'It's Christmas.'

'They're waiting for me at the morgue.'

'I'm sorry to hear it,' he mumbled into the pillow. 'I didn't know you felt that bad.'

4

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.