Marino couldn’t stand the thought of Scarpetta being alone with Oscar Bane. It unnerved him that Oscar had requested her specifically, because that could mean only one thing: He was far more aware of her than he ought to be.

Marino said, “You’re suggesting he might be a serial killer, so what’s he doing with the Doc? I can’t believe Berger or anybody set her up for something like this. Especially since he could get out any minute. Jesus.”

He was pacing. In a dozen steps, he could cover his apartment’s entire square footage.

“Once she’s done, maybe she’ll buzz back to Massachusetts and you got nothing to worry about,” Morales said. “Which is good, right? Since you got plenty to worry about already.”

“That right? Why don’t you tell me.”

“I’m reminding you this is a sensitive case, and you didn’t handle it all too well when Oscar Bane poured his heart out to you last month.”

“I did it by the book.”

“Funny thing about that. Nobody gives a shit once there’s a problem. As far as your former boss Kay goes, I advise avoidance. Not that you have any reason to be in her company or show up unexpected at Bellevue. For example.”

It inflamed Marino to hear Morales call her Kay. Marino had never called her Kay, and he’d worked side by side with her, had probably spent ten thousand hours with her in the morgue, in her office, in the car, at crime scenes, in her home, including on holidays, and even having a drink or two in her hotel room when they worked cases out of town. So if he didn’t call her Kay, who the hell did Morales think he was?

“My advice to you is to make yourself scarce until Kay’s back in Massachusetts,” Morales said. “She doesn’t need any more stress, you hearing me, bro? And what I don’t want is next time we call her in for assistance, she says no because of you. We don’t need her quitting her position at John Jay, quitting as a consultant because of you. Then Benton would quit next, if he wants to keep the wife happy. So we lose both of them because of you. I plan on spending a lot of years working with both of them. Being the Three Musketeers.”

“You don’t know them.” Marino was so angry, his heart was pounding in his neck.

“They quit and it will hit the news,” Morales said. “And you know how things get passed down the line. A scandal because it will be the front page of the Post, a headline ten feet tall that Jaime Berger, the ace prosecutor of sex crimes, hired a sex offender and maybe she gets fired. Unbelievable how you can bring down the house of cards, man. Anyway, I gotta get off the phone. About what’s on the Internet, what happened between you and Kay. Not to pry—”

“Then fucking don’t,” Marino snapped.

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta