I set the burglar alarm and locked the house, turning on the light in the garage, where I opened a spacious locker built of cedar, with vents along the top and bottom. Inside were hiking boots, waders, heavy leather gloves and a Barbour coat with its special waterproofing that reminded me of wax.

Out here I kept socks, long underwear, jumpsuits and other gear that would never see the inside of my house. Their end of tour landed them in the industrial-size stainless steel sink and washer and dryer not meant for my normal clothes.

I tossed a jumpsuit, a pair of black leather Reeboks and an Office of Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, baseball cap inside the trunk. I checked my large Halliburton aluminum scene case to make sure I had plenty of latex gloves, heavy-duty trash bags, disposable sheets, camera and film. I set out with a heavy heart ss Benton's words drifted through my mind again. I tried to block out his voice, his eyes and smile and the feel of his skin. I wanted to forget him and more than anything, I didn't.

I turned on the radio as I followed the Downtown Expressway to 1-95, the Richmond skyline sparkling in the sun. I was slowing at the Lombardy Toll Plaza when my car phone rang. It was Marino.

Thought I'd let you know I'm going to drop by," he said.

A horn blared when I changed lanes and almost clipped a silver Toyota in my blind spot. The driver swooped around me, yelling obscenities I couldn't hear.

"Go to hell," I angrily said in his wake.

"What?" Marino said loudly in my ear.

"Some goddamn idiot driver."

"Oh, good. You ever heard of road rage, Doc?"

"Yes, and I've come down with it"

I took the Ninth Street exit, heading to my office, and let Rose know I was two minutes away. When I pulled into the parking lot, Fielding was waiting with the hard case and extension cord.

"I don't guess the Suburban's back yet," I said.

"Nope," he replied, loading the equipment in my trunk. "Gonna be something when you show up in this thing. I can just see all those dockworkers staring at this goodlooking blond woman in a black Mercedes. Maybe you should borrow my car."

My bodybuilding deputy chief had just finalized a divorce and celebrated by trading in his Mustang for a red Corvette.

"Actually, that's a good idea;" I dryly said. "If you don't mind. As long as it's a V-eight"

Yeah, yeah. I hear ya. Call me if you need me. You know the way, right?"

"I do."

His directions led me south, and I was almost to Petersburg when I turned off and drove past the back of the Philip Morris manufacturing plant and over railroad tracks. The narrow road led me through a vacant land of weeds and woods that ended abruptly at a security checkpoint. I felt as if I were crossing the border into an unfriendly country.Beyond was a train yard and hundreds of boxcar-size orange containers stacked three and four high. A guard who took his job very seriously stepped outside his booth. I rolled down my window.

"May I help you, ma'am?" he asked in a flat military tone.

"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I replied.

"And who are you here to see?"

"I'm here because there's been a death," I explained. "I'm the medical examiner."

I showed him my credentials. He took them from me and studied them carefully. I had a feeling he didn't know what a medical examiner was and wasn't about to ask.

"So you're the chief," he said, handing the worn black wallet back to me. "The chief of what?"

"I'm the chief medical examiner of Virginia," I replied. "The police are waiting for me."

He stepped back inside his booth and got on the phone as my impatience grew. It seemed every time I needed to enter a secured area, I went through this. I used to assume my being a woman was the reason, and in earlier days this was probably true-at least some of the time. Now I believed the threats of terrorism, crime and lawsuits were the explanation. The guard wrote down a description of my car arid the plate number. He handed me a clipboard so I could sign in and gave me a visitor's pass, which I didn't clip on.

"See that pine tree down there?" he said, pointing.

"I see quite a few pine trees."

"The little bent one. Take a left at it and just head on towards the water, ma'am;" he said. "Have a nice day."

I moved on, passing huge tires parked here and there and several red brick buildings with signs out front to identify the U.S. Customs Service and Federal Marine Terminal. The port itself was rows of huge warehouses with orange containers lined up at loading docks like animals feeding from troughs.

Moored off the wharf in the James River were two container ships, the Euroclip and the Sirius, each almost twice as long as a football field. Cranes hundreds of feet high were poised above open hatches the size of swimming pools.

Yellow crime-scene tape anchtired by traffic cones circled a container that was mounted on a chassis. No one was nearby. In fact, I saw no sign of police except for an unmarked blue Caprice at the edge of the dock apron, the driver, apparently, behind the wheel talking through the window to a man in a white shirt and a tie. Work had stopped. Stevedores in hard hats and reflective vests looked bored as they drank sodas or bottled water or smoked.

I dialed my office and got Fielding on the phone.

"When were we notified about this body?" I asked him.

"Hold on. Let me check the sheet:" Paper rustled. "At exactly ten fifty-three."

"And when was it found?"

"Uh, Anderson didn't seem to know that."

"How the hell could she not know something like that?"

"Like I.said, I think she's new."

"Fielding, there's not a cop in sight except for her, or at least I guess that's her. What exactly did she say to you when she called in the case?"

"DOA, decomposed, asked for you to come to the scene."

"She specifically requested me?" I asked.

"Well, hell. You're always everybody's first choice. That's noticing new. But she said Marino told her to get you to the scene."

"Marino?" I asked, surprised. "He told her to tell me to respond?"

"Yeah, I thought it was a little ballsy of him."

I remembered Marino's telling me he would drop by the scene, and I got angrier. He gets some rookie to basically give me an order, and then if Marino can fit, it in, he might swing by and see how we're doing?"Fielding, when's the last time you talked to him?" I asked.

"Weeks. Pissy mood, too."

"Not half as pissy as mine's going to be if and when he finally decides to show up," I promised.

Dockworkers watched me climb out of my car and pop open the trunk. I retrieved my scene case, jumpsuit and shoes, and felt eyes crawl all over me as I walked toward the unmarked car and got more annoyed with each labored step, the heavy case bumping against my leg.

The man in the shirt and tie looked hot and unhappy as he shielded his eyes to gaze up at two television news helicopters slowly circling the port at about four hundred feet.

"Darn reporters," he muttered, turning his eyes to me.

"I'm looking for whoever's- in charge of this crime scene," I said.

"That would be me," came a female voice from inside the Caprice.

I bent over and peered through the window at the young woman sitting behind the wheel. She was darkly tanned, her brown hair cut short and slicked back, her nose and jaw strong. Her eyes were hard, and she was dressed in relaxed-leg faded jeans, lace-up black - leather boots and white T-shirt. She wore her gun on leer hip, her badge on a ball chain tucked into her collar. Air-conditioning was blasting, light rock on the radio surfing over the cop talk on the scanner.

"Detective Anderson, I presume," I said.

"Rene Anderson. The one and only. And you must be the doc I've heard so much about," she said with the arrogance I associated with most people who didn't know what the hell they were doing.