Cynthia Powski, 'Cream' of Vivid Digital fame, had disappeared in the parking lot of her luxury condominium complex after visiting 'friends'. No witnesses. The lot security cameras had been knocked out by supposed vandals the previous night. They knew she made it to the parking lot—or at least they thought they knew—because her Porsche was parked the way she always parked it, kitty-corner across two spots. They knew she never made it to her condo because of her boyfriend, whom the Escondido authorities had considered their prime suspect until the BD arrived in Quantico.

Though Thomas listened patiently, and even asked several pointed questions, dozens of worries and recriminations bubbled through his thoughts. After teaching for so many years, he'd found he could listen to, even answer, his students' questions while remaining entirely distracted. He never realized just how functionally distracted he could be until his divorce. How many anti-Nora zingers had he hatched while explaining this or that staple psychological concept to his class?

Special Agent Samantha Logan talked and he listened, all the while wracking his brains.

Why lie?

To protect Neil?

But why? Not only had the guy flipped his lid, he'd been screwing Nora. Screwing him. Why protect Neil now?

Back in Princeton, he and Neil had once rented The Exorcist as a lark, expecting to be more amused than anything else. The movie had scared them shitless, even though neither believed in God, demons—or even priests for that matter. After smoking several bowls contemplating the contradiction, they came up with what they called the 'Exorcist Effect', the disconnect between knowing and conditioning. They knew demonic possession was bullshit, but they had been conditioned to be terrified—habitualized.

So much of therapeutic psychology, Thomas would later discover, involved resisting the Exorcist Effect.

So much of what it meant to be human.

My closest friend …

He protected Neil out of habit. Goddamn habit.

And yet, even after he realized this, he continued listening to Sam rattle off fact after fact. Amiable. Attentive. Once, when a pinch in traffic forced her to fall silent, he fairly screamed at himself to come clean. Just tell her! he inwardly cried. Just say, 'Samantha, I lied… Your SUB just happened to pop by last night'

Instead he said, 'Traffic's a bitch.'

Somehow they had found their way to the West Side Highway. As they paced the Hudson River, Thomas stared at the far shore, watched Jersey sulk beneath a senescent sun. It seemed impossible that mere centuries ago that shore marked the limit of literate civilization. The limit of knowledge. He could see them, the Dutch and then the English, wandering into the emerald deeps, between trees like temple pillars, across a continental Karnak.

How many had gone mad? How many, like Neil, had repudiated everything they had known, had adopted first the ways and then the horrors of what lay beyond knowledge?

Neil as Kurtz, he thought wryly. Me as Marlowe…

How flattering was that?