First Daughter

Molly turned. "Bye, Daddy." She waved and was off out the front door.

Schiltz sighed as he flapped a folded copy of today's Washington Post. "Speaking of Rick, I was just underscoring to Molly how religion and adherence to God's commandments will protect her against the wages of sin, which these days are all too evident. Senator George is the object lesson du jour. I suppose you heard that august Democrat has been exposed as an adulterer."

"Frankly, I haven't had time for Beltway gossip."

"Is that why I don't see you anymore? How long has it been?"

"Sorry about that, Egon."

Schiltz grunted as he slipped the paper into his briefcase. He nodded at the plate Jack was holding aloft. "Is that my floating island?"

"Not exactly." Jack placed the plate on the table in front of the ME.

Schiltz redirected his attention from Jack's face to the severed human hand on the dessert plate. "Very fu

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. Your presence is needed elsewhere."

Schiltz glanced at Jack. Carefully, he placed the plate back down on the immaculate linen tablecloth. Not even a crumb of roll marred its starched white surface. The same could be said, in terms of emotion, for Schiltz's face. Then he broke out into peals of laughter. "You dog, you," he said, wiping his eyes. He stood up to briefly embrace his friend. "I've missed you, buddy."

"Back atcha, Slim." Jack disentangled himself. "But honestly, I need your help. Now."

"Slow down. I haven't laid eyes on you for months." Schiltz gestured for Jack to sit on the chair vacated by his daughter.

"No time, Egon."

"'No time to say hello, good-bye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!' " Schiltz quoted the White Rabbit in Bugs Bu

"There's always time," he continued, sobering. "Give the hysteria of logic a rest."

"Logic is all I have, Egon."

"That's sad, Jack. Truly." He took a Cohiba Corona Especial out of his breast pocket, offered it to Jack, who refused. "I would have thought Emma's tragic death would have taught you the futility of a logic-based life."

Jack felt sweat break out at the back of his neck. His face was burning, and there was the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he'd had when he'd seen Emma in Saigon Road. In order to steady himself, he turned the chair around, pushed aside his holstered Glock G36, sat straddling the seat. "And you think faith is better."

"I know it's better." Schiltz sat back, lit the cigar, turning it slowly, lovingly between his thumb and first two fingers as he took his first tentative puffs. "Logic stems from the mind of man, therefore it's limited, it's flawed. Faith gives you hope, keeps you from despair. Faith is what picks you up and ensures you keep going. Logic keeps you lying facedown in the muck at your feet." He waved the gray end of the cigar. "Case in point: I'm certain you're convinced that Emma's death was senseless."

Jack gripped the table edge with both hands.

"I don't. She left us for a reason, Jack. A reason only God can know. I believe that with all my heart and soul, because I have faith."

Say what you want about Schiltz, he knew how to hunt and he smoked only the finest cigars. These attributes were sometimes all that kept Jack from strangling him.

"Jack, I know how much you're hurting."

"And you're not? You knew Emma as well as I know Molly. We had cookouts together, went camping in the Smokies, hiked the Blue Ridge together."

"Of course I grieve for her. The difference is that I'm able to put her death into a larger context."

"Egon, I need to make sense of it," Jack said almost desperately.

"A quixotic desire, my friend. The help you need you will find only in faith."

"Where you see faith, I see doubt, confusion, chaos. Situation normal, all fucked up."

The ME shook his head. "I'm saying this as a friend: It's time to stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Jack reflexively blocked that advice by going on the offensive. "So what is faith, exactly, Egon? I've never quite been able to get a handle on it."

Schiltz rolled ash into a cut-glass ashtray. "If you insist on reducing it to its basic elements, it's the sure and simple knowledge that there's something more out there, something greater than yourself, than mankind: a grand plan, a design that can't be comprehended by you or by any other human being, because it is numinous, it is God's design, something only He can fathom."

"What about the angels? Can they fathom God's plan?"

Schiltz expelled a cloud of highly aromatic smoke. "You see how logic binds you to the earth, Jack? It ensures you dismiss with a joke anything you can't understand."

"Like angels on unicycles, for instance."

"Yes, Jack." Egon refused to rise to the joke. "Just like angels on unicycles."

"Then Emma, up in heaven, must know God's plan for her."

"Certainly."

"She's content then."

Schiltz's eyes narrowed slightly behind the aromatic blue smoke. "All who are in heaven are content."

"Says who?"

"We have the Word of God."

"In a book written by men."

Egon gave Jack a look he might have reserved for the devil. "I suppose there's only one way to get rid of you tonight," he sighed.

WHAT DO you want me to tell you about the hand?"

"Whether or not it belongs to Alli Carson."

That got Schiltz's attention. His white eyebrows shot up, cartoon-style. "The president-elect's daughter?"

"The same."

Jack and Schiltz faced each other in the autopsy room, lights low to cut down on the glare from all the stainless steel and tile.

Schiltz snapped on rubber gloves, placed a magnifying lens over his right eye. Then he adjusted a spotlight, the beam illuminating the hand. He bent over, his shoulders rolled forward, a hunchback in his ill-lit garret beside the stone belfry. "Waterlogged as hell," he said gloomily, "so you can forget about anything like DNA testing." His finger-tips moved the hand. "Interesting."

"What is?" Jack prompted.

"The hand was sawn off, expertly."

"With a chain saw?"

"That would be a logical assumption." Was there a touch of irony in his voice? He held up the hand, stump first. "But the markings indicate otherwise. Something rotary, certainly. But delicate." He shrugged. "My best guess would be a medical saw."

Jack leaned in. The stench of formaldehyde and acetone was nauseating. "We looking at a surgeon as the perp?"

"Possibly."

"Well, that narrows it down to a couple hundred million."

"Amusing." Schiltz glanced up. "Here's what I do know: This was done with a sure hand, no remorse in the cut, no hesitation whatsoever. Plus, the immersion in water has made the pruning permanent. He's betting we won't be able to get fingerprints to make an ID."

"So-what? — the perp's done this sort of thing before?"

"Uh-huh."

Jack held up the gold-and-platinum ring in its plastic evidence bag. "I took this off the third finger. It belongs to Alli Carson."

"Which doesn't speak to her state of health." Seeing Jack blanch, he hastened to add, "All it means is your perp has access to her." Schiltz used a dental pick to scrape under and around the nails, one at a time. "Look." Holding aloft the implement so that the working end was directly in the light, he said, "What do you see here?"

"Something pink," Jack said.

"And shiny." Schiltz put the end of the pick close to his eye. "This is undoubtedly nail polish. Plus, the nails are newly cut, so my guess is that for whatever reason-"

"The perp cut this girl's nails and removed the polish," Jack finished for him. He stood up. "Alli Carson never wore polish; her nails were square-cut, like a boy's. This isn't her hand."