She looked through the peephole and was shocked to see a big rugged face, a balding head, and out-of- style wire-rimmed glasses.

Oh God in heaven.

She snatched up the phone and called 911.

Inside Bellevue’s cafeteria, Benton Wesley and Jaime Berger sat in a pink booth against the back wall, where they could have privacy. People who didn’t recognize Berger often noticed her anyway.

She had compelling good looks, was of medium height and slim, with deep blue eyes and lustrous dark hair. Always smartly dressed, today she wore a charcoal cashmere blazer, a button-up black sweater, a black skirt with a slit in back, and black pumps with small silver buckles on the sides. Berger wasn’t provocative, but she wasn’t afraid to look like a woman. It was well known that if the attention of lawyers, cops, or violent offenders began wandering over her physical landscape, she’d lean close, point at her eyes, and say, “Look here. Look right here when I’m talking to you.”

She reminded him of Scarpetta. Her voice had the same low timbre that commanded attention because it didn’t ask for it, her features similar in their keenness, and her physical architectural style completely to his liking, simple lines that led to generous curves. He had his fetishes. He admitted it. But as he had emphasized to Dr. Thomas a short while ago over the phone, he was faithful to Scarpetta and always would be. Even in his imagination, he was faithful to her, would instantly change channels when his fantasies strayed to erotic dramas that didn’t feature her. He would never cheat on her. Never.

His behavior hadn’t always been so virtuous. What Dr. Thomas had said was true. He’d cheated on his first wife, Connie, and if he was honest about it, the betrayal had begun early on when he’d decided it was perfectly admissible and, in fact, healthy to enjoy the same magazines and movies other males did, especially during his four monk-like months at the FBI Academy when there was little to do at night except have a few beers in the Board-room, then return to his dorm where he could briefly relieve his stress and escape his uptight life.

He had maintained this clandestine but healthy sexual routine throughout his sensible marriage until he and Scarpetta had worked one too many cases together and ended up in the Travel-Eze Motel. He’d lost his wife and half of a considerable inheritance, and their three daughters continued to have nothing to do with him. To this day, some of his former colleagues from his FBI past still had no respect for him, or at least they blamed it on his morals. He didn’t care.

Worse than not caring and a vacuum where there should be a spark of remorse was the truth that he would do it all again, if he could. And he did do it all again, often, in his mind. He would replay that scene in the motel room, where he was bleeding from cuts that required stitches, and Scarpetta had tended to him. She’d barely dressed his wounds before he was undressing her. It was beyond fantasy.