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good,” Scarpetta says.
         “I’ll fill you in later. Got a question. You ever heard of something that happened at a Christmas shop in Las Olas maybe two and a half years ago?”
         “By something I assume you mean a homicide.”
         “Right.”
         “Not offhand. Maybe Lucy can try to track it down. I hear it’s snowing up there.”
         “I’ll get you here if I have to hire Santa’s reindeer.”
         “I love you.”
         “Me, too,” he says.
         He ends the call and asks Thrush, “Who are we dealing with?”
         “Well, Dr. Lonsdale was nice enough to help me out. You’ll like him. But he didn’t do the autopsy. She did.”
         She is the chief. She got where she is because she’s a she.
         “You ask me,” Thrush says, “women got no business doing this anyway. What kind of woman would want to do this?”
         “There are good ones,” Benton says. “Very good ones. Not all of them get where they are because of their gender. More likely, in spite of it.”
         Thrush is unfamiliar with Scarpetta. Benton never mentions her, not even to people he knows rather well.
         “Women shouldn’t see shit like this,” Thrush says.
         The night air is penetrating and milky-white up and down Commercial Street. Snow swarms in lamplight and lights the night until the world glows and seems surreal as the two of them walk in the middle of the deserted silent street east along the water to the cottage Lucy began renting several days ago after Marino got the strange phone call from the man named Hog.
         She builds a fire, and she and Stevie sit in front of it on quilts and roll a joint with very good stuff from British Columbia, and they share it. They smoke and talk and laugh, and then Stevie wants more.
         “Just one more,” she begs as Lucy undresses her.
         “That’s different,” Lucy says, staring at Stevie’s slender nude body, at the red hand prints on it, maybe tattoos.
         There are four of them. Two on her breasts as if someone is grabbing them, two on her upper inner thighs as if someone is forcing her legs apart. There are none on her back, none where Stevie couldn’t reach and apply them herself, assuming they are fake. Lucy stares. She touches one of the hand prints, places her hand over one of them, fondling Stevie’s breast.
         “Just checking to see if it’s the right fit,” Lucy says. “Fake?”
         “Why don’t you take off your clothes.”
         Lucy does what she wants, but she won’t take off her clothes. For hours, she does what she wants in the firelight, on the quilts, and Stevie lets her, is more alive than anyone Lucy has ever touched, smooth with soft contours, lean in a way Lucy isn’t anymore, and when Stevie tries to undress her, almost fights her, Lucy won’t allow it, then Stevie gets tired and gives up and Lucy helps her to bed. After she is asleep, Lucy lies awake listening to the eerie whining of the wind, trying to figure out exactly what it sounds like, deciding it doesn’t sound like silk stockings after all, but like something distressed and in pain.

    Chapter 7

         The autopsy room is small with a tile floor and the usual surgical cart, digital scale, evidence cabinet, autopsy saws and various blades, dissecting boards and a transportable autopsy table latched to the front of a wall-mounted dissecting sink. The walk-in refrigerator is built into a wall, the door partially open.
         Thrush hands Benton a pair of blue nitrile gloves, asks him, “You want booties or a mask or anything?”
         “No thanks,” Benton says as Dr. Lonsdale emerges from the refrigerator, pushing a stainless-steel cadaver carrier bearing the pouched body.
         “We need to make this quick,” he says as he parks near the sink and locks two of the swivel casters. “I’m already in deep shit with my wife. It’s her