Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Do that. And I'll call you at the coroner's office if I find myself in Boston."

"I'd like that," she said.

"And Nikki, if anything does turn up on those microscopic slides you spoke about, please let me know."

Nikki picked up her fiddle and gently rubbed it down with a cloth.

"I'll do that, Bill," she said, taking her seat among the musicians, who were currently between numbers. "Since you don't have a request, I'll pick one. We've been playing some Alison Krauss. She was Kathy's idol. Mine, too."

The smart, distinguished-looking medical examiner she had never gotten to meet might have left, but few others had. People were gathered around the buffet table and scattered across the dance floor, arm in arm, waiting for the next tune. Kathy would have approved and probably would have insisted on adding a keg of Bud to the celebration of her life.

Nikki closed her eyes and let the music fill her mind and her body. A few hours ago she was a total stranger in Belinda. Now, because of Kathy and the gift of bluegrass, she was connected to the town and the forests and the mountains and the water in ways that would endure as long as she did.

It was nearing three-thirty. Nikki helped transfer Kathy's things into the Wilsons' Dodge Ram pickup. After everything was set in place, she reached into the trunk of the Saturn and brought out the case containing Kathy's exquisite mandolin.

"Here," she said, handing it over to Sam. "Chief Grimes told me you taught Kathy to play."

"Only fer a couple a weeks," he replied, taking the instrument out and cradling it in his huge hands, a soft, wistful expression on his face. "After thet she begun teachin' me."

He ran his thick-jointed thumb over the strings, which Nikki had tuned before loading the instrument into the trunk. Then he took one of the picks from the case and played a brief riff of remarkable clarity and some technical difficulty.

"That was great," Nikki said. "No wonder Kathy was so good. It's in her blood."

"Here," Sam said, placing the instrument back in its case and passing it back to her. "I want you ta have it."

"But I — "

From beyond where Sam was standing, Kit stopped her short with a definitive shake of her head.

"Sam's got arthritis pretty good," she said. "We'd both be happy knowin' Kathy's instrument is with you."

Nothing in either of Kathy's parents' faces encouraged debate.

"I may come back for a lesson on it," she said.

"You'd be welcome if'n ya did," Sam managed, his eyes moist.

Nikki set the instrument on the front seat, embraced the Wilsons, then headed down the arching church driveway toward the road north. At the outskirts of Belinda, she paused and gazed back through the rear window, down the length of Main Street. It really was a lovely town — gentle, earnest people; beautiful countryside; and an appealing pace of life. She ached to think she would never get to know the place with her friend.

She turned north, retracing her route onto the narrow, two-lane road that would bring her to Route 29. The road, snaking through dense forest, was deserted, just as it had been on the trip into town. Nikki pulled on a blue Red Sox cap to control her hair and opened the moon roof and her window. Sunlight filtered through the tops of the trees, dappling the pavement. As she rounded a tight turn, she saw a car pulled over at an angle on the narrow shoulder. A man in jeans and a yellow T lay facedown on the road. A heavyset man in a dark suit knelt beside him. Nikki's immediate assessment of the scene was that the man had struck a pedestrian. He looked up as she approached, then stood and waved to her. Nikki pulled over, scanning the ground around the victim for blood.

The man, in his thirties and obviously distressed, hurried to her window.

"I… I didn't see him. I came around the corner and there he was. Do you have a cell phone?"

"Is he breathing?"

"I… I think so."

Nikki stepped from the car and hurried to the motionless man, expecting the worst. No blood, no obvious injuries. There was a slight rise and fall of his chest — he was most definitely breathing. She had no intention of rolling him over without stabilizing his neck. She knelt down next to him, peered at his face, and reached across to check his pulse. At that instant, he rolled over, and at the same moment, the large man standing behind her grabbed her roughly by the hair and clamped a cloth over her nose and mouth. It was soaked with a substance she knew well from the lab — chloroform.

"Beddy-bye, Doc," he said.

During her one year of surgical residency before the switch to pathology, Nikki had earned the nickname "Cube" because of her absolute coolness and composure in the face of even the direst medical emergencies. She never could fully explain what seemed to be an inborn trait, but once she did check her pulse seconds after saving a patient by performing an emergency tracheotomy. Fifty-eight.

"I guess I'm just a very logical person," she once told a medical friend by way of explanation. "And a very positive one, too. Once a situation begins — critical or otherwise — all I focus on is what I have to do, almost never on what will happen if I screw up."

The whiff of chloroform gave Nikki three seconds before the obese man in the business suit clamped the cloth over her mouth. As with emergencies in the hospital, her reactions over those precious seconds seemed reflex, but were, in fact, the product of a number of rapid-fire observations and deductions.

Chloroform — take in a sharp breath and hold it!.. Quick, purposeful movements by the so-called victim — it's a trap!.. Beddy-bye, Doc — he knows who I am! This is no random — mugging. Trying to beg — to talk them out of whatever they're going to do — would be hopeless…

Three times in her life Nikki had taken self-defense courses for women. She came away from each of them frustrated, embarrassed, and a little frightened by how much she had already forgotten. But there were three recurring rules the courses had permanently impressed on her brain: Do something quickly; go for the testicles, the nose, or the knee; and as soon as possible, run. Still on her knees, her back to the massive assailant, Nikki drew her fist up in front of her eyes and jackhammered her elbow back into the man's groin with all the force she could muster. Air exploded from his lungs. He grunted, released her, stumbled backward briefly, and dropped onto his butt like a sack of grain thrown from a truck. The chloroform-soaked washcloth flew off to one side. The rail-thin man in the yellow T-shirt was scrambling to his feet, but Nikki was quicker to hers. She kicked him viciously under the chin as he was coming up, snapping his teeth together and sending him sprawling backward. Then she whirled and sprinted across the road into the forest.

"Get her, Verne!" the larger man shouted, speaking without the mountain twang Nikki had become used to over the day. "For chris-sakes, just shoot the bitch!"

"Shit, Larry, she broke my tooth. She broke my fucking tooth in half!"

Nikki was several paces inside the trees when she dared checking over her shoulder. Larry, Mr. Business Suit, was wobbly, but upright. He had shed his jacket, revealing a torso the size of a Volkswagen. Sun sparkled off his expansive white dress shirt, highlighting a shoulder holster on the left and dark sweat stains beneath his ham-hock arms. Verne, also on his feet, seemed less dazed. He had pulled a snub-nosed pistol out of the front of his waistband and was starting across the road after her, still rubbing his jaw. He fired once, but Nikki was charging ahead into the brush and had no idea if the shot was even close.

These men know who I am and are trying to kill me! her mind screamed. Move! Just move!