"Pay you back? For what?" Scarpetta inquires, and she has a reason for all these questions.

"A long story. Been going on more than a year, from bad to worse, not that it was ever all that good."

"About as long as these women have been disappearing from your area." Scarpetta finally gets to her point. "I want to know how you're handling that, because it will get you if you let it. When you least expect it. It's not escaped my notice that you haven't brought up the cases once, not once, not while I've been here. Ten women in fourteen months. Vanished, from their homes, vehicles, parking lots, all in the Baton Rouge area. Presumed dead. I can assure you they are. I can assure you they were murdered by the same person, who is shrewd-very shrewd. Intelligent and experienced enough to gain trust, then abduct, then dispose of the bodies. He's killed before, and he'll kill again. The latest disappearance was just four days ago-in Zachary. That makes two cases in Zachary, the first one several months ago. So you're going home to that, Nic. Serial murders. Ten of them."

"Not ten. Just the two in Zachary. I'm not on the task force," Nic replies with restrained resentment. "I don't run with the big boys. They don't need help from little country cops like me, at least that's the way the U.S. Attorney looks at it."

"What's the U.S. Attorney got to do with it?" Scarpetta asks. "These cases aren't the jurisdiction of the feds."

"Weldon Winn's not only an egotistical asshole, but he's stupid. Nothing worse than someone who's stupid and arrogant and has power. The cases are high-profile, all over the news. He wants to be part of them, maybe end up a federal judge or senator someday.

"And you're right. I know what I'm going home to, but all I can do is work the two disappearances we've had in Zachary, even if I know damn well they're connected to the other eight."

"Interesting the abductions are now happening farther north of Baton Rouge," Scarpetta says. "He may be finding his earlier killing field too risky."