Judge Chase’s duty station would be the Eastern District of Virginia, where he will hold his seat until he resigns, dies or is removed from office. He can’t pick up and relocate to Massachusetts even though his wife did. At least I can be grateful for that.

“Are you certain of the year Erin Loria started with the FBI?” I ask Lucy. “Nineteen-ninety-seven? As in the year you were there?”

“Not the only year I was there,” she says as I think about Erin Loria being married to a federal official who was appointed by the White House.

That’s not good. It’s not good at all. She’ll claim that he has no more influence in her cases than Benton has in mine. She’ll swear His Honor has no professional involvement with her, that both of them stay completely within the legal boundaries and guidelines. Of course it isn’t true. It never is.

“I realize you were at Quantico before and after 1997,” I’m commenting to Lucy as my thoughts continue to slam into each other like billiard balls. “That once you got started with the FBI you never really left.”

“Until they ran me out of Dodge,” she says as if it’s nothing that for all practical intents and purposes she was fired. “Even before I was an agent I was there summers, holidays, most weekends, every spare minute I had. You probably remember. I’d start arranging my classes so I could leave Charlottesville early Thursday morning and not come back until late Sunday. I was at Quantico more than I was in college.”

“Jesus,” Marino mutters. “Erin Loria was there when you were. And it’s not exactly a big place.”

“That’s right,” Lucy says.

“Another blast from the past just like Carrie. What did you step in during that informative time in your life, huh? Some Super Glue–like dog shit that you can’t clean off?”

He means formative, but Lucy and I ignore it. We don’t crack a smile. Not now as we perch on our hard, unforgiving seats in Lucy’s place of meditation, her church, her Stonehenge.

“You step in some special brand of it?” he’s saying. “And you not only still have it on your damn shoes but you’re tracking it everywhere for the rest of us to step in.”

“Which session?” I can’t believe this is happening.

“We overlapped,” she says. “Erin was at Quantico while I was an intern at ERF, while Carrie was there, yes. That’s true. And they were familiar with each other.”

“How familiar?” I ask it blandly.

“Familiar enough.” Lucy doesn’t flinch. “They got pretty friendly.”