Eyes glazed over. Nobody trusted it. She’d spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on satisfying the Frye standard whenever she tried to admit DNA evidence into court. In fact, DNA hadn’t helped her marriage, not that much could have. But with the proliferation of new scientific techniques had come new pressures and demands, the likes of which no one had ever anticipated or seen. Maybe if forensic science had stayed where it was when she was still at Columbia, living with a woman who eventually broke her heart and scared her straight into Greg’s arms, she would have had something left over for her private life. Gone on more vacations, or even gone on one when she didn’t bring a briefcase. Gotten to know Greg’s children, really gotten to know them. Gotten to know people she worked with, like Scarpetta, who’d never received so much as a card from Berger after Rose died, and Berger had known about that.

Marino had told her.

Maybe Berger would have gotten to know herself.

“Kay will be here in a second. I’ve got to get dressed,” she said to Lucy. “Actually, maybe you should get dressed.”

Lucy was in a Jockey undershirt and briefs. Both of them had been watching what were called snuff films in some markets, and neither of them had on much in the way of clothing. It was still early, not even ten a.m., but seemed more like late afternoon. Berger felt as if she had jet lag. She was still in the silk pajamas and robe she’d put on after getting out of the shower minutes before Lucy had shown up at her building.

In the space of less than five hours since Scarpetta, Benton, Marino, Bacardi, and Morales had been in her living room, Berger had learned the grotesque truth and had watched it as if it was happening before her eyes. She’d witnessed the tortured deaths of three people who had fallen prey to a man who was supposed to protect them: a doctor who never was, who shouldn’t have become a cop, who shouldn’t have ever been allowed within a mile of any living creature.