep the table level. He prefers not to chop on a surface that moves, but balance is virtually impossible in his warped little world, and the graying wood floor slopes enough to roll an egg from the kitchenette right out to the dock, where some planks are rotted, others curled like dull dead hair flipped up at the ends.
    Swatting at sea gnats, he finishes a Budweiser, crushes the can and hurls it out the open screen door, pleased that it sails twenty feet past his boat and plops into the water. Boredom gives pleasure to the most mundane activities, including checking on the crab pots suspended below floats in the murky freshwater. It doesn’t matter that crabs aren’t foundin freshwater. Crawfish are, and they’re in season, and if they don’t pick the pots clean, something bigger usually comes along.
    Last month, a large log turned into an alligator gar weighing at least a hundred pounds. It moved like a torpedo, speeding off with a trotline and its makeshift float of an empty Clorox bottle. Jay sat calmly in his boat and tipped his baseball cap to the carnivorous creature. Jay doesn’t eat what he catches in the pots, but out here in the middle of this hellish nowhere he now calls home, his only acceptable fresh choices are catfish, bass, turtles and as many frogs as he can gig at night. Otherwise, his food comes in bags and cans from various grocery stores on the mainland.
    He brings down a meat cleaver, cutting through muscle and bone. More pieces of foul flesh land in the bucket. It doesn’t take long for meat to rot in this heat.
    â€œGuess who I’m thinking about right now,” he says to Bev Kiffin, his woman.
    â€œShut up. You just say that to get to me.”
    â€œNo, ma chérie, I