I sealed up the bag, then the bottle, both of which would fit easily in my oversize purse.

Of course, I now confronted the matter of the twenty-one empty glass vials.

I could wash them. Run them through my dishwasher, then remove them to my office. Glass vials in a psychiatrist’s office, not too strange. But would a trace of the formaldehyde remain in the rubber stopper? Not to mention my fingerprints . . .

Gallon-size freezer bag this time. Two of them. I removed the rubber stoppers, then double-bagged the glass vials. Then got out a stainless steel meat mallet and proceeded to pulverize the contents of the freezer bags, reducing the empty tubes to glass fragments small enough to flush down a toilet, at another stop along the routine errands/evidence disposal field trip.

The gallon-size bag also went into my purse, as well as a bag of rubber stoppers, to be tossed in a random Dumpster. The box was easy. It was, after all, only a shoe box. I removed the silk scrap, folded it up and placed it in my closet. The foam cushion I threw away. The box I broke down for deposit in my apartment building’s recycling center.

If any of those three items were traced back to me, what did it matter? Yes, Officer, I recognize that empty box. Used to have it in my closet. But I recently tidied up the place, throwing it away. End of story.

Done at last, I stripped off the latex gloves and placed them in my purse. I would throw them away as well, but at a separate location. Like a trail of guilty bread crumbs, scattered across the greater Boston area.

Then I washed my hands. Again and again and again. And I watched my fingers tremble and I told myself it was okay, I was doing the right thing, I did not have to be this person; I would not be this person.

Anyone could change. Even the deepest compulsion could be overcome with time and effort.

Then I walked into my bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed and cried.

Because my collection was gone and I didn’t know what would ever fill me up, get me through the bad nights, quite like that again.

I was alone.

A baby, strapped into a car seat and trapped in a dark closet, the entire world reduced to nothing but a thin sliver of ominous light . . .

Nothing to see but plenty to hear.

Understanding little but absorbing all, like little hobgoblins now stuck in the back of my mind.

Please, Harry, not the baby.

Suddenly . . . I scrambled up off the edge of my bed. Raced into my home office. Knocking over a book, yanking open the filing cabinet, searching, searching, searching.