“What about his e-mail? His consent or not, you can access it, right? I’m assuming he e-mailed Terri,” Benton said.

“We can access it, and we will. And no one’s telling him that. In summary, and I think we’ve established this clearly? He’s really not as cooperative as he might seem. Unless we find probable cause for his arrest, that won’t change. A very difficult position for me. I have to be extra-careful, yet I want to know what Kay knows. He’s telling her something up there in the infirmary. Something he’s not telling us and she’s not allowed to divulge under the current circumstances. I’m sure I don’t need to ask, but she has no history with Oscar Bane?”

“If she does, she didn’t know about it, didn’t remember it, or she would have said something the minute I mentioned his name when I called her earlier,” Benton said. “But we’re not going to find out unless Oscar is arrested or volunteers to waive doctor-patient confidentiality. I know Kay. She’s not going to say anything improper.”

“What about a connection with Terri Bridges? Possible?”

“Can’t imagine it. If Oscar discusses Terri with her, and she realizes there’s a connection, she’ll immediately recuse herself or at least notify us so we could figure out what to do.”

“Not a fun thing to put her through,” Berger said. “Not fun for either of you, really. I imagine you’re not used to it. Professional discussions are your dinner conversations. They’re your dialogues on weekends, holidays. They’re even the source of fights, perhaps.” Her eyes on his. “Nothing off-limits unless you’re expert witnesses for opposing counsel in the same court case, and that almost never happens. Quite the team, the two of you. No secrets. Always professionally inseparable. And now, personally inseparable. I hope it’s going well.”

“No, this isn’t fun.” He didn’t like her personal references. “It would be easier if Oscar’s charged with killing his girlfriend. That’s a terrible thing to hope.”

“We hope a lot of things we don’t want to admit,” she said. “But fact is, if he murdered Terri Bridges, we’re not looking for someone else.”

She remembered snow that stung like nettles, and she needed a pound of Breakfast Blend coffee, but she didn’t feel like going out. Overall, there was nothing good she could say about that day.

She’d had a harder time than usual with a column she was supposed to post, an especially mean-spirited one titled “The Ex-File,” which was a list of celebrities whose fans had turned on them and why. Certainly Shrew had to leave out that part as she wrote the scene for Investigator Marino. There was a lot she had to leave out. For example, she couldn’t tell him her horror when her doorbell rang, and she let Terri in, not realizing the Gotham Gotcha website programming was as big as life on her twenty-four- inch computer screen.

Terri set the basket on the coffee table and walked right over to the desk, which was forward of her, now that Shrew thought about it as she wrote the scene on her pad of paper, leaving out what she was remembering right this minute.