What always struck him when he looked back on it was how he’d managed to work around her for the better part of five years and not succumb sooner. The more he’d flipped back through the pages of his life during his talks with Dr. Thomas, the more amazed he was by a number of things, not the least of which was Scarpetta’s imperviousness. She honestly hadn’t known how he felt, was far more aware of how she felt. Or at least that’s what she told him when he’d admitted that with rare exception, whenever she’d seen him with his briefcase in his lap, it meant he was hiding an erection.

Including the first time we met?

Probably.

In the morgue?

Yes.

Reviewing cases in that awful conference room of yours at Quantico, going through reports, photographs, having those relentless, endless, serious conversations?

Especially then. Afterward, when I’d walk you back to your car, it was all I could do not to get in it and …

If I’d known, Scarpetta had told him one night, when they were drinking a lot of wine, I would have seduced you immediately instead of wasting five goddamn years singing solo.

Singing solo? Do you mean … ?

Just because I work around dead people doesn’t mean I am one.

“This is the main reason I’m not going to,” Jaime Berger was saying to Benton. “Political correctness. Political sensitivity. Are you paying any attention to me at all?”

“Yes. If I seem glazed, I’m slightly sleep-deprived.”

“The last thing I want is a perception of prejudice. Especially now, when there’s much more public awareness about dwarfism and the misconceptions and stereotypes historically associated with it. This morning’s Post, for example. The headline about this big.” She held her hands about two inches apart. “Midget Murder. Horrible. Exactly what we don’t want, and I expect a backlash, especially if other news sources pick it up and it’s all the hell over the place.” Her eyes were on his, and she paused. “Unfortunately, I can’t control the press any more than you can.”

She said it as if she meant something else.

It was the something else that Benton was anticipating. He knew damn well the Terri Bridges case wasn’t Berger’s only agenda. He’d made a tactical error. He should have brought up the Gotham Gotcha column while he’d had the chance.

“The joys of contemporary journalism,” she said. “We’re never sure what’s true.”

She would accuse Benton of lying to her by omission. But technically he hadn’t, because technically Pete Marino had committed no crime. What Dr. Thomas had said was correct. Benton wasn’t in Scarpetta’s house when it happened and would never know the nuances of what Marino had done to her that warm, humid Charleston night last May. Marino’s drunken, grossly inappropriate behavior had gone unreported and largely undiscussed. For Benton to have made even the slightest allusion to it would have been a betrayal of Scarpetta—and of Marino, for that matter—and in fact would constitute hearsay that Berger would never tolerate under other circumstances.