He was silent as he opened a bottle of Jack Daniel's.

Then he said, "Well, you and I know she ain't handling it so well."

"Lucy has always been able to compartmentalize."

"Yeah, and how healthy is that?"

"I guess we should ask each other that."

"But I'm telling you right now, this time she ain't gonna handle it well, Doc," he said, splashing bourbon into a glass and dropping in several ice cubes. "She killed two people in the line of duty barely a year ago, and now she's just done. it again. Most guys go their entire careers and don't even take a shot at somebody. That's why I'm trying to make you understand it's gonna be viewed differently this time. The big guys in Washington are gonna consider that maybe they got a gunslinger on their hands, someone who's a problem."

He handed the drink to me.

"I've known cops, agents like that," he said.. "They always have justifiable reasons for judicial homicide, but if you look hard at it, you begin to get the drift that they subconsciously set things up to go bad. They thrive on it."

"Lucy's not like that."

"Yeah, she's only been pissed off since the day she was born. And by the way, you ain't going anywhere tonight. You're staying here with me and Father Christmas."

He poured himself a bourbon, too, and we went into his shabby, crowded living room with:its crooked lampshades, its dusty, bent Venetian blinds and the sharp-cornered glass coffee table he blamed on me. He dropped into his recliner chair, which was so old he had repaired splits in the brown Naugahyde with duct tape, I remembered the first time I walked into his house. After recovering from the dismay, I realized he was proud of how thoroughly he wore everything out, except for his truck, aboveground pool, and now his Christmas decorations.

He caught me staring dismally at his chair as -I curled up in a corner of the green corduroy couch I tended to choose. It might have been missing its wale wherever bodies came in touch with it, but it was cozy.

"One day I'll get a new one of these," he said, pushing down the lever on the side of the chair and sliding the footrest out.

He wiggled his stocking feet as if his toes were cramped, and flicked on the TV I was surprised when he changed the channel to twenty-one; the Arts amp; Entertainment network.

"I didn't know you watched Biography," I said.

"Oh yeah. And the real-life cops shows they usually got on. This may sound like I been sniffing glue, but does it strike you how everything in the world's gone to hell ever since Bray came to town?"

"I'm sure it would strike you that way, after what she's been doing to you."

"Huh. And she's not been doing the same thing to you?" he challenged, sipping his drink. "I'm not the only person in this room she's trying to ruin."

"I don't think she has the power to cause everything else going on in fife," I replied.

"Let me just run through the list for you, Doc, and make sure to remember we're talking about a three-month period, okay? She arrives in Richmond. I get thrown back in uniform. You suddenly have a thief in your office. You have a snitch who breaks into your e-mail and turns you into Dear Abby.

"Then this dead guy shows up in a container and Interpol's suddenly in the picture, and now Lucy kills two people, which is convenient for Bray, by the way. Don't forget, she's been all hot and bothered about getting Lucy to sign on with Richmond, and if ATF throws Lucy back like a fish, she's gonna need a job. And oh yeah, now someone's following you."

I watched a young, gorgeous Liberace playing the piano and singing while a voice-over of a friend talked about what a kind, generous man the musician had been.

"You're not listening to me;" Marino raised his voice again.

"I'm listening."

He heaved himself ъp again with an exasperated huff and padded into the kitchen.

"Have we heard anything from Interpol?" I called out as he made a lot of noise tearing open paper and rummaging through the silverware drawer.

"Nothing worth passing on."

The microwave hummed.

"It would be nice if you'd pass it on anyway," I said, annoyed.

Stage lights caught Liberace blowing kisses to his audience and his sequins flashed like an intense red and gold fireworks display. Marino walked back into the living room with a bowl of ruffled potato chips and a container of some sort of dip.

"The guy at State Police got a computer message back from them within an hour. They just requested more info, that's all:" 'That tells us a lot," I said, disappointed. "That probably means they didn't get a hit on anything significant. The old fracture of the jaw, the unusual accessory cusp of the Carabelli, not to mention fingerprints. None of it matched up with anybody wanted or missing."

"Yeah. It's a pisser," he said, his mouth full as he held out the bowl to me.

"No, thanks:' "It's really good. What you do is soften the cream cheese in the microwave first and put in jalapeiнos. It's a lot better for you than onion dip."

"I'm sure."

"You know, I always liked him:' He pointed a greasy finger at the TV "I don't care if he was queer. You gotta admit he had style. If people are gonna pay all that money for records and concert tickets, by God they ought to get people who don't look and act like some schmoe on the street.

"Let me tell you," Marino said with his mouth full, "shootings are a bitch. You get investigated as if you made an attempt on the damn president, and then there's all the counseling and everybody worrying about your mental health so much it makes you crazy."

He threw back bourbon and crunched more chips.

"She's gonna get some time on the bricks," he went on, using cop jargon for involuntary time off. "And Miami detectives are gonna work it like they always work homicides. Got to. And everything will have the hell reviewed out of it"

He looked over at me, wiping his hands.on his jeans.

"I know this won't make you feel good, but maybe you're the. last person she wants to see right now," he said.

There was a rule in our building that any evidence, even something as innocuous as a ten-print card, had to be transported on the service elevator. This was located at the end of a hallway where two cleaning ladies were this minute pushing their carts as I headed to Neils Vander's lab.

"Good morning, Merle. And Beatrice, how are you?" I smiled at them.

Their eyes landed on the towel-covered surgical pan and the paper sheets covering the gurney I was pushing. They had been around long enough to know that whenever I carried something bagged or pushed something covered, it was nothing they wanted to know about.

"Uh-oh," Merle said.

"Uh-oh is right," Beatrice chimed in.

I pushed the elйvator button.

"You going anyplace special for Christmas, Dr. Scarpelts.

They could tell by the look on my face that Christmas was a topic I didn't particularly care to talk about.

"You're probably too busy for Christmas," Merle quickly said.

Both women got uncomfortable for the same reason everybody else did when they were reminded of what had happened to Benton.

"I know this time of year gets real busy," Merle awkwardly changed the subject. "All those people drinking on the road. More suicides and people getting mad at each other."

Christmas would be here in about two weeks. Fielding was on call that day. I couldn't count how many Christmases I had worn a pager.

"People burning up in fires, too."

"When bad things happen this time of year," I said to them as the elevator doors opened, "we feel them more. That's a lot of it."

"Maybe that's it."

"I don't know 'bout that, remember that electrical fire…?'

The doors shut and I headed ъp to the second floor, which had been designed to accommodate tours for citizens and politicians and anyone else interested in our work. All labs were behind big expanses of plate glass, and at first this had seemed odd and uncomfortable to scientists used to working in secret behind cinder block walls. By now, nobody cared. Examiners tested trigger pulls and worked with bloodstains, fingerprints and fibers without paying much attention to who was on the other side of the glass, which at this moment included me pushing my gurney past.