“Meeting with him is as important as meeting with anyone else,” she says. “We always show respect, remember?”

Marino smells like cigarettes and booze, and when “his chemistry’s off,” as Scarpetta understates it all too often these days, his deep-seated insecurities shift his bad behavior into high gear, a problem made quite threatening by his physical formidability. In his mid-fifties, he shaves off what is left of his hair, typically wears black motorcycle clothing and big boots, and, as of the past few days, a gaudy necklace with a silver dollar dangling from it. He is fanatical about lifting weights, his chest so broad he’s known to brag that it takes two x-rays to capture his lungs on film. In a much earlier phase of his life, based on old photographs she’s seen, he was handsome in a virile, tough way, and might still be attractive were it not for his crassness, slovenliness, and hard living that at this point in his life can’t be blamed on his difficult upbringing in a rough part of New Jersey.

“I don’t know why you still entertain the fantasy that you’ll fool me,” Scarpetta says, shifting the conversation away from the ridiculous subject of how she is dressed and why. “Last night. And clearly in the morgue.”

“Fool you about what?” Another gulp from the can.

“When you splash on that much cologne to disguise cigarette smoke, all you do is give me a headache.”

“Huh?” He quietly belches.

“Let me guess, you spent the night at the Kick ‘N Horse.”

“The joint’s full of cigarette smoke.” He shrugs his massive shoulders.

“And I’m sure you didn’t add to it. You were smoking in the morgue. In the fridge. Even the surgical gown I put on smelled like cigarette smoke. Were you smoking in my locker room?”

“Probably drifted in from my side. The smoke, I mean. I might have carried my cigarette in there, in my side. I can’t remember.”

“I know you don’t want lung cancer.”

He averts his eyes the way he does when a certain topic of conversation is uncomfortable, and he chooses to abort it. “Find anything new? And I don’t mean the old lady, who shouldn’t have been sent here just because the coroner didn’t want to deal with a stinky decomp. But the kid.”

“I’ve put him in the freezer. There’s nothing more we can do right now.”

“I can’t stand it when it’s kids. I figure out who did that little kid down there, I’ll kill him, tear him to pieces with my bare hands.”

“Let’s don’t threaten to kill people, please.” Rose is in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. Scarpetta isn’t sure how long she’s been standing there.

“It ain’t no threat,” Marino says.