“You claimed the person who shot you had on a camo dive skin,” she then says. “The detail came from you.”

“I don’t recall saying that but I might have because it’s true.”

“Of course you don’t remember.” Her voice oozes condescension.

“I don’t remember telling your agents this,” I reply. “But I remember what I saw.”

“Somehow you recognized this person presumed dead.” She rephrases her argument about Carrie. “Even though you’d not laid eyes on her or seen a photograph of her in more than a decade you’re positive in your identification of her. And I’m loosely quoting from your own sworn statement that you gave to our agents in Miami on June seventeenth while you were still in the hospital.”

“A statement that wasn’t recorded,” I remind her. “Only written. What agents write down and what was actually said can be difficult to prove since there’s no unimpeachable record. And I’m just wondering how can we be sure my statement was sworn?”

“You’re saying if you didn’t swear under oath to tell the truth you might not …?”

She’s cut off by a familiar voice in the corridor. “Hello! Hello! That’s enough! It’s bad manners to start without me!”

Jill Donoghue walks in smiling, typically chic in one of her designer suits, this one midnight blue. Her wavy dark hair is shorter than when I saw her last. Other than that she looks the same, perpetually energetic and fresh, permanently somewhere between thirty-five and fifty.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” She introduces herself to Erin, and a brief turf war ensues that the FBI isn’t going to win. “Then you’re new to the Boston area,” Donoghue summarizes. “So let me tell you how things work. When my client says she won’t talk to you until I show up? You stop talking.”

“We were having a casual discussion about her recognizing Carrie Grethen …”

“See? Now that sounds like talking.”

“ … And how she could have recognized her or anyone for that matter, considering how fast it happened, considering the extreme duress of the alleged situation.”

“Alleged?” Donoghue almost laughs. “Have you seen Doctor Scarpetta’s leg?”

“Show me.” Erin’s eyes dancing with defiance, with her certainty I’m not about to undress.

But she couldn’t be more mistaken. I unzip my cargo pants.

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

THAT’S OKAY,” SHE QUICKLY SAYS. “YOU DON’T NEED to prove anything.”

“In my profession you give up modesty rather quickly.” I ease the right pants leg down to my knee. “When you’ve just finished working a decomp, a floater, you really don’t care who’s in the shower next to you. The entrance and exit scars are right here.”

I point to them, round and angry red and smaller than a dime.