I GOT THROUGH THREE MORE EXAMS BEFORE DRIFTING OFF. Slumped sideways on my bed pillows, I floated in that limbo between waking and sleep, dreaming meaningless snatches. Running on a beach. Arranging bones with Emma.

In one fragment, I was sitting in a circle at an AA meeting. Ryan was there. Pete. A tall, blond man. The three were talking, but I couldn't hear the conversation. Their faces were in shadow so I couldn't read their expressions.

I awoke to a room bathed in orange and a breeze clattering the palmettos against the outside deck. The clock said eight ten.

I walked to the bathroom and rehabbed the topknot. While I'd been dozing, my bangs had decided to go for that spiky thing. I wet them, grabbed a brush, and began blow-drying. Halfway through, I stopped. Why? And why had I bothered earlier with makeup? Tossing the brush, I hurried downstairs.

Anne's house is connected to the beach by a long wooden boardwalk. A gazebo occupies a deck at the walkway's highest point in its trajectory over the dunes. Pete was there, drinking wine, the last glow of sunset warming his hair.

Katy's hair. The genetic echo was so strong I could never look at one without seeing the other.

I was barefoot, so Pete didn't hear me approach. He'd found a tablecloth, silver candles, a bud vase, and an ice bucket. Two places were set, and a cooler rested on the gazebo floor.

I pulled up short, clotheslined by an unexpected sense of loss.

I don't buy into the "there's but one soul mate" philosophy, but when I met Pete the attraction had been nuclear fusion. The flipping gut when our arms brushed. The thumping heart when I spotted his face in a crowd. I'd known from the start Pete was the guy I was going to marry.

I looked at Pete's face now, lined and tanned, the forehead creeping a little to the north. I'd awakened to that face for more than two decades. Those eyes watched in awe as my daughter was born. My fingers had traced that skin a thousand times. I knew every pore, every muscle, every bone.

Every excuse those lips had constructed.

Every time the truth had shredded my heart.

No way. Done.

"Hey, dude."

Pete rose and turned at the sound of my voice. "Thought I'd been stood up."

"Sorry. I fell asleep."

"Table by the window, madam?"

I took a seat. Towel-draping his arm, Pete pulled a Diet Coke from the ice bucket and laid it on his wrist for my inspection.

"Excellent year," I said.

Pete poured, then began spreading food. Cold spiced shrimp. Smoked trout. Lobster salad. Marinated asparagus. Brie. Pumpernickel squares. Tapenade.

I doubt my estranged husband could survive in a world without a good deli.

We ate, watching fingers of sunlight change from yellow to orange to gray. The ocean was calm, a background symphony of swells rolling gently to shore. Now and then a seabird called out and another answered.

We finished with key lime pie as the gray turned to black.

Pete cleared the table, then we both put our feet on the railing.

"The beach suits you, Tempe. You're lookin' good."

Pete looked good, too, in his rumpled, tousled Pete Petersons way.

I repeated my earlier warning. "This isn't a date, Pete."

"I can't mention the fact that you look nice?" All innocence.

Muted yellow lights were appearing in the houses lining the shore. Another day was checking out. Pete and I watched in silence, the salt breeze playing with our hair.

When Pete spoke again his voice had taken on a deeper tone.

"What I'm having a hard time remembering is why we split up."

"Because you're annoying as hell and spectacularly unfaithful."

"People change, Tempe."

All responses to that seemed dumb, so I didn't make one.

"You ever think—"

At that moment my cell phone sounded. I dug it from my pocket and clicked on.

"How's the most beautiful woman on the planet?" Ryan.

"Good." I dropped my feet and did a half turn in my chair.

"Busy day?"

"Not bad."

"Any word on your skeleton?"

"No."

Pete served himself more of the Chardonnay, then waggled another Coke in my direction. I shook my head no.

Sounds slipped over the line. Or Ryan picked up on my reticence. "Is this a bad time?"

"I'm finishing dinner." A gull screamed overhead.

"On the beach?"

"It's a beautiful night." Dumb. Ryan knew my attitude toward dining solo. "Pete made a picnic."

Ryan didn't answer for a full five seconds. Then, "OK."

"How's Lily?"

"Good." After another long pause, "I'll talk to you later, Tempe."

I was listening to dead air.

"Problem?" Pete asked.

I shook my head. "I'm going to turn in." I rose. "Thanks for dinner. It really was nice."

"My pleasure."

I started up the boardwalk.

"Tempe."

I turned.

"When you're ready to listen, I'd like to talk."

I walked toward the house, feeling Pete's eyes on my back.

===OO=OOO=OO===

My late afternoon nap kept me up until well past three.

Or was it agitation over Ryan's displeasure? Though I phoned several times, my calls went unanswered.

Was Ryan displeased? Was I being paranoid? He's the one who'd gone to Nova Scotia to visit Lily. Wasn't Lily's mother in Nova Scotia?

Whatever.

And what was bothering Emma? Saturday's caller had obviously not delivered good news. Was she in trouble over this cruise ship case?

Who was parked outside Anne's house early this morning? Dickie Dupree? He'd threatened me, but I hadn't taken him seriously. Would Dupree stoop to physical intimidation? No, but he might send somebody.

Could Dupree have something to do with the skeleton buried on Dewees? That seemed a stretch.

Had bacteria really contaminated the iceman's bones? Five thousand years in the Alps and now he's snack food for microbes?

Why two spellings for ketchup? Catsup? And where did that name come from, anyway?

I tossed and turned for hours, then slept later than I'd planned on Monday.

By the time I got to the hospital it was after ten. Emma was there. So was the forensic dentist, a behemoth in a sweatsuit he must have picked up at a Kmart closeout. Emma introduced him as Bernie Grimes.

