“Where is the new shift?” I asked, as she took my temperature.

“I’m it. We’re all just doing the best we can.”

I nodded as she alluded to the furlough yet one more time this day.

“There’s hardly a lab worker here,” she went on. “You could wake up tomorrow, the only person in the building.”

“Now I’m sure to have nightmares,” I said as she wrapped the BP cuff around my arm.

“Well, you’re feeling okay, and that’s the important thing. Ever since I started coming down here, I started imagining I was getting one thing or another. The slightest ache or pain or sniffle, and it’s, oh my God. So what kind of doctor are you?”

I told her.

“I was going to be a pediatrician. Then I got married.”

“We’d be in a lot of trouble were it not for good nurses like you,” I smiled and said.

“Most doctors never bother to notice that. They have these attitudes.”

“Some of them certainly do,” I agreed.

I tried to go to sleep, and was restless throughout the night. Street lights from the parking lot beyond my window seeped through the blinds, and no matter which way I turned, I could not relax. It was hard to breathe and my heart would not slow down. At five A.M., I finally sat up and turned on my light. Within minutes, the nurse was back inside my room.

“You all right?” She looked exhausted.

“Can’t sleep.”

“Want something?”

I turned on the computer as I shook my head. I logged onto AOL and went back to the chat room, which was empty. Clicking on the Available button, I checked to see if deadoc was on line, and if so, where he might be. There was no sign of him, and I began scrolling through the various chat rooms available to subscribers and their families.

There was truly something for everyone, places for flirts, singles, gays, lesbians, Native Americans, African Americans, and for evil. People who preferred bondage, sadomasochism, group sex, bestiality, incest, were welcome to find each other and exchange pornographic art. The FBI could do nothing about it. All of it was legal.

Dejected, I sat up, propped against my pillows and, without intending to, dozed off. When I opened my eyes again an hour later, I was in a chat room called ART-LOVE. A message was quietly waiting for me on my screen. Deadoc had found me.

DEADOC: a picture s worth a thousand words

I hastily checked to see if he was still logged on, and found him quietly coiled in cyberspace, waiting for me. I typed my response.

SCARPETTA: What are you trading?

He didn’t respond right away. I sat staring at the screen for three or four minutes. Then he was back.

DEADOC: I don t trade with traitors I give freely what do you think happens to people like that

SCARPETTA: Why don’t you tell me?

Silence, and I watched as he left the room, and a minute later was back. He was breaking the trace. He knew exactly what we were doing.