Scarpetta removed the lab report from an envelope and read it as he described what Berger had told him about a woman in Palm Beach.

“Well?” he said. “Can you think of any reason?”

“What’s not here is Dr. Lester’s report of what samples she took. You said vaginal.”

“That’s what Berger told me.”

“Exactly what they were and from where? Not here. So no. I’m not going to venture a guess about the unusual results and what they might mean.”

“Well, I will. Contamination,” he said. “Although I can’t figure out how an elderly woman in a wheelchair factors into that.”

“Any chance she has a connection with Oscar Bane?”

“I’m told no. Berger called her and asked.”

His phone rang. He answered, listening for a long silence, his closed face giving away nothing.

“Don’t think it was such a great idea,” he finally spoke to whoever was on the line. “Sorry that happened … Of course I regret it in light of … No, I didn’t want to tell you for this very reason … Because, no, hold on. Listen to me for a minute. The answer is, I have … Lucy, please. Let me finish. I don’t expect you to understand, and we can’t get into it now. Because … You don’t mean that. Because … When someone has nowhere else to turn … We’ll deal with it. Later, all right? Calm down and we’ll talk later,” and he got off the phone.

“What the hell was that about?” Scarpetta asked. “What was Lucy saying? What are you sorry about, and who has nowhere else to turn?”

Benton’s face was pale but impassive, and he said, “Sometimes she has no sense of time and place, and what I don’t need right now is one of her rages.”

“Rage? Over what?”

“You know how she gets.”

“Usually when she has good reason to get that way.”

“We can’t get into it now.” He said the same thing to her that he’d said to Lucy.

“How the hell am I supposed to concentrate after overhearing a conversation like that? Get into what?”

He was silent. She never liked it when he stopped to think after she’d asked him a question.

“Gotham Gotcha,” he said, to her surprise and annoyance.

“You’re not really going to make a big deal out of that.”

“You read it?”

“I started reading it in the cab. Bryce said I needed to.”

“Did you read all of it?”

“I was interrupted by being thrown out on the street.”

“Come look.”

He typed something as she moved next to him.

“That’s odd,” Benton said, frowning.

The Gotham Gotcha website had a massive programming error or had crashed. Buildings were dark, the sky flashing red, and Rockefeller Center’s huge Christmas tree was upside down in Central Park.

Benton impatiently scooted the mouse around on its pad and clicked it repeatedly.