Her eyes are dark and cold as they bore into the camera. “Sexist, vulgar names and snipes that the FBI didn’t think Carrie overheard. But she did, and her upbringing had prepared her well for not reacting to taunts or retaliating or doing anything that gave the enemy any power.

“Punishment isn’t punishment if you don’t feel punished, if you don’t experience the suffering that’s intended. It’s all about perception. It’s all about the way you react to something and that reaction is the real weapon. The weapon is what injures, and in your case I’m banking on you being injured by your own self, by your own reactions because you’ve yet to learn a lesson no one had to teach me: If you feel no pain and show no injury then there was no weapon, only a weak attempt …”

Her mellow, pleasant voice with its subtle Virginia lilt suddenly stops and the frame goes black. It’s the same as before. The link is disabled. Instantly it’s gone like the first one.

JILL DONOGHUE is unavailable, and I insist that her secretary interrupt her. I don’t give orders unless I mean it, and right now I feel like an engine about to overtorque. I know I don’t sound particularly nice but I can’t help it.

“I’m sorry Doctor Scarpetta. But it’s a deposition,” the secretary tries to plead with me. “They’re supposed to break at noon.”

“Noon won’t work. I need her now and I’m very sorry. I’m sure whatever she’s doing is important. But it’s not as important as this. Please get her for me,” I reply, and I think about patience, about whether I’m a patient person because I certainly don’t sound like it.

I don’t for a very good reason, I decide. Not this morning, and Carrie knew what she was doing. She’s giving me clues, and as much as I can’t stand to think about how manipulated I feel it would be reckless and foolish to wear blinders. She’s made it clear that everything is about timing. Therefore it stands to reason that the timing of the texts landing in my phone isn’t random.

I wonder if she’s spying even as I stand in Lucy’s rock garden, the sun moving in and out of white clouds that are ruffled like a washboard underneath, the tops of them building vertically. The storm is coming, a whopper summer thunder cell and I smell its ozone approach as I begin to wander well beyond Lucy’s outdoor sanctuary, thick green grass springy beneath my boots. I move into the partial shade of a dogwood tree, waiting for my pulse to slow down. The Muzak on Donoghue’s office line is awful and I feel a flare of irritation. My face feels angry hot.