Later, he walked us out through the bay, where locked freezers stored the blood of enough convicted felons to fill a small city, the samples awaiting entry into the Commonwealth’s DNA data bank. Parked in front of the door was Jennifer Deighton’s car, and it looked more pathetic than I remembered, as if it had gone into a dramatic decline since the murder of its owner. Metal along the sides was creased and dented from being repeatedly struck by other car doors. Paint was rusting in spots and Scraped and gouged in others, and the vinyl top was peeling. Lucy paused to peer inside a sooty window.

“Hey, don’t touch nothing,” Marino said to her.

She looked levelly at him without a word, and all of us went outside.

Lucy drove off in my car and went straight to the house without waiting for Marino or me. When we walked in, she was already in my study with the door shut.

“I can see she’s still Miss Congeniality,” Marino said.

“You don’t win any prizes tonight, either.”

I opened the fireplace screen and added several logs.

“She’ll keep her mouth shut about what we were talking about?”

“Yes,” I said wearily. “Of course.”

“Yeah, well, I know you trust her, since you’re her aunt. But I’m not sure it was a good idea for her to hear all that, Doc.”

“I do trust Lucy. She means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. I hope the two of you will become friends. The bar is open, or I’ll be glad to put on a pot of coffee.”

“Coffee would be good.”

He sat on the edge of the hearth and got out his Swiss Army knee. While I made coffee, he trimmed his nails and tossed the shavings into the fire. I tried Susan’s number again, but there was no answer.

“I don’t think Susan took his prints,” Marino said when I set the coffee tray on the butler’s table.”

I’ve been thinking while you were in the kitchen. I know she didn’t do it while I was at the morgue that night, and I was there most of the time. So unless it was done right when the body was brought in, forget it.”

“It wasn’t done then,” I said, getting more unnerved. “Corrections was out of there in minutes. The entire scene was very distracting. It was late and everybody was tired. Susan forgot, and I was too busy with what I was doing to notice.”

“You hope she forgot.”

I reached for my coffee.

“Something’s going on with her, based on what you’ve been telling me. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her,” he said.

Right now I didn’t.

“We need to talk to Benton,” he said.