“Yes. Someone on AOL with the name D-E-A-D-O-C.”

“As in Dead-Doc?” He was intrigued enough to forget his mood.

“I can only assume. The message was one word: ten.”

“That’s it?”

“In lowercase letters.”

He looked at me, thinking. “You count the ones in Ireland, this is number ten. You got a copy of this thing?”

“Yes. And the Dublin cases and their possible connection to the first four here have been in the news.” I handed him a printout. “Anybody could know about it.”

“Don’t matter. Assuming this is the same killer and he’s just struck again, he knows damn well how many he’s killed,” he said. “But what I’m not getting is how he knew where to send this file to you?”

“My address in AOL wouldn’t be hard to guess. It’s my name.”

“Jesus, I can’t believe you would do that,” he erupted again. “That’s like using your date of birth for your burglar alarm code.”

“I use e-mail almost exclusively to communicate with medical examiners, people in the Health Department, the police. They need something easy to remember. Besides,” I added as his stare continued to pass judgment on me, “it’s never been a problem.”

“Well, now it sure as hell is,” he said, looking at the printout. “Good news is, maybe we’ll find something in here that will help. Maybe he left a trail in the computer.”

“On the Web,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. “Maybe you should call Lucy.”

“Benton should do that,” I reminded him. “I can’t ask her help on a case just because I’m her aunt.”

“So I guess I got to call him about that, too.” He picked his way around my clutter, walking to the doorway. “I hope you’ve got some beer in this joint.” He stopped and turned toward me. “You know, Doc, it ain’t none of my business, but you got to talk to him eventually.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of your business.”

Three

The next morning, I woke up to the muffled drumming of heavy rain on the roof and the persistent beeping of my alarm. The hour was early for a day that I was supposed to be taking off from work, and it struck me that during the night the month had turned into November. Winter was not far away, another year gone. Opening shades, I looked out at the day. Petals from my roses were beaten to the ground, the river swollen and flowing around rocks that looked black.

I felt bad about Marino. I had been impatient with him when I had sent him home without a beer last night. But I did not want to talk with him about matters he would not understand. For him, it was simple. I was divorced. Benton Wesley’s wife had left him for another man. We’d been having an affair, so we might as well get married. For a while I had gone along with the plan. Last fall and winter, Wesley and I went skiing, diving, we shopped, cooked in and out and even worked in my yard. We did not get along worth a damn.