The Last Precinct

"I just assume you've talked to the entire world. What I haven't yet figured out is how you've had time."

"There was a little downtime at MCV, the medical college hospital."

I imagine her drinking coffee with Talley. I can picture the look on his face, his demeanor. I wonder if she is attracted to him.

"I talked to both Talley and Marino while Chando

"I'm getting the impression that you're wondering if Jay is somehow involved…" I start to say.

Berger interrupts me with a shrug. "No stone unturned," she says. "Is it possible? By this point, I'm about to believe anything is possible. What a wonderful position Talley would be in if he were in collusion with the Chando

"Look," I say with a hint of defeat in my voice, "Jay and I were intimate in Paris over a twenty-four-hour period, at most."

"You initiated sex. Quarreled in a restaurant that evening and you stormed out, jealous because he was looking at another woman…"

"What?" I blurt out. "He said that?"

She regards me silently. Her tone is no different from the one she was using with Chando

"The Cafe Runtz on rue Favard. You made quite a scene." She continues my story, or at least Talley's version of it.

"I didn't make a scene. I got up from the table and walked out, period."

"From there you returned to the hotel, got into a cab and went to lie Saint-Louis, where the Chando

What she has just said sends electrical shocks through my every cell. Sweat rolls in cold tickles beneath my blouse. I never told Jay what I did after I left him in the restaurant. How does Berger know all this? How did Jay know if he is the one who told her? Marino. How much has Marino volunteered to her?

"What was your real purpose in finding the Chando

"If I knew what something would tell me, I wouldn't need to investigate," I reply. "As for the water sample, as you must know from the lab reports, we found diatoms, or microscopic algae, on the clothing of the unidentified body from the Richmond port_from Thomas's body. I wanted a water sample from near the Chando

"But the water sample is important."

"Why?"

"Anything that happened reveals more to me about the defendant and possibly leads to motive. More importantly, to identity and intent."

Identity and intent. Those words roar through my mind like a train. I am a lawyer. I know what those words mean.

"Why did you take the water sample? Do you routinely go around collecting evidence that isn't directly associated with a body? Collecting water samples really isn't your jurisdiction, in other words, especially in a foreign country. Why did you go to France to begin with? Isn't that a little out of the ordinary for a medical examiner?"

"Interpol summoned me. You just pointed that out yourself."

"Jay Talley summoned you, more specifically."

"He represents Interpol. He's the ATF liaison."

"I'm wondering why he really orchestrated your going there." She pauses to allow that chilly fear to touch my brain. It occurs to me that Jay may have manipulated me for reasons I am not sure I can bear to entertain. "Talley has many layers," Berger adds cryptically. "If Jean-Baptiste was tried here, I fear Talley would more likely be used by the defense than by the prosecution. Possibly to discredit you as a witness."

Heat crawls up my neck. My face burns. Fear rips through me like shrapnel, tearing apart any hope I have had that something like this would not happen. "Let me ask you something." My outrage is complete. It is all I can do to steady my voice. "Is there anything you don't know about my life?"

"Quite a bit."

"Why is it I feel that I'm the one about to get indicted, Ms. Berger?"

"I don't know. Why do you feel that way?"

"I'm trying not to take any of this personally. But it's getting harder by the minute."

Berger doesn't smile. Resolve turns her eyes to flint and hardens her tone. "It's going to get very personal. I highly recommend you don't take it that way. You of all people know how it works. The actual commission of a crime is incidental to the real damage its ripples do. Jean-Baptiste Chando

I silently return her stare. My mouth is dry. My heart seems to beat out of rhythm.

"It isn't fair, is it?" she says with the sharp edge of a prosecutor who knows how to dismantle human beings as completely as I do. "But then, I'm sure your patients wouldn't enjoy being naked on your table and under your knife, to have their pockets and orifices explored, if they knew. And yes, there's a hell of a lot I don't know about your life. And yes, you aren't going to like my probing. And yes, you will coop- erate if you're the person I've heard you are. And yes, goddamn it, I desperately need your help or this case is fucked to the moon."

"Because you're going to try to drag in his other bad acts, aren't you?" I am out with it. "A Molineux application."

She hesitates. Her eyes linger on me and light up for an instant, as if I have just said something that fills her with happiness or maybe a new respect. Then just as quickly, those eyes shut me out again, and she says, "I'm not sure what I'll do yet."

I don't believe her. I am the only living witness. The only one. She fully intends to suck me into it_to put every one of Chando