“He was drunk,” Scarpetta says. “Now we find out he’s probably on a testosterone supplement that could make him very aggressive, depending on how much he’s using, and he doesn’t know the meaning of moderation. His excesses. Too much. Too much. You’re right, his drinking this past week, and his smoking. He’s never good with boundaries, but now there are none. Well, I suppose it’s all been leading up to this.”

“All been leading up to this? After all these years, your relationship has been leading up to his sexually assaulting you?”

“I’ve never seen him like that. He was someone I didn’t know. So aggressive and angry, completely out of control. Maybe we should be more worried about him than me.”

“Don’t start.”

“Please try to understand.”

“I’ll understand better when you tell me what he did.” Lucy’s voice is flat, the way she sounds when she’s capable of anything. “What did he do? The more you dodge it, the more I want to punish him, and the worse it will be when I do. And you know enough to take me seriously, Aunt Kay.”

“He went only so far then stopped and started crying,” Scarpetta says.

“How far is ‘only so far’?”

“I can’t talk about this.”

“Really? And if you’d called the police? They’d demand details. You know how it goes. Violated once. Then violated again when you tell all and some cop starts imagining it happening, and secretly gets off on it. These perverts who go from courtroom to courtroom looking for rape cases so they can sit in the back and listen to all the details.”

“Why are you going off on this tangent? It has nothing to do with me.”

“What do you think would have happened had you called the police and Marino were charged with sexual battery? At the very least? You’d end up in court, and God knows what a spectator sport that would be. People listening to all the details, imagining all of it, as if, in a sense, you were undressed in public, viewed as a sexual object, degraded. The great Dr. Kay Scarpetta naked and manhandled for all the world to see.”

“It didn’t go that far.”

“Really? Open your shirt. What are you hiding? I can see abrasions on your neck.” Lucy reaches for Scarpetta’s shirt, starts on the top button.

Scarpetta pushes her hands away. “You’re not a forensic nurse, and I’ve heard enough. Don’t make me angry with you.”

Lucy’s own anger begins to work its way to the surface. She feels it in her heart, in her feet, in her hands. “I’ll take care of this,” she says.