“This is kind of strange. It’s actually a box.” Anger hardens his tone as he carefully picks it up and the tail moves, the eyes staring at me. “A heavy one, must be solid silver. Except I can’t open it because it’s glued shut. I can smell the glue so it wasn’t applied all that long ago. Maybe while we were gone. Maybe while the clocks were being wound. I don’t hear anything loose inside.” As he shakes it a little. “So here’s what I have to say, Doc. What happened to Chanel Gilbert is personal. It’s sexual. This isn’t about a burglary or some other crime that got out of control and ended in murder. It’s obvious what we’ve got is sick and demented, and we’re being jerked around and we know by who. Of course that’s just me talking. I’m not that kind of expert. I’m not Benton.”

I’ve paused by the fireplace to look at the clocks, at the bookcases filled with leather-bound books on either side of the wide stone hearth. “It’s all about power,” I tell him as he squats by the scene case and begins pulling out trays. “Everything with her is about power. That’s what she loves. It’s what sexually excites and drives her. You don’t have to be a profiler to figure that out.”

Marino finds a small plastic bottle labeled ACETONE and returns to the small table next to the cherry sofa with black leather cushions. He picks up the silver fish box in his gloved hands.

“Let’s hope it’s not a bomb.” He’s almost joking. “If it is then I’ll just kiss my ass good-bye.” He finds camera equipment.

“And mine by the way.”

“Someone glued the lid on and I don’t think it was all that long ago. I want to know why.” He starts taking photographs of the box. “The other alternative is to bring in the bomb squad. Maybe Amanda Gilbert would like to watch. Let’s see what else we can do to put her on the friggin’ warpath.”

He digs in the scene cases for fingerprint powder and brushes. I peruse old books as he checks the silver box for latent prints, finding not so much as a smudge. He swabs for DNA and he’s getting angrier and more aggressive. He’s feeling manipulated and mocked. I know when the pressure is building inside Marino, and he’s about to blow.

“I mean you think it’s her.” He angrily rips open a packet of swabs. “By now you don’t have any second thoughts.” It’s not a question. He’s telling me as if there can be no doubt. And there isn’t. We know.

“Yes,” I reply.

“And you’ve been thinking it all day.”