“You’d think I’d remember after all these times,” I muttered.

“Your investigator friend, Ring, tried to walk me over here after the consultation,” she said, scanning her thumb in a biometric lock by the door.

“He’s not my friend,” I told her.

The lobby was high-ceilinged and arranged with glass cases displaying clunky, inefficient radio and electronic equipment used by law enforcement before ERF was built.

“He asked me out again,” she said.

Corridors were monochromatic and seemed endless, and I was forever impressed with the silence and sense that no one was here. Scientists and engineers worked behind shut doors in spaces big enough to accommodate automobiles, helicopters and small planes. Hundreds of Bureau personnel were employed at ERF, yet they had virtually no contact with any of us across the street. We did not know their names.

“I’m sure there are a million people who would like to ask you out,” I said as we boarded an elevator, and Lucy scanned her thumb again.

“Usually not after they’ve been around me very long,” she said.

“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten rid of you yet.”

But she was very serious. “Once I start talking shop, the guys turn off. But he likes a challenge, if you know the type.”

“I know it all too well.”

“He wants something from me, Aunt Kay.”

“Would you like to hazard a guess? And where are you taking me, by the way?”

“I don’t know. But I just have this feeling.” She opened a door to the virtual environment lab, adding, “I have a rather interesting idea.”

Lucy’s ideas were always more than interesting. Usually they were frightening. I followed her into a room of virtual system processors and graphic computers stacked on top of each other, and countertops scattered with tools, computer boards, chips and peripherals like DataGloves and helmet-mounted displays. Electrical cords were bundled in thick hanks and tied back from the blank expanse of linoleum flooring where Lucy routinely lost herself in cyberspace.

She picked up a remote control and two video displays blinked on, and I recognized the photographs deadoc had sent to me. They were big and in color on the screens, and I began to get nervous.

“What are you doing?” I asked my niece.

“The basic question has always been, does an immersion into an environment actually improve the operator’s performance,” she said, typing computer commands. “You never got a chance to be immersed in this environment. The crime scene.”

Both of us stared at the bloody stumps and lined-up body parts on the monitors, and a chill crept through me.

“But suppose you could have that chance now?” Lucy went on. “What if you could be inside deadoc’s room?”

I started to interrupt, but she would not let me.

“What else might you see? What else might you do?” she said, and when she got like this, she was almost manic. “What else might you learn about the victim and him?”

“I don’t know if I can use something like this,” I protested.