BY THE TIME most people were turning on the morning news, we had descriptions of a "cute brunette in a suit" (the night doorman) who "looked like she was totally into him" (their waiter at Masa's) and had accompanied Bengosian back to his room last night.

She was either the killer or an accomplice who had let the killer in. A different girl from the one we were seeking as the au pair.

I looked up from the papers on my desk and saw Claire. "Got a second, Lindsay?"

Claire always maintained an upbeat side, even in the grimmest of cases, but it was clear from her expression that she didn't like what she had found. "I owe you a couple of hours sleep," I said.

Her worried eyes said, No, you don't.

"I've been doing this work ten years." Claire sank into the chair across my desk and shook her head. "I've never seen the inside of a body that looked like that."

"I'm listening," I said, leaning forward.

"I don't even know what to call it," she said. "It was like jelly in there. Total vascular and pulmonary collapse. Hemor-rhaging all through the gastrointestinal tract. Massive sple-netic and renal necrosis... Degradation, Lindsay," she said, seeing my eyes glaze.

I shrugged. "We talking some kind of poison, Claire?"

"Yeah, but with a toxicity that's way beyond anything I've seen before. I skimmed through a few journals. I once worked on this child who had a similar vascular collapse and edema; we tied it to a rare adverse reaction to, of all things, castor oil. So I'm thinking castor beans. Not ............