“I didn’t tell her, and I’m sure she hasn’t seen it. She would have called to warn me. Funny how she’s like that.”

“Yes. Kay and her fragile heroes with their feet of clay. Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Timing,” Benton said.

“Yours or hers?”

“She was in the morgue,” he said. “I wanted to wait and do it in person.”

“Let’s retrace our steps, Benton. You talked to her at the crack of dawn, let me guess. Isn’t that what you always do when you’re away from each other?”

“We talked early this morning.”

“So when you talked to her early this morning, you already knew what was on the Internet, because Lucy called you when?” Dr. Thomas said. “At one a.m. to tell you, since your hypomanic niece by marriage has audible alarms programmed into her computer to wake her up like a fireman if one of her search engines finds something important in cyberspace?”

Dr. Thomas wasn’t joking. Lucy did have alarms that signaled her when one of her search engines found something she needed to know about.

He said, “Actually, she called me at midnight. When the damn thing was posted.”

“But she didn’t call Kay.”

“To her credit, she didn’t, and she let it go when I said I would handle it.”

“Which you didn’t do,” Dr. Thomas said. “So we’re back to that. You talked to Kay early this morning, by which time you’d known for many hours what’s on the Internet? Yet you said nothing. You’ve still said nothing. I don’t believe it’s about telling her in person. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance she might find out from someone other than you—if she hasn’t already.”

Benton took a deep, quiet breath. He pressed his lips together and wondered when it was, exactly, that he’d begun to lose faith in himself and his ability to read his environment and react accordingly. For as far back as he could remember, he had possessed the uncanny ability to size up people at a glance or a quick listen. Scarpetta called it his party trick. He’d meet someone or overhear a snippet of a conversation, and that was it. Rarely was he wrong.

But he’d completely missed the danger at the door this time, and still didn’t fully comprehend how he could have been so devastatingly obtuse. He’d watched Pete Marino’s anger and frustration build over the years. He knew damn well it was a matter of time before Marino’s self-loathing and rage reached flashover. But Benton didn’t fear it. He didn’t give Marino enough credit to be feared like that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever imagined Marino having a dick prior to its becoming a weapon.

It made no sense, in retrospect. For virtually everybody else, it was impossible to get past Marino’s rough-hewn machismo and volatility, and that particular recipe was Benton’s bread and butter. Sexual violence, no matter its catalyst, was what kept forensic psychologists in business.

“I’m having homicidal thoughts about him,” Benton said to Dr. Thomas. “Of course, I wouldn’t do it. Just thoughts. I’m having a lot of thoughts. I believed I’d forgiven him and felt proud of myself, really proud of myself, because of the way I handled it. Where would he be without me? All I’ve done for him, and now I want to kill him. Lucy