“I won’t tell you not to let it get to you.”

“I believe you just told me by not telling me. What happened was never in the news. I never reported it. It’s not accurate. This is slander. I’ll sue.”

“Sue whom? An anonymous piece of shit in cyberspace?”

“Lucy could find out who.”

“Speaking of, I’m not sure it’s coincidental the site crashed,” he said. “That’s probably the best remedy. Maybe it will stay crashed forever.”

“Did you ask her to crash the site?”

“You just heard me on the phone with her. Of course not. But you know her, as do I. Sure as hell is something she’d do, and much more effective than a lawsuit. There’s no slander. You can’t prove that what this person’s written is a lie. You can’t prove what happened. And what didn’t.”

“You say that as if you don’t believe what I’ve told you.”

“Kay.” He met her eyes. “Let’s don’t turn this into a fight between us. What you need to brace yourself for, obviously, is the exposure. The public didn’t know, and now it does, and you’re going to be asked. Same thing with this… .” He read some more. “This other bullshit. Parochial school. Sister Polly. That’s a story I’m not familiar with.”

Scarpetta barely read it, didn’t need to, and she replied, “There’s no Sister Polly, and what was described didn’t happen, not like that. It was a different nun, and there certainly was no salacious whipping in the bathroom.”

“But some truth.”

“Yes. Miami, the scholarship to parochial school. And my father’s protracted, terminal illness.”

“And his grocery store. Did the other girls in school call you a Florida cracker?”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Benton.”

“I’m trying to determine what’s true and who would know it. What’s already out there? Any of this?”

“You know what’s out there. And no. None of this, true or false, is out there. I don’t know where the information came from.”

He said, “I’m not as concerned about what’s false. I want to know what’s out there that’s true, and if there’s a publicized source for what’s in these columns. Because if there isn’t, as you seem to be suggesting, then someone close to you is leaking information to whoever this hack writer is.”

“Marino,” she reluctantly said. “He knows things about me that other people don’t.”

“Well, obviously the Charleston information. Although I can’t imagine him using that word.”

“What word, Benton?”

He didn’t answer.

“You can’t bring yourself to say it, can you? The word rape. Even though that’s not what happened.”