when they were back in the car, grace said, "when you told mrs. alworth you checked her phone records for international calls..."

duncan nodded. "it was a bluff."

the children were plugged back into their game boys. scott duncan called the coroner. she was waiting for them.

grace said, "we're getting closer to the answer, aren't we?"

"i think so."

"mrs. alworth might be telling the truth. i mean, as far as she knows."

"how do you figure?" he asked.

"something happened years ago. jack ran away overseas. maybe shane alworth and sheila lambert did too. your sister, for whatever reason, hung around and ended up dead."

he did not reply. his eyes were suddenly moist. there was a tremor in the corner of his mouth.

"scott?"

"she called me. geri. two days before the fire."

grace waited.

"i was running out the door. you have to understand. geri was a bit of a kook. she was always so melodramatic. she said she had to tell me something important, but i figured it could wait. i figured it was about whatever new thing she was into - aromatherapy, her new rock band, her etchings, whatever. i said i'd call her back."

he stopped, shrugged. "but i forgot."

grace wanted to say something, but nothing came to her. words of comfort would probably do more harm than good right now. she took hold of the wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror. emma and max both had their heads lowered, their thumbs working the buttons on the tiny console. she felt that overwhelmed thing coming on, that pure blast in the middle of normalcy, the bliss from the everyday.

"do you mind if we stop at the coroner's now?" duncan asked.

grace hesitated.

"it's about a mile away. just turn right at the next light."

in for a penny, grace thought. she drove. he gave directions. a minute later he pointed up ahead. "it's that office building on the corner."

the medical office seemed dominated by dentists and orthodontists. when they opened the door, there was that antiseptic smell grace always associated with a voice telling her to rinse and spit. an ophthalmology group called laser today was listed for the second floor. scott duncan pointed to the name "sally li, md." the directory said she was on the lower level.

there was no receptionist. the door chimed when they entered. the office was properly sparse. the furniture consisted of two distressed couches and one flickering lamp that wouldn't muster a price tag at a garage sale. the lone magazine was a catalogue of medical examiner tools.

an asian woman, mid-forties and exhausted, stuck her head through the door of the inner office. "hey, scott."

"hey, sally."

"who's this?"

"grace lawson," he said. "she's helping me."

"charmed," sally said. "be with you in a sec."

grace told the kids that they could keep playing their game boys. the danger of video games was that they shut the world out. the beauty of video games was that they shut the world out.

sally li opened the door. "come on in."

she wore clean surgical scrubs with high heels. a pack of marlboros was jammed into the breast pocket. the office, if you could call it that, had that early american hurricane look going for it. there were papers everywhere. they seemed to be cascading off her desk and bookshelves, almost like a waterfall. pathology textbooks were open. her desk was old and metal, something bought at an old elementary school garage sale. there were no pictures on it, nothing personal, though a really big ashtray sat front and center. magazines, lots of them, were stacked high all over the place. some of the stacks had already collapsed. sally li had not bothered to clean them up. she dropped herself in the chair behind her desk.

"just knock that stuff to the floor. sit."

grace removed the papers from the chair and sat. scott duncan did the same. sally li folded her hands and put them on her lap.

"you know, scott, that i'm not much with bedside manner."

"i know."

"the good thing is, my patients never complain."

she laughed. no one else did.

"okay, so now you see why i don't get dates." sally li picked up a pair of reading glasses and started shuffling through files. "you know how the really messy person is always so well organized? they always say something like, 'it might look like untidy but i know where everything is.' that's crap. i don't know where... wait, here it is."

sally li pulled out a manila file.

"is that my sister's autopsy?" duncan asked.

"yep."

she slid it toward him. he opened it. grace leaned in next to him. on the top were the words duncan, geri. there were photographs too. grace spotted one, a brown skeleton lying on a table. she turned away, as if she'd been caught invading someone's privacy.

sally li had her feet on the desk, her hands behind her head. "look, scott, you want me to go through the rigmarole of how amazing the science of pathology has become, or do you want me to bottom-line it?"

"skip the rigmarole."

"at the time of her death, your sister was pregnant."

duncan 's body convulsed as if she'd hit him with a cattle prod. grace did not move.

"i can't tell you how long. no more than four, five months."

"i don't understand," scott said. "they must have done an autopsy the first time around."

sally li nodded. "i'm sure."

"why didn't they see it then?"

"my guess? they did."

"but i never knew..."

"why would you? you were, what, in law school? they may have told your mom or dad. but you were just a sibling. and her pregnancy has nothing to do with the cause of death. she died in a dorm fire. the fact that she was pregnant, if they knew, would be deemed irrelevant."

scott duncan just sat there. he looked at grace and then back at sally li. "you can get dna from the fetus?"

"probably, yeah. why?"

"how long will it take you to run a paternity test?"

grace was not surprised by the question.

"six weeks."

"any way to rush it?"

"i might be able to get some kind of rejection earlier. in other words, rule people out. but i can't say for sure."

scott turned to grace. she knew what he was thinking. she said, "geri was dating shane alworth."

"you saw the picture."

she had. the way geri looked up at jack. she had not known the camera was on her. they were all still getting ready to pose. but what was captured, the look on geri duncan's face, well, it was the way you look at someone who is much more than a friend.

"let's run the test then," grace said.