THE WOMAN WHO CALLS HERSELF CASSIE MAY WAITS PATIENTLY, sitting on a backless stool behind the antique cash register in George Dower's shop while keeping an eye on the proprietor, who is busy in the workshop behind the bead curtain (which she has tied back, to afford her a clear view).

The back of the shop is not what she had expected. She's been in instrument makers' workshops before, smelled the glue and fresh-planed wood, the wax and varnish. She's familiar with other musical specialties as well, with signal generators and plugboards, amps and filters, the hum and hot metallic smell of overdriven amplifiers. Dower's shop is not like any of these. It has some of the characteristics of a jeweler's workshop, or a watch repairer's—but it is not entirely like either of those. It's summer but the air is uncharacteristically chill, and not from air conditioning: it's stuffy, and there's a faint charnel-house scent, as if something has died under the floorboards.

Dower has donned a pair of white cotton conservator's gloves and hung a dictaphone around his neck. He keeps the bone-white violin at arm's length, as if he doesn't want to hold it too close, muttering into his microphone: "C-rib thickness varies between 3.2 and 5.5 millimeters; as with the right lower curve, this material appears to be ductile and rigid, although examination at 6X magnification reveals the characteristic spongiform structure of endochondral ossification . . ." He swallows, as if nauseous—as well he might be. (The instrument is indeed made of bone, preserved and treated to give it a rigidity and resonance similar to mountain maple. The treatments that modify the material in this way are applied while its donor is still alive, and in excruciating pain.) Peering into a fiber-optic probe, the end of which is inserted through one of the violin's f-holes: "The upper block appears to be carved from the body and lesser cornu of os hyoideum; the greater cornu is avulsed in a manner usually indicative of death by strangulation . . ."

Dower may suspect, but the woman knows, that the materials used to construct this instrument were harvested from the bodies of no less than twelve innocents, whose premature deaths were believed to be an essential part of the process. Before he became a highly specialized instrument maker, Dower trained as a surgeon. He's a sensitive, trained to see what lies before his eyes: most people wouldn't recognize the true horror of the instrument, seeing merely a white violin. Which is why the woman came here, after checking the files for a list of suitable examiners.