“No.” Rose is adamant, waving them off. “I mean it! Please go away. I fainted. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” Marino says to her, but his dark glasses are staring at the blond EMT. “I had to bust the damn door down.”

“And you better fix it before you leave,” Rose mutters.

Scarpetta introduces herself. She explains that it seems Rose mixed alcohol with oxycodone, was unconscious when they got here.

“Ma’am?” The blond EMT leans closer to Rose. “How much alcohol and oxycodone did you have, and when did you take it?”

“One more than usual. Three tablets. And just a little bit of wine. Half a glass.”

“Ma’am, it’s very important you’re honest with me about this.”

Scarpetta hands him the prescription bottle and says to Rose, “One tablet every four to six hours. You took two more than that. And you’re on a high dose already. I want you to go to the hospital just to make sure everything’s all right.”

“No.”

“Did you crush them or chew them or swallow them whole?” Scarpetta asks, because when the tablets are crushed, they dissolve more quickly and the oxycodone is more rapidly released and absorbed.

“I swallowed them whole, just like I always do. My knees were aching something awful.” She looks at Marino. “I shouldn’t have moved the couch.”

“If you won’t go with these nice EMTs, I’ll take you,” Scarpetta says, aware of the blond EMT’s stare.

“No.” Rose adamantly shakes her head.

Marino watches the blond EMT watch Scarpetta. Marino doesn’t protectively move close to her as he would have done in the past. She doesn’t address the most disturbing question—why Rose is on Roxicodone.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” Rose says. “I’m not. I mean it.”

“It looks like we’re not going to need you,” Scarpetta says to the EMTs. “But thanks.”

“I heard you lecture a few months back,” the blond EMT says to her. “The child fatality session at the National Forensic Academy. You lectured.”

His name tag reads T. Turkington. She has no recollection of him.

“What the hell were you doing there?” Marino asks him. “The NFA’s for cops.”

“I’m an investigator for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department. They sent me to the NFA. I’m a graduate.”

“Now, ain’t that strange,” Marino says. “Then what the hell are you doing here in Charleston, riding around in an ambulance?”

“My days off, I work as an EMT.”

“This ain’t Beaufort County.”

“Can use the extra pay. Emergency medicine’s good supplemental training for my real job. I have a girlfriend here. Or did.” Turkington is easygoing about it. To Scarpetta, he says, “If you’re sure everything’s all right in here, we’ll be on our way.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep my eye on her,” Scarpetta replies.