“Try proving I didn’t write it. Try making a case for any of it. Don’t focus on me because you don’t want to focus on something about yourself. I’ve left you alone about it all morning, and now it’s enough. I can’t anymore.”

Scarpetta starts clearing off a countertop, putting things away.

“I sit here listening to you talk so calmly on the phone to Benton. To Dr. Maroni. How can you do it and not choke on denial and avoidance?”

Scarpetta runs water in a steel sink near an eyewash station. She scrubs her hands as if she’s just done an autopsy instead of working inside a pristinely clean lab where nothing much goes on except photography. Lucy sees the bruises on her aunt’s wrists. She can try all she likes, but she can’t hide them.

“Are you going to protect that bastard for the rest of your life?” Lucy means Marino. “All right. Don’t answer me. Maybe the biggest difference between him and me isn’t what’s obvious. I won’t let Dr. Self drive me to doing anything fatal to myself.”

“Fatal? I hope not. I don’t like it when you use that word.” Scarpetta busies herself with repackaging the gold coin and its chain. “What are you talking about? Something fatal.”

Lucy takes off her lab coat, hangs it on the back of the shut door. “I’m not going to give her the pleasure of goading me into something that can’t be repaired. I’m not Marino.”

“We need to get these to DNA immediately.” Scarpetta tears off evidence tape to seal envelopes. “I’ll hand them over directly to keep the chain of evidence intact, and maybe in thirty-six hours? Maybe less? If there are no unforeseen complications. I don’t want the analysis to wait. I’m sure you understand why. If someone came to visit me with a gun.”

“I remember that time in Richmond. Christmas, and I was spending it with you, home from UVA, had brought a friend with me. He hit on her right in front of me.”

“Which time? He’s done that more than once.” Scarpetta has an expression on her face that Lucy’s never seen before.

Her aunt fills out paperwork, busies herself with one thing after another, anything so she doesn’t have to look at her, because she can’t. Lucy doesn’t recall a time when her aunt seemed angry and shamed. Maybe angry but never shamed, and Lucy’s bad feeling gets worse.