“Well, TV, mostly,” she added. “If you don’t mind my asking, how bad was it? The break-in? It appears a police car’s been there all day, and you’ve been over there, and I haven’t seen her. I’m sure she went to stay with family, perhaps her boyfriend. I wouldn’t sleep a wink after something like that. I’ve noticed you’ve used the past tense several times, as if she’s not over there anymore. And you’ve talked to her family. So I assume it was bad. I don’t know what her family in Arizona has to do with … Well, why you would talk to them. It’s really bad, isn’t it?”

He said, “I’m afraid it doesn’t get any worse.”

Something fluttered in her stomach like fingers about to grab.

Leather creaked loudly as he leaned forward in a chair not meant for him, and his face got bigger as he said to her, “Where’d you get the idea it was a burglary?”

“I just thought …” She could barely speak.

“I’m sorry to tell you it wasn’t. Your neighbor was murdered last night. Kind of hard to believe you weren’t aware of all the commotion out there, right across the street. Police cars, a van from the Medical Examiner’s office.”

Shrew thought about Dr. Scarpetta.

“A lot of flashing lights and car doors slamming shut, and people talking. And you didn’t hear or see a thing,” he said it again.

“Did Dr. Scarpetta show up at the scene?” she blurted out, wiping her eyes, her heart racing.

The look on his face—it was as if she’d just given him the finger.

“What the hell are you getting at?” he said, not nicely.

She realized it much too late. She hadn’t made the connection, at least not consciously, before this instant. How could it be possible? P. R. Marino? As in Pete Marino, the same name in the column she herself had edited, formatted, and posted. It couldn’t be the same person, could it? That Marino lived in South Carolina, didn’t he? He didn’t work for Jaime Berger, surely not. A woman like Ms. Berger wouldn’t hire a man like that, would she?

Shrew was about to panic, her heart beating so hard, her chest hurt. If this Marino was the same one the Boss had just written about, then he had no business sitting in Shrew’s living room, in her husband’s recliner. For all she knew, he was the maniac who murdered that defenseless little lady across the street.

This was exactly how the Boston Strangler got his victims. Pretended to be someone nice and responsible. Had a cup of tea and a pleasant conversation in the living room right before he …

“What about Dr. Scarpetta?” Investigator Marino looked at Shrew as if she had insulted him unforgivably.