He was talking in choppy sentences, his brain sluggish and slightly disorganized, probably because he was extremely stressed. He worked on the paper clip. He watched her.

After a lengthy silence, she looked up at him and said, “Then what? Did he talk to them?”

She’s comparing notes, he thought. Wants to line up what I know with what Oscar said to her. She’s being clinical, impersonal, because she’s not going to forgive me, he thought.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry with me,” he said.

She held his gaze and said, “I’m wondering why she had nothing on but a bra and a robe. If a stranger was at her door, would she answer it like that?”

“We can’t work through it now.” Benton meant their relationship, not the case. “Can we put it on a shelf?”

It was the way they phrased it when private matters presented themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Her lingering gaze and the way her eyes turned a deeper shade of blue told him she would. She would put it on a shelf for now because she loved him, even if he didn’t deserve it.

“It’s a good question. The way she might have been dressed when she answered the door,” he said. “I have a few observations, when we get to that part.”

“What exactly did Oscar do when the police were inside the apartment with him?” she asked.

“He was sobbing, knees buckling, yelling. So insistent on returning to the bathroom that two officers had to hold on to him while they tried to get him to talk. He said he cut off the flex-cuff. It was on the bathroom floor near a pair of scissors he said he’d removed from the cutlery block in the kitchen.”

“Did he call it a flex-cuff at the scene? Or is that what the police called it? Where did the term flex-cuff come from? It’s important we know who said it first.”

“Don’t know.”

“Well, someone knows.”

Benton bent the paper clip into a figure-eight as what they’d placed on the shelf kept falling off. At some point they would talk, but talking didn’t fix broken trust any more than it fixes broken bones. Lies and more lies. The necessary axis of his life was lies, all well intended or professionally and legally necessary, which was why, in fact, Marino was a threat. The foundation of Marino’s relationship with her had never been lies. When he forced himself on her, he wasn’t showing contempt or hate or trying to humiliate. Marino was taking what he wanted when she wouldn’t give it, because it was the only way he could kill an unrequited love he could no longer survive. His betrayal of her was actually one of the most honest things he’d ever done.