AFTER BREAKFAST, I wandered about in my bedroom and study, deliberating over what to bring on our trip. My aluminum briefcase would go, because it was habit to take it almost everywhere these days. I also packed an extra pair of slacks and a shirt, and toiletries for overnight, and my Colt .38 went into my pocketbook. Although I was accustomed to carrying a gun, I had never even thought about taking one to New York, where doing so could land one in jail with no questions asked. When Lucy and I were in the car, I told her what I had done.

“It’s called situational ethics,” she said. “I’d rather be arrested than dead.”

“That’s the way I look at it,” said I, who once had been a law-abiding citizen.

HeloAir was a helicopter charter service on the western edge of the Richmond airport, where some of the area’s Fortune 500 companies had their own terminals for corporate King Airs and Lear Jets and Sikorskys. The Bell JetRanger was in the hangar, and while Lucy went on to take care of that, I found a pilot inside who was kind enough to let me use the phone in his office. I dug around in my wallet for my AT&T calling card and dialed the number for Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center’s administrative offices.

The director was a woman psychiatrist named Lydia Ensor who was very leery when I got her on the line. I tried to explain to her in more detail who I was, but she interrupted.

“I know exactly who you are,” she said with a Midwestern tongue. “I’m completely aware of the current situation and will be as cooperative as I can. I’m not clear, however, on what your interest is, Dr. Scarpetta. You’re the chief medical examiner of Virginia? Correct?”

“Correct. And a consulting forensic pathologist for ATF and the FBI.”

“And of course, they’ve contacted me, too.” She sounded genuinely perplexed. “So are you looking for information that might pertain to one of your cases? To someone dead?”

“Dr. Ensor, I’m trying to link a number of cases right now,” I replied. “I have reason to suspect that Carrie Grethen may be either indirectly or directly involved in all of them and may have been involved even while she was at Kirby.”

“Impossible.”

“Clearly, you don’t know this woman,” I firmly said. “I, on the other hand, have worked violent deaths caused by her for half of my career, beginning when she and Temple Gault were on a spree in Virginia and finally in New York, where Gault was killed. And now this. Possibly five more murders, maybe more.”

“I know Miss Grethen’s history all too well,” Dr. Ensor said, and she wasn’t hostile, but defensiveness had crept into her tone. “I can assure you that Kirby handled her as we do all maximum security patients . . .”