They were heading to Mike's house in Beach to spend spring break together when, like the couples before them, they vanished. Mike's blue van was found abandoned along the Colonial Parkway near Williamsburg, a white handkerchief tied to the antenna signaling engine trouble that did not exist when the police went over the van later. On May fifteenth a father and son out turkey hunting discovered the couples' bodies in a wooded area between Route 60 in James City County.

I remembered, once again, packing up bones to send to the Smithsonian's forensic anthropologist for one final look. Eight young people, and despite the countless hours I had spent on each one of them, I could not determine how or why they had died.

"If, God forbid, there is a next time, don't wait until the bodies turn up," I finally had instructed Marino. "Let me know the minute the car is found."

"Yo. May as well staff autopsying the cars since the bodies ain't telling us nothing," he had said, trying unsuccessfully to be funny.

"In all cases," Mrs. Harvey was saying, "doors were unlocked, keys in the ignition, there was no sign of a struggle, and it did not appear anything was stolen The MOs were basically the same."

She folded her notes and slipped them back into a pocket "You're well informed" was all I said. I didn't ask, but presumed she had gotten her staff to research the previous cases.

"My point is, you've been involved since the beginning," she said. "You examined all of the bodies. And yet, as I understand it, you don't know what killed these couples."

"That's right I don't know," I replied.

"You don't know? Or is it that you aren't saying, Dr. Scarpetta?"

Pat Harvey's career as a prosecutor in the federal system had earned her national respect if not awe. She was gutsy and aggressive, and I felt as if her porch suddenly had turned into a courtroom.

"If I knew their cause of death, I would not have signed them out as undetermined," I said calmly.