“I tend to overcondition when I get whacked out,” he said, sipping his tea and eyeing me through steam. “That’s when I get injured.”

He thought for a moment.

“I guess the worst thing I do, now that you have me thinking about it, is I shut out my wife and kids. Find excuses not to be home. I’m an insensitive bastard and they hate me for a while. So yes, I’m self-destructive, too. But I promise,” he said to me, “if you would just find time to fast-walk, ride a bike, do a few push-ups, maybe crunches, I swear you’d be amazed.”

He walked off, adding, “The body’s natural morphines, right?”

“Thanks,” I called after him, sorry I asked.

I had barely settled behind my desk when Rose appeared, her hair pinned up, fit for a CEO in her smart, navy blue suit.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, setting dictated protocols on top of a stack. “ATF just called. McGovern.”

“Yes?” I asked with interest. “Do you know about what?”

“She said she was in D.C. over the weekend and needs to see you.”

“When and about what?”

I began signing letters.

“She should be here soon,” Rose said.

I glanced up in surprise.

“She called from her car and told me to let you know that she was almost to Kings Dominion and should be here in twenty or thirty minutes,” Rose went on.

“Then it must be important,” I muttered, opening a cardboard file of slides.

I swung around and removed the plastic cover from my microscope and turned on the illuminator.

“Don’t feel you have to drop everything,” said the ever protective Rose. “It’s not as if she made an appointment or even asked if you could fit her in.”

I set a slide on the stage and peered through the eyepiece lens at a tissue section of pancreas, at pink and shrunken cells that looked hyalinized, or scarred.

“His tox came back as zip,” I said to Rose as I put another slide on the stage. “Except for acetone,” I added. “The byproduct of inadequate metabolism of glucose. And kidneys show hyperosmolar vacuolization of the proximal convoluted tubular lining cells. Meaning, instead of cuboidal and pink, they’re clear, bulging and enlarged.”

“Sonny Quinn again,” Rose said dismally.

“Plus we’ve got a clinical history of fruity-smelling breath, weight loss, thirst, frequent urination. Nothing that insulin wouldn’t have cured. Not that I don’t believe in prayer, contrary to what the family has told reporters.”