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don’t know,” said Proffit. If Serna had been one of their corporate lawyers, even one of their stables of criminal trial lawyers, Proffit wouldn’t have been so concerned. It was the nature of her work that scared him, and her ambition. She was in a position to do real damage both to himself and the firm. They were one and the same as far as Proffit was concerned. From what he could see, she was already in the process of doing that damage when she died.
    “Who is her next of kin?” he asked.
    Fischer shook his head, shrugged a shoulder.
    “Well, goddamn it, find out! See if she had a company life insurance policy. If so, there should be a named beneficiary. That may be it. Did she have any other property besides the place in Georgetown? A vacation hideaway where she may have stored documents?”
    Again Fischer didn’t know. But by now he was taking notes on Post-it slips from the little square holder on Proffit’s desk.
    “Did she own or rent the place in Georgetown?”
    “Owned. I think.”
    “Well, find out!” said Proffit. “We don’t want some nosy landlord traipsing through the place looking at things until we’ve had a chance to do it ourselves. Did she have anybody else in the firm she trusted, any associates?”
    “She wanted to hire an assistant. You said no.”
    “I know what I said. Was there anybody in the office she confided in?”
    “I didn’t follow her into the ladies’ room, if that’s what you mean. Vicki Preebles was her secretary. I assume if she trusted anybody it would have been her.”
    “Was Preebles upset by the news? Serna’s death, I mean?”
    “Sure. Wouldn’t you be? She wanted to stay and help out, but I told her to take a couple days off. I felt it was the thing to do,” said Fischer. “We can wait a respectful period and then debrief her. See what Serna may have told her. If anybody knows anything, I suspect it’s her.”
    “Hmmm.”
    “And I changed the locks on Serna’s office just like you said.”
    “Good.” Proffit thought to himself that if Cyril Fischer ever got disbarred, perhaps he could make a living as a locksmith.

FOUR
    H er principal value rested not in her ability to kill her victims, though she was proficient in this. Her usefulness flowed from her knowledge of forensic science and, in particular, trace evidence, hair and fibers, minute particles of dirt, pollen, and other microscopic bits of information that could compromise a job. Sometimes she worked alone and sometimes with others to make sure they made no mistakes and left no telltale signs behind.
    You could call her a hired mercenary, but of a special kind. She seldom, if ever, worked in a war zone; almost always in developed countries, Western Europe, the first world nations of Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas.
    Governments and large corporations hired her because they knew her skills and could afford the price of her services. She spoke several languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French, a smattering of German along with some Russian. Her English, though fluent, if you listened closely, carried a hint of what sounded like a Spanish trill, so that you might mistake her background as Latin American if you didn’t know better.
    Ana Agirre was Basque, born in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Her great-grandfather died in the bombing of Guernica by the Germans in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, a travesty made famous by Picasso’s painting of the same name. Both her father and her mother worked in the Basque underground before the end of the Franco regime and then afterward, part of the ETA, the Basque separatist movement. Her mother died smuggling explosives during an ETA mission in Barcelona. Her father was taken prisoner. She never saw him again. At the time Ana was eight.
    Raised by her maternal grandmother, she excelled in school, particularly in science. She graduated from secondary school a year ahead of her classmates. Given her family background and the fear