It was cool this Tuesday morning, trees beginning to look like fall. I could feel my lack of sleep. My eyes burned, my head was dull, and I was unsettled by what Marino had said before I had almost hung up on him.

“Hello.” The administrator cheerfully let me in. “How are we this morning, Dr. Scarpetta?”

His name was Jimmy Shaw, and he was very young and Irish, with hair as fiery as copper ivy, and eyes as blue as sky.

“I’ve been better,” I confessed.

“Well, I was just boiling tea,” he said, shutting us inside a narrow, dimly lit hallway, which we followed to his office. “Sounds like you could use a cup.”

“That would be lovely, Jimmy,” I said.

“As for the good doctor, she should be finishing up an inquest.” He glanced at his watch as we entered his cluttered, small space. “She should be out in no time.”

His desk was dominated by a large Coroner’s Inquiries book, black and bound in heavy leather, and he had been reading a biography of Steve McQueen and eating toast before I arrived. Momentarily, he was setting a mug of tea within my reach, not asking how I took it, for by now he knew.

“A little toast with jam?” he asked as he did every morning.

“I ate at the hotel, thanks.” I gave the same reply as he sat behind his desk.

“Never stops me from eating again.” He smiled, slipping on glasses. “I’ll just go over your schedule, then. You lecture at eleven this morning, then again at one P.M. Both at the college, in the old pathology building. I should expect about seventy-five students for each, but there could be more. I don’t know. You’re awfully popular over here, Dr. Kay Scarpetta,” he cheerfully said. “Or maybe it’s just that American violence is so exotic to us.”

“That’s rather much like calling a plague exotic,” I said.

“Well, we can’t help but be fascinated by what you see.”

“And I guess that bothers me,” I said in a friendly but ominous way. “Don’t be too fascinated.”

We were interrupted by the phone, which he snapped up with the impatience of one who answers it too often.

Listening for a moment, he brusquely said, “Right, right. Well, we can’t place an order like that just yet. I’ll have to ring you back another time.

“I’ve been wanting computers for years,” he complained to me as he hung up. “No bloody money when you’re the dog wagged by the Socialist tail.”

“There will never be enough money. Dead men don’t vote.”

“The bloody truth. So what’s the topic of the day?” he wanted to know.

“Sexual homicide,” I replied. “Specifically the role DNA can play.”

“These dismemberments you’re so interested in.” He sipped tea. “Do you think they’re sexual? I mean, would that be the motivation on the part of whoever would do this?” His eyes were keen with interest.

“It’s certainly an element,” I replied.