“And the timing of my getting these little cyber bombs that I was supposed to worry were from Lucy’s In Case of Emergency line? You must have planned this for quite a while and I’m trying to figure out the connection between your sending these to me and Chanel Gilbert’s ending up dead.”

“Her murder is Carrie’s timing. Not ours,” Benton says. “But is there a connection? Yes. It would appear that she’s known for a while who and what Chanel Gilbert was. When you consider Carrie’s previous ties to Russia and what we know she was doing over there for at least the past decade? It’s no surprise that she would have encountered some of our people from the intelligence community.”

“Were Carrie and Chanel personally involved?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I assume you pulled the trigger on making sure the Depraved Heart videos were sent to me because you knew Lucy was getting raided this morning,” I then say and Benton doesn’t answer me. “I just need to know you had nothing to do with Chanel being killed …”

“Jesus, Kay. Of course not.” He holds my stare and again says, “You need to leave it. Suffice it to say that the information in those recordings you’ve watched will derail what Erin Loria is trying to do to Lucy. And now is a good time to trust me. We shouldn’t talk about this anymore.”

“Stupid me not to figure it out.” I turn the wipers off because the rain has almost stopped. “The red flag should have been that Carrie confessed she has a blood disorder, that she might have a physical impairment. I don’t have to be a profiler to intuit that she wouldn’t want to come across as weak. Not to me. But she couldn’t resist making such a confession to you.”

“Transference. It’s not so different from what happens between a patient and a psychiatrist.”

I look at him. “How long have you had these recordings. Benton?”

“Pretty much since they were made.”

“Lucy figured it out?”

“Not at first. If you listen to them unedited Carrie refers to me by name. Not you.”

“Then Lucy has seen them too. You, Janet and Lucy are all in this together. I thought so. Okay. At least I know.”

A soupy grayness blurs lights and obliterates the tops of tall trees and buildings. Harvard Square is almost deserted and shrouded in fog.

“I think it’s safe to say that all of us need to be in this together,” Benton replies.

“The MP5K was a movie prop and the firearms reports linking it to an assassination were probably faked,” I then say. “And the videos as it turns out are propaganda …”

“They’re not,” Benton interrupts. “The footage is genuine and Carrie did hide cameras in Lucy’s dorm room.”