“An unusual well-educated group with no common sense, no street smarts, and by the time you see this …” She ends the sentence abruptly, awkwardly, and there’s no question the recording has been edited. “I wonder how many of them will be dead. Lucy and I used to make predictions. You see she’d gathered intelligence on every resident on her floor. But she didn’t call anyone by name. She didn’t speak to anyone in passing, and her reserve was correctly interpreted as entitlement and arrogance. Lucy was spoiled. Her Auntie Kay had managed to spoil her rotten.”

Carrie refers to you as if she’s talking to someone else.

She turns a page in her script. “A teenaged civilian with special gifts and special connections, Lucy enjoyed a special status at the FBI Academy that was on a par with a protected witness, a visiting chief of police, an agency director, a secretary-general or in other words a very important person, which Lucy is by merit of her associations and not her accomplishments.

“Her Auntie Kay mandated up front that during her precious niece’s internship and until she turned twenty-one she would have her own room with a bath and a view and a curfew. She would have constant supervision, and she did ostensibly and officially. It was spelled out in her file, a thin unimportant file as I film this. But with time it likely would get much bigger as the federal government wises up to Lucy Farinelli and realizes she must be stopped.”

Where is this file? The question floats up in my mind like a bubble in a cartoon strip. Benton should know.

“But on this bright July afternoon in 1997”—Carrie walks and talks somberly, pensively like the host of a true crime show—“the Academy faculty and staff had no idea that young Lucy’s chaperone, yours truly, was a frequent sleepover and not the harmless eccentric geek who passed her extensive background check, interviews, and a polygraph with flying colors before she was hired to overhaul the FBI’s computer and case management system.

“Even the psychological profilers in the Behavioral Science Unit including their legendary chief somehow missed that I am a psychopath.” She says legendary chief weirdly. “Just as my father was and his father before him.” Her eyes are cobalt in the camera. “I’m actually quite rare. Less than one percent of the female population is psychopathic. And you know the evolutionary purpose of psychopathy now don’t you? We’re the chosen ones who will survive.

“Remember that when you think I’m gone. And oops! I have to stop reading my wonderful little story for now. We have company.”