My lab coat was draped over the back of a chair, and I reached inside a pocket and got out my keys. “Here,” I said, handing them to her. “You can lie down on the couch in my office. Get on the intercom immediately if the dizziness doesn’t go away or you start feeling worse.”

She reappeared about an hour later, her winter coat on and buttoned up to her chin.

“How do you feel?” I asked as I sutured the Y incision.

“A little shaky but okay.”

She watched me in silence for a moment, then added, “I thought of something while I was upstairs. I don’t think you should list me as a witness in this case.”

I glanced up at her in surprise. It was routine for anyone present during an autopsy to be listed as a witness on the official report. Susan’s request wasn’t of great importance, but it was peculiar.

“I didn’t participate in the autopsy,” she went on. “I mean, I helped with the external exam but wasn’t present when you did the post. And I know this is going to be a big case - if they ever catch anyone. If it ever goes to court. And I just think it’s better if I’m not listed, since, like I said, I really wasn’t present.”

“Fine,” I said. “I have no problem with that.”

She placed my keys on a counter and left.

Marino was home when I tried him from my car phone as I slowed at a tollbooth about an hour later.

“Do you know the warden at Spring Street?” I asked him.

“Frank Donahue. Where are you?”

“In my car.”

“I thought so. Probably half the truckers in Virginia are listening to us on their CBs.”

“They won’t hear much.”

“I heard about the kid,” he said. “You finished with him?”

“Yes. I’ll call you from home. There’s something you can do for me in the meantime. I need to look over a few things at the pen right away.”

“The problem with looking over the pen is it looks back.”

“That’s why you’re going with me,” I said.

If nothing else, after two miserable semesters of my former professor’s tutelage I had learned to be prepared. So it was on Saturday afternoon that Marino and I were en route to the state penitentiary. Skies were leaden, wind thrashing trees along the roadsides, the universe in a state of cold agitation, as if reflecting my mood.

“You want my private opinion,” Marino said to me as we drove, “I think you’re letting Grueman jerk you around.”

“Not at all.”

“Then why is it every time there’s an execution and he’s involved, you act jerked around?”

“And how would you handle the situation?”

He pushed in the cigarette lighter. “Same way you are. I’d take a damn look at death row and the chair, document everything, and then tell him he’s fall of shit. Or better yet, tell the press he’s full of shit.”