“Benton, you still with me?” he said into the phone. “She’s right here holding a very big knife. I’m sure she told you today’s specials? The Tufts student is the worst, her life worth two hundred bucks. The Bloods or the Crips, some gang piece of shit, you should see him on video surveillance. All over the news. Jack shouldn’t be doing that case. Does anybody ask me? About to blow an aneurysm. And the suicide, yup. Comes home from Iraq without a scratch. He’s fine. Have a happy holiday and a nice life.”

Scarpetta pushed back her face shield. She pulled off her bloody gloves and dropped them in a bright red biohazard can. She scrubbed her hands in a deep steel sink.

“Bad weather inside and out,” Bryce chatted to Benton, who wasn’t fond of chatting. “A full house and Jack’s irritable depression, did I mention that? Maybe we should do an intervention. Maybe a weekend getaway at that Harvard hospital of yours? We probably could qualify for a family plan … ?”

Scarpetta took the receiver from him, removed the paper towels, and dropped them into the trash.

“Stop picking on Jack,” she said to Bryce.

“I think he’s on steroids again, and that’s why he’s so cranky.”

She turned her back to him and everything else.

“What’s happened?” she said to Benton.

They had talked at dawn. For him to call again several hours later while she was in the autopsy suite didn’t bode anything good.

“I’m afraid we’ve got a situation,” he said.

It was the same way he’d phrased it last night when she’d just gotten home from the ATM homicide scene and found him putting on his coat, headed to Logan to catch the shuttle. NYPD had a situation and needed him immediately.

“Jaime Berger’s asking if you can get here,” he added.

Hearing her name always unnerved Scarpetta, gave her a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with the New York prosecutor personally. Berger would always be linked to a past that Scarpetta preferred to forget.

Benton said, “The sooner the better. Maybe the one-o’clock shuttle?”

The wall clock said it was almost ten. She’d have to finish her case, shower, change, and she’d want to stop by the house first. Food, she thought. Homemade mozzarella, chickpea soup, meat-balls, bread. What else? The ricotta with fresh basil that Benton loved on homemade pizza. She’d prepared all that and more yesterday, having no idea she was about to spend New Year’s Eve alone. There would be nothing to eat in their New York apartment. When Benton was by himself, he usually got take-out.

“Come straight to Bellevue,” he said. “You can leave your bags in my office. I have your crime scene case ready and waiting.”

She could barely hear over the rhythmic rasping of a knife being sharpened in long, aggressive sweeps. The buzzer from the bay blared, and on the closed-circuit video screen on the countertop, a dark-sleeved arm emerged from the driver’s window of a white van as attendants from a delivery service buzzed.