She returned a pair of studded flip-flops to the carpet beneath a hanging rod, which, unlike everything else she’d noticed in the apartment, had been installed lower than usual, so Terri could reach it without a tool or a step stool.

She said, “I’ll also stick with my theory that she was influenced by consumer reviews. Possibly even for her provocative tastes.”

“I’d give this maybe three stars,” Marino said, holding up a thong he’d just pulled out of a drawer. “But you ask me, the thing about rating underwear? It all depends on who’s wearing it.”

“Victoria’s Secret. Frederick’s of Hollywood,” Scarpetta observed. “Open mesh and fishnet. Lace teddies, crotchless panties. A corset. She was wearing a red lace shelf bra under her robe, and it’s very difficult for me to imagine she wasn’t wearing panties to match.”

“I don’t think I know what a shelf bra is.”

“It rather much does what the name implies,” she said. “The object of the game, to enhance and accentuate.”

“Oh. The one he cut off her. Doesn’t look like it would cover anything important.”

“It wouldn’t, and wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “That’s why she would have been wearing it to begin with, assuming it wasn’t the killer’s idea.”

Scarpetta returned the lingerie to its drawer and for a moment couldn’t look at Marino as she remembered the sounds and smells of him, and his shocking strength. It wasn’t until later that she’d felt him, when pain mapped out where he’d been in damaged flesh that burned and throbbed all the way to the bone.

“That and all the condoms,” Marino said.

He had his back to her, opening drawers in a nightstand. The condoms had been collected by the police.

“You see from the pictures, she must have had a hundred condoms in this top drawer,” he said. “Maybe this is a Benton question, but if she was a neat freak—”

“Not if.”

“In other words, she was uptight. Everything had to be exactly right. So does it make sense for someone like that to have this wild side?”

“You mean for someone obsessive-compulsive to like sex?”

“Yeah.”

Marino was sweating, and his face was red.

“Makes perfect sense,” Scarpetta said. “Sex was a way to relieve her anxiety. Perhaps the only acceptable way for her to be uninhibited, to give up control. Or better put, to delude herself into thinking she was giving up control.”

“Yeah. She gave it up as long as it was according to her plan.”