As I listen I’m finding it difficult to kneel in the grass, to concentrate. I’m packing up my scene case, feeling a little drunk, and I wonder what questions Benton was asking Barclay. What were they discussing as the presumptuous investigator escorted him here? I slam down the lid of what’s nothing more than a big black toolbox.

“Bet you don’t know many agents who started out as police investigators? Because I would think that would be a big draw …”

“You need to go,” Benton snaps at Barclay.

And heavy plastic clasps snap. And my heart lurches. I feel strangely shaky and emotional.

Keep breathing. Keep moving.

SINCE I SAW BENTON last he’s taken off his suit jacket and his tie. The sleeves of his white shirt are folded up to his elbows, and the pistol holstered on his hip is exposed.

He didn’t drop by to say there’s a lovely bottle of French Chablis waiting at home. He’s here on official Bureau business, and I think of Lucy as my pulse hammers. I ask if she’s okay and feel a stab of nausea.

“She’s fine.” Benton watches me from just inside the tent, near the equipment cases.

I’m getting increasingly agitated. Hostility smolders and sparks like an aggravated dragon while I act like everything is normal.

“We need to talk, Kay.”

But I’m wondering how the hell he knows Lucy is fine unless he’s been in communication with her recently. And if so, why? Don’t gild the lily. Don’t sugarcoat. Just tell me what I don’t want to hear, tell the damn truth for once.

“Is she still working in the truck?” I hear myself ask even as I know the answer.

“No.” Benton stares at me, and Lucy wouldn’t still be here.

That was hours ago when we talked inside the air-conditioning, and the stench is putrid and pervasive now. I’m insulated in it like a foul rotting gauze that I taste in the back of my throat as the dragon salivates, swallowing hard.

For God’s sake, don’t throw up.

I’d never live it down, and I watch Investigator Barclay vanish through the tent flap, what’s become the wormhole to a parallel universe. He won’t go far. No doubt he’ll hover within earshot as he’s done most of the time Marino and I have been working in isolation, conversing in private, speculating secretly, gossiping just between the two of us, not realizing some asshole wannabe was out there listening.