New York's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was on First Avenue, across from the Gothic red brick hospital called Bellevue, where the city's autopsies had been performed in earlier years. Winter-brown vines and graffiti marred walls and wrought iron, and fat black bags of trash awaited pickup on top of filthy snow. Christmas music played nonstop inside the beat-up yellow cab squeaking to a halt on a street almost never this still.

'I need a receipt,' I said to my Russian driver, who had spent the last ten minutes telling me what was wrong with the world.

'How much for?'

'Eight.' I was generous. It was Christmas morning.

He nodded, scribbling, as I watched a man on the sidewalk watching me, near Bellevue's fence. Unshaven, with wild long hair, he wore a blue jean jacket lined with fleece, the cuffs of stained army pants caught in the tops of battered cowboy boots.

He began playing an imaginary guitar and singing as I got out of the cab.

'Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the day. OHHH what fun it is to ride to Galveston today-AAAAAYYYYY…'

'You have admirer,' my amused driver said as I took the receipt through an open window.

He drove off in a swirl of exhaust. There was not another person or car in sight, and the horrendous serenading got louder. Then my mentally disfranchised admirer darted after me. I was appalled when he began screaming, 'Galveston!' as if it were my name or an accusation. I fled into the chief medical examiner's lobby.

'There's someone following me,' I said to a security guard decidedly lacking in Christmas spirit as she sat at her desk.

The deranged musician pressed his face against the front door, staring in, nose flattened, cheeks blanched. He opened his mouth wide, obscenely rolling his tongue over the glass and thrusting his pelvis back and forth as if he were having sex with the building. The guard, a sturdy woman with dreadlocks, strode over to the door and banged on it with her fist.

'Benny, cut it out,' she scolded him loudly. 'You quit that right now, Benny.' She rapped harder. 'Don't you make me come out there.'

Benny backed away from the glass. Suddenly he was Nureyev doing pirouettes across the empty street.

'I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta,' I said to the guard. 'Dr. Horowitz is expecting me.'

'No way the chief's expecting you. It's Christmas.' She regarded me with dark eyes that had seen it all. 'Dr. Pinto's on call. Now, I can try to get hold of him, if you want.' She headed back to her station.

'I'm well aware it's Christmas' - I followed her -'but Dr. Horowitz is supposed to meet me here.' I got out my wallet and displayed my chief medical examiner's gold shield.

She was not impressed. 'You been here before?'

'Many times.'

'Hmm. Well, I sure haven't seen the chief today. But I guess that don't mean he didn't come in through the bay and didn't tell me. Sometimes they're here half a day and I don't know. Hmm. That's right, don't nobody bother to tell me.'

She reached for the phone. 'Hmm. No sir, I don't need to know.' She dialed. 'I don't need to know nothing, no not me. Dr. Horowitz? This is Bonita with security. I got a Dr. Scarlett.' She paused. 'I don't know.'

She looked at me. 'How you spell that?'

'S-c-a-r-p-e-t-t-a,' I patiently said.

She still didn't get it right but was close enough. 'Yes, sir, I sure will.' She hung up and announced, 'You can go on and have a seat over there.'

The waiting area was furnished and carpeted in gray, magazines arranged on black tables, a modest artificial Christmas tree in the center of the room. Inscribed on a marble wall was Taceant Colloquia Effugiat Risus Hie Locus Est Ubi Mors Gaudet Succurrere Vitae, which meant one would find little conversation or laughter in this place where death delighted to help the living. An Asian couple sat across from me on a couch, tightly holding hands. They did not speak or look up, Christmas for them forever wrapped in pain.

I wondered why they were here and whom they had lost, and I thought of all I knew. I wished I could somehow offer comfort, yet that gift did not seem meant for me. After all these years, the best I could say to the bereft was that death was quick and their loved one did not suffer. Most times when I offered such words, they weren't entirely true, for how does one measure the mental anguish of a woman made to strip in an isolated park on a bitterly cold night? How could any of us imagine what she felt when Gault marched her to that ice-filled fountain and cocked his gun?

Forcing her to disrobe was a reminder of the unlimited depths of his cruelty and his insatiable appetite for games. Her nudity had not been necessary. She had not needed it telegraphed to her that she was going to die alone at Christmas with no one knowing her name. Gault could have just shot her and been done with it. He could have pulled out his Glock and caught her unaware. The bastard.

'Mr. and Mrs. Li?' A white-haired woman appeared before the Asian couple.

'Yes.'

I'll take you in now if you're ready.'

'Yes, yes,' said the man as his wife began to cry.

They were led in the direction of the viewing room, where the body of someone they loved would be carried up from the morgue by a special elevator.

