“Would it bother you terribly if I asked a question about Mark?” she said.

“Ask anything you want.” I smiled. “You will anyway.”

“Have you ever gone to where it happened, visited that place where he died?”

“I don’t know where it happened,” I quickly replied.

She looked at me as she smoked.

“What I mean is, I don’t know where, exactly, in the train station.” I was evasive, almost stuttering.

Still she said nothing, crushing the cigarette beneath her foot.

“Actually,” I went on, “I don’t know that I’ve been in Victoria at all, not that particular station, since he died. I don’t think I’ve had reason to take a train from there. Or arrive there. Waterloo was the last one I was in, I think.”

“The one crime scene the great Dr. Kay Scarpetta will not visit.” She tapped another Consulate out of the pack. “Would you like one?”

“God knows I would. But I can’t.”

She sighed. “I remember Vienna. All those men and the two of us smoking more than they did.”

“Probably the reason we smoked so much was all those men,” I said.

“That may be the cause, but for me, there seems to be no cure. It just goes to show that what we do is unrelated to what we know, and our feelings don’t have a brain.” She shook out a match. “I’ve seen smokers’ lungs. And I’ve seen my share of fatty livers.”

“My lungs are better since I quit. I can’t vouch for my liver,” I said. “I haven’t given up whiskey yet.”

“Don’t, for God’s sake. You’d be no fun.” She paused, adding pointedly, “Course, feelings can be directed, educated, so they don’t conspire against us.”

“I will probably leave tomorrow.” I got back to that.

“You have to go to London first to change planes.” She met my eyes. “Linger there. A day.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s unfinished business, Kay. I have felt this for a long time. You need to bury Mark James.”

“Margaret, what has suddenly prompted this?” I was tripping over words again.

“I know when someone is on the run. And you are, just as much as this killer is.”

“Now, that’s a comforting thing to say,” I replied, and I did not want to have this conversation.

But she was not going to let me escape this time. “For very different reasons and very similar reasons. He’s evil, you’re not. But neither of you wants to be caught.”

She had gotten to me and could tell.

“And just who or what is trying to catch me, in your opinion?” My tone was light but I felt the threat of tears.

“At this stage, I expect it’s Benton Wesley.”

I stared off, past the gurney and its protruding pale foot tied with a tag. Light from above shifted by degrees as clouds moved over the sun, and the smell of death in tile and stone went back a hundred years.

“Kay, what do you want to do?” she asked kindly as I wiped my eyes.