It was also significant that Benton’s briefcase had been found inside his hotel room, when I knew it had accompanied him earlier at the morgue. Clearly, he had returned to his room some time after leaving the Lehigh fire scene. Where he had gone after that and why remained an enigma. I read more notes about Kellie Shephard’s murder. Benton had emphasized overkill, frenzied, and disorganized. He had jotted, lost control and victim response not according to plan. Ruination of ritual.Wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Rage. Will kill again soon.

I snapped shut the briefcase and left it on the bed as my heart ached. I walked out of the bedroom, turned off the light, and shut the door, knowing that the next time I entered it would be to clean out Benton’s closet and drawers, and somehow decide to live with his resounding absence. I quietly checked on Lucy, finding her asleep, her pistol on the table by her bed. My restless wanderings took me to the foyer, where I turned off the alarm long enough to snatch the paper off the porch. I went into the kitchen to make coffee. By seven-thirty I was ready to leave for the office, and Lucy had not stirred. I quietly entered her room again, and the sun glowed faintly around the windowshade, touching her face with soft light.

“Lucy?” I softly touched her shoulder.

She jerked awake, sitting half up.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“I need to get up, too.”

She threw back the covers.

“Want to have a cup of coffee with me?” I asked.

“Sure.”

She lowered her feet to the floor.

“You should eat something,” I said.

She had slept in running shorts and a T-shirt, and she followed me with the silence of a cat.

“How about some cereal?” I said as I got a coffee mug out of a cupboard.

She said nothing but simply watched me as I opened the tin of homemade granola that Benton had eaten most mornings with fresh banana or berries. Just the toasty aroma of it was enough to crush me again, and my throat seemed to close and my stomach furled. I stood helplessly for a long moment, unable to lift out the scoop or reach for a bowl or do the smallest thing.

“Don’t, Aunt Kay,” said Lucy, who knew exactly what was happening. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

My hands trembled as I clamped the top back on the tin.

“I don’t know how you’re going to stay here,” she said.

She poured her own coffee.

“This is where I live, Lucy.”

I opened the refrigerator and handed her the carton of milk.

“Where’s his car?” she asked, whitening her coffee.

“The airport at Hilton Head, I guess. He flew straight to New York from there.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

“I don’t know.”

I got increasingly upset.