More photos: a table set for two. Candles, wineglasses, linen napkins in blue napkin rings, and dinner and bread plates and salad bowls. In the center of the table, a flower arrangement. Great attention to details, everything perfectly appointed, perfectly matched, and centered and straight but lacking in imagination and warmth.

“She was obsessive,” Scarpetta observed. “A perfectionist. But she went to trouble for him. I think Oscar mattered to her. Was there music playing when the police arrived?”

“Nothing in the report.”

“The television on? There’s one in the living room, but it’s off in the photograph. Any hint as to what she might have been doing when someone arrived at her door? Other than cooking at some point during the afternoon?”

“What you see in the photos, what’s in the reports, is pretty much all we know.” He paused. “Because you’re the only one Oscar would really talk to.”

She scanned the report out loud. “Oven set at two hundred, a whole chicken inside, suggesting it was cooked. She was just keeping it warm. Fresh spinach in a pot, hadn’t been cooked yet. Stove off.”

Another photo: a black plastic flashlight on the carpet near the front door.

Another photo: clothing neatly laid out on a bed. A low-cut sweater, red. Looked like cashmere. Red pants. Looked like silk. Shoes? No sign of them. No sign of her panties.

Another photo: no sign of makeup on Terri’s suffused face.

Scarpetta reconstructed: Terri was going to dress festively and provocatively in bright red that was soft to the touch. She had on a sexy bra, a not-so- sexy robe and slippers, perhaps waiting until shortly before Oscar arrived to put on makeup and finish getting dressed, alluringly, in red. Where were her shoes? Maybe she didn’t always wear them indoors, especially in her own apartment. Where were her panties? Some women don’t wear panties. Maybe she was one of them. But if so, Scarpetta found that inconsistent with what Oscar had told her about Terri’s obsession with cleanliness, with “germs.”

“Do we know if she had a habit of not wearing panties?” she asked Benton.

“Got no idea.”

“And shoes. Where are they? She’d gone to so much trouble to pick out what she was going to wear, but no shoes? Three possibilities. She hadn’t picked them out yet. The killer took them. Or she didn’t wear shoes in the house. And that’s curious and a little hard for me to accept. Someone obsessive-compulsive about neatness, cleanliness, isn’t likely to walk around barefoot. And when she was in her robe, she had on slippers. Wasn’t barefoot then. Someone obsessive-compulsive about dirt and bacteria is likely to wear panties.”

“I wasn’t aware she was obsessive-compulsive,” Benton said.

Scarpetta realized she’d revealed something she shouldn’t have.