“I can’t give you the key.” He’s stopped eating. “He ever found out…”

“I need the key for ten minutes, fifteen at the most. He’ll never find out, I promise.”

“Maybe you could start her up while you’re at it. No harm in it.” He rips open a packet of ketchup.

“Will do.”

She goes out a back door and finds the Porsche in a secluded corner of the parking lot. She turns on the engine and opens the glove box to check the registration. The Carrera is a 2006 and registered to Lupano. She turns on the GPS, checks the history of the stored destinations, and writes them down.

The rapid respiration of the magnet keeping cool.

Inside the MRI suite, Benton looks through glass at Dr. Self’s sheet-draped feet. She’s on a sliding table inside the bore of the fourteen-ton magnet, her chin taped down to remind her not to move her head, which is against a coil that will receive the radio frequency pulses necessary to image her brain. Over her ears is a set of gradient-damping headphones. Through them, a little later, when the functional imaging starts, she’ll hear the audiotape of her mother’s voice.

“So far, so good,” he says to Dr. Susan Lane. “Except for her fun and games. I’m awfully sorry she’s kept everybody waiting.” To the tech: “Josh? How about you? Awake?”

“Can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” Josh says from his console. “My little girl’s been throwing up all day. Ask my wife how much she’d like to kill me right now.”

“Never known one person to bring such happiness into the world.” Benton means Dr. Self, the eye of the storm. He looks through glass at her feet, catches a glimpse of stockings. “She’s wearing hose?”

“You’re lucky she’s wearing anything. When I brought her in, she insisted on taking everything off,” Dr. Lane says.

“I’m not surprised.” He’s careful. Although Dr. Self can’t hear them unless they use the intercom, she can see them. “Manic as hell. Has been since she got here. Been a productive stay. Ask her. She’s as sane as a judge.”

“I did ask her about anything metal, asked if she had on an underwire bra,” Dr. Lane says. “Told her the scanner has a magnetic pull sixty thousand times greater than the earth’s and nothing ferrous can be near it, and bra burning would have a different meaning if there was underwire and she didn’t tell us. She said she did, was quite proud of the fact, and went on and on about the—ah-hmmm—burden of having large breasts. Of course, I told her she had to take off the bra, and she said she preferred to take off everything and asked for a johnny.”

“I rest my case.”