Many people could not accept death unless they saw or touched it first, and despite the many viewings I had arranged and witnessed over the years, I really could not imagine going through such a ritual. I did not think I could bear that last fleeting glance through glass. Feeling the beginning of a headache, I closed my eyes and began massaging my temples. I sat like this for a long time until I sensed a presence.

'Dr. Scarpetta?' Dr. Horowitz's secretary was standing over me, her face concerned. 'Are you all right?'

'Emily,' I said, surprised. 'Yes, I'm fine, but I certainly wasn't expecting to see you here today.' I got up.

'Would you like some Tylenol?'

'You're very kind, but I'm fine,' I said.

'I wasn't expecting to see you here today, either. But things aren't exactly normal right now. I'm surprised you managed to get in without being accosted by reporters.'

'I didn't see any reporters,' I said.

'They were everywhere last night. I assume you saw the morning Times?'

'I'm afraid I haven't had a chance,' I said uncomfortably. I wondered if Wesley was still in bed.

'Things are a mess,' said Emily, a young woman with long, dark hair who was always so demure and plainly dressed that she seemed to have stepped forth from another age. 'Even the mayor's called. This is not the sort of publicity the city wants or needs. I still can't believe a reporter just happened to find the body.'

I glanced sharply at her as we walked. 'A reporter?'

'Well, he's really a copy editor or some such with the Times - one of these nutcakes who jogs no matter the weather. So he happens to be out in the park yesterday morning and takes a turn through Cherry Hill. It was very cold and snowy and deserted. He nears the fountain and there the poor woman is. Needless to say, the description in the morning paper is very detailed and people are frightened out of their wits.'

We passed through several doorways, then she poked her head inside the chief's office to gently announce us so we would not startle him. Dr. Horowitz was getting on in years and was getting hard of hearing. His office was scented with the light perfume of many flowering plants, for he loved orchids, African violets and gardenias, and they thrived in his care.

'Good morning, Kay.' He got up from his desk. 'Did you bring someone with you?'

'Captain Marino is supposed to meet us.'

'Emily will make certain he is shown the way. Unless you'd rather wait.'

I knew Horowitz did not want to wait. There was not time. He commanded the largest medical examiner's office in the country, where eight thousand people a year - the population of a small city -were autopsied on his steel tables. A fourth of the victims were homicides, and many would never have a name. New York had such a problem with identifying their dead that the NYPD's detective division had a missing persons unit in Horowitz's building.

The chief picked up the phone and spoke to someone he did not name.

'Dr. Scarpetta's here. We're on our way down,' he said.

I'll make sure I find Captain Marino,' Emily said. 'Seems like I know his name.'

'We've worked together for many years,' I told her. 'And he's been assisting the FBI's Investigative Support Unit at Quantico for as long as it has existed.'

'I thought it was called the Behavioral Science Unit, like in the movies.'

'The Bureau changed the name, but the purpose is the same,' I said of the small group of agents who had become famous for their psychological profiling and pursuit of violent sex offenders and killers. When I recently had become the consulting forensic pathologist for the unit, I had not believed there was much left that I had not seen. I had been wrong.

Sunlight filled windows in Horowitz's office and was caught in glass shelves of flowers and miniature trees. I knew that in the bathroom orchids grew in the steamy dark from perches around the sink and tub, and that at home he had a greenhouse. The first time I had met Horowitz he had reminded me of Lincoln. Both men had gaunt, benevolent faces shadowed by a war that was ripping society apart. They bore tragedy as if they had been chosen to, and had large, patient hands.

We went downstairs to what the N.Y. office called their mortuary, an oddly genteel appellation for a morgue set in one of the most violent cities in America. Air seeping in from the bay was very cold and smelled of stale cigarettes and death. Signs posted on aqua walls asked people not to throw bloody sheets, shrouds, loose rags or containers into Dumpsters.

Shoe covers were required, eating was prohibited and red biological hazard warnings were on many of the doors. Horowitz explained that one of his thirty deputy chiefs would be performing the autopsy on the unknown woman we believed was Gault's latest victim.

We turned into a locker room where Dr. Lewis Rader was dressed in scrubs and attaching a battery pack to his waist.

'Dr. Scarpetta,' Horowitz said, 'have you and Dr. Rader met?'

'We've known each other forever,' Rader said with a smile.

'Yes, we have,' I said warmly. 'But the last time we saw each other, I guess, was San Antonio.'

'Gee. Has it been that long?'

This had been at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Bring Your Own Slide session, an evening once a year when people like us got together for show and tell. Rader had presented the case of a bizarre lightning death involving a young woman. Because the victim's clothing had been blown off and her head injured when she had fallen and struck concrete, she had come into the ME's office as a sexual assault. The cops were convinced until Rader showed them that the woman's belt buckle was magnetized and she had a small burn on the bottom of one foot.