Grimes's handshake was one of those you don't know quite how to handle. Too weak to grasp. Too clingy to slip.

Freeing my hand, I smiled at Grimes. He smiled back, looking like a silo in blue velour.

Emma had already wheeled the skeleton from the cooler. It lay on the same gurney it had occupied on Saturday, a large brown envelope covering the ribs. The dental X-rays were again spread on the light box.

Grimes led us through a point-by-point description of the morphological characteristics, oral hygiene, and entire dental history of CCC-2006020277. Smoker. Negligent brusher. Nonflosser. Fillings. Untreated cavities and massive tartar buildup, hadn't seen a dentist in several years preceding death. I hardly listened. I was anxious to get to the bones.

Finally, Grimes finished, and he and Emma left to begin filling out an NCIC case form. One by one, I examined the full-body films. Skull. Upper limbs. Lower limbs. Pelvis.

Zip. That didn't surprise me. I'd noticed nothing obvious while handling the bones.

I moved on to the torso.

Since no flesh remained to hold the ribs in place, the technician had spread them flat and shot from above. I saw nothing suspicious in the right arcade. I was finishing with the left when I spotted a dark crescent near the vertebral end of the twelfth rib.

Moving to the gurney, I selected that rib and took it to a scope. Under magnification the imperfection appeared as a tiny gash bordered by a curl of bone on the rib's lower edge. Though small, the defect was real.

Had the gash been caused by a knife blade? Had our unknown been stabbed? Or was the nick a postmortem artifact? From a trowel? A snail or crustacean? No matter how much I angled and reangled the rib, no matter how high I kicked the magnification or adjusted the fiber optic light, I just couldn't tell.

Returning to the X-rays, I inspected the breast- and collarbones, the shoulder blades, then the rest of the ribs. Nothing looked amiss.

I moved on to the spine. The vertebrae had been filmed separated and placed flat, like the ribs, then articulated and lying on their sides.

In a stabbing, it's often the posterior arch or the back of the vertebral body that takes the hit. I moved through the vertebral films. None gave a clear view of these surfaces.

Returning to the skeleton, I began a bone-by-bone inspection, rotating and scrutinizing every element under a magnifying lens surrounded by a fluorescent bulb.

I found nothing until I started on the spine.

Every one's a specialist. Even the vertebrae. The seven cervicals support the head and allow for neck mobility. The twelve thoracics anchor the rib cage. The five lumbars throw in a lower-back curve. The five sacrals form the tail side of the pelvic girdle. Different jobs. Different shapes.

It was the sixth cervical that got my attention.

But I oversimplify. The neck vertebrae have tasks other than head support. One of their jobs is to provide safe passage for arteries traveling to the back of the brain. The transit route involves a small hole, or foramen, in the transverse process, a tiny bone platform between the body of the vertebra and its arch. CCC-2006020277 had a vertical hinge fracture snaking across the left transverse process, on the body side of the hole.

I brought the bone closer to the lens. And found a hairline fracture on the arch side of the hole.

No signs of healing. Hinging. No question here. Both fractures had involved trauma to fresh bone. The injury had occurred around the time of death.

I sat back, considering.

C-6. Lower neck.

Fall? Falls cause sudden excessive impaction. Such impaction can lead to vertebral fracture. But fractures due to falls are generally compressive in nature, and usually involve the vertebral body. This was a hinge fracture. Of the transverse process.

Strangulation? Strangulation most often affects the hyoid, a small bone in the front of the throat.

Whiplash? Not likely.

Blow to the chin? Head?

I could think of no scenario that fit the pattern I was seeing.

Frustrated, I moved on.

And found more.

The twelfth thoracic vertebra sported a pair of nicks similar to the one I'd spotted on the twelfth rib. The first and third lumbar vertebrae had a single nick each.

Like the neck fracture, the pattern of the nicks was confusing. All were located on the belly side.

Knife marks? To penetrate to the front of a lumbar vertebra you'd have to thrust hard enough to pass through the entire abdomen. That's a mighty big thrust.

And these were very small nicks. Made with a very sharp tool.

What the hell had gone on?

I was still speculating when Emma returned.

"Grimes gone?" I asked.

Emma nodded. What color she'd shown earlier had ebbed from her face, accentuating the dark circles under her eyes. "Form's done. Now it will be up to the sheriff."

Though NCIC is operational 24/7, year-round, only members of federal, state, and local law enforcement can input data.

"Gullet will shoot it through right away?"

Emma raised both hands in a "who knows" gesture. Pulling a chair from the wall, she dropped and leaned her elbows on her thighs.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Emma shrugged. "Sometimes it just seems so hopeless."

I waited.

"Gullett's not going to slap this case with a priority sticker. And when he does enter our guy into the system, what are the chances we'll get a hit? To submit a missing adult into the database under the new regs, the person's got to be disabled, a disaster victim, abducted or kidnapped, endangered—"

"What does that mean?"

"Missing in the company of another under circumstances suggesting his or her physical safety is in danger."

"So a lot of MP's never get entered? Our guy may not have made it into the computer when he vanished?"

"The thinking is that most missing adults take off on their own. Husbands skipping town with their mistresses. Smothered wives looking for something more. Deadbeats cutting out on debt."

"The runaway bride." I referred to a case wrung dry in a recent media frenzy.

"It's head cases like that one that nurture the mind-set." Emma threw out her feet and leaned back. "But it's true. The vast majority of missing adults are people just trying to escape their lives. There's no law against that, and entering them all overloads the system."

Emma closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall.

"I doubt this guy simply went missing," I said, turning back to the gurney. "Take a look at this."

I was lining up the vertebrae when I heard movement, then a heart-stopping crack.

I whipped around.

Emma lay crumpled on the tile floor.