LITMIR.BIZ

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but Chris saw the glint of tears.

      “Hey,” he said, reaching out and squeezing her arm. “It’s okay.”

      She shook her head with surprising violence. “No, it’s not. Maybe someday it will be, but right now it’s not.”

      “I know one thing,” Chris said. “In the shape you’re in, you don’t need to be working a murder case. You need a medical leave.”

      Morse laughed strangely. “I’m on medical leave now.”

      As he looked down at her, everything suddenly came clear. Her deep fatigue, her obsessiveness, the thousand-yard stare of a shell-shocked soldier … “You’re on your own, aren’t you?”

      She shook her head again, but her chin was quivering.

      “You say I a lot more than you say we.”

      Morse bit her bottom lip, then squinted as though against bright sunlight.

      “Is that how it is?” he asked gently. “Are you alone?”

      When she looked up at him, her eyes were wet with more than rain. “Pretty much. The truth is, almost everything I’ve done beginning five weeks ago was unauthorized. They’d fire me if they knew.”

      Chris whistled long and low. “Jesus Christ.”

      She took him by the wrists and spoke with fierce conviction. “You’re my last shot, Dr. Shepard. My no-shit last shot.”

      “Last shot at what?”

      “Stopping these people. Proving what they’ve done.”

      “Look,” he said awkwardly, “if everything you’ve told me is true, why isn’t the FBI involved?”

      Frustration hardened her face. “A dozen reasons, none of them good. Murder’s a state crime, not a federal one, unless it’s a RICO case. A lot of what I have is inference and supposition, not objective evidence. But how the hell am I supposed to get evidence without any resources? The FBI is the most hidebound bureaucracy you can imagine. Everything is done by the book—unless it involves counterterrorism, of course, in which case they throw the book right out the window. But nobody’s going to nail the guys I’m after by using the Marquess of Queensberry rules.”

      Chris didn’t know what to say. Yesterday morning his life had been ticking along as usual; now he was standing on a bridge in the rain, watching a woman he barely knew fall apart.

      “If you’re acting alone, who saw Thora go into the lawyer’s office?”

      “A private detective. He used to work for my father.”

      “Jesus. What does the FBI think you’re doing right now?”

      “They think I’m in Charlotte, working a prostitution case involving illegal aliens. When they transferred me there after I was shot, I got lucky. I found an old classmate from the Academy there. He’s done a lot to cover for me. But it can’t go on much longer.”

      “Holy shit.”

      “I know I’m not making perfect sense about everything. I haven’t slept more than three hours a night in five weeks. It took me two weeks just to find the connection between my brother-in-law and the divorce lawyer. Then another week to come up with the names of all his business partners. I only came up with my list of victims a week ago. There could be a dozen more, for all I know. But then your wife walked into Rusk’s office, and that brought me to Natchez. I’ve been splitting my time between here and Jackson, where my mother is dying, and—”

      “Who’s Rusk?” Chris cut in. “The divorce lawyer?”

      “Yes. Andrew Rusk Jr. His father’s a big plaintiff’s attorney in Jackson.” More tears joined the raindrops on her cheeks. “Fuck, it’s a mess! I need your help, Doctor. I need your medical knowledge, but most of all I need you, because you’re the next victim.” Morse’s eyes locked onto his with eerie intensity. “Do you get that?”

      Chris closed his eyes. “Nothing you’ve said today even remotely proves that.”

      Her frustration finally boiled over. “Listen to me! I know you don’t like hearing it, but your wife drove two hours to Jackson to meet with Andrew Rusk, and she lied to you by not telling you about it. What do you think that adds up to?”

      “Not murder,” Chris said stubbornly. “I don’t believe that. I can’t.”

      Morse touched his arm. “That’s because you’re a doctor, not a lawyer. Every district attorney in this country has a list of people who come in on a weekly basis to plead with them to open a murder case on their loved one. The deaths are recorded as accidents, suicides, fires, a hundred things. But the parents or the children or the wives of the victims … they know the truth. It was murder. So they work their way through the system, begging for someone to take notice, to at least classify what happened as a crime. They hire detectives and spend their life savings trying to find the truth, to find justice. But they almost never do. Eventually they turn into something like ghosts. Some of them stay ghosts for the rest of their lives.” Morse looked at Chris with the furious eyes of a hardened combat soldier. “I’m no ghost, Doctor. I will not stand by and let my sister be erased for someone’s convenience—for his profit.” Her voice took on a dangerous edge. “As God is my witness, I will not do that.”

      Out of respect, Chris waited a few moments to respond. “I support what you’re doing, okay? I even admire you for it. But the difference is, you have a personal stake in this. I don’t.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, you do. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”

      “Please don’t start again.”

      “Doctor, I would do anything to get you to help me. Do you understand? I’d go over there in the bushes and pull my shorts down for you, if that’s what it would take.” Her eyes gleamed with cold fire. “But I don’t have to do that.”

      Chris didn’t like the look that had come into her face. “Why not?”

      “Because your wife is cheating on you.”

      He tried to keep the shock out of his face, but nothing could slow his pounding heart.

      “Thora’s screwing a surgeon right here in town,” Morse went on. “His name is Shane Lansing.”

      “Bullshit,” Chris said in a hoarse whisper.

      Morse’s eyes didn’t waver.

      “Do you have proof?”

      “Circumstantial evidence.”

      “Circumstantial …? I don’t want to hear it.”

      “Denial is always the first response.”

      “Shut up, goddamn it!”

      Morse’s face softened. “I know how it hurts, okay? I was engaged once, until I found out my fiancé was doing my best friend. But pride is your enemy now, Chris. You have to see things straight.”

      “I should see things straight? You’re the one spinning out Byzantine theories of mass murder. Cancer as a weapon, a newlywed planning to murder her husband … no wonder you’re out on your own!”

      Morse’s level gaze was unrelenting. “If I’m crazy, then tell me one thing. Why didn’t you call the FBI to report me yesterday?”

      He stared down at the concrete rail.

      “Why, Chris?”

      He felt the words come to him as if of their own accord. “Thora’s leaving town this week. She told me last night.”

      Morse’s mouth dropped open. “Where’s she going?”

      “Up to the Delta. A spa up in Greenwood. A famous hotel.”

      “The Alluvian?”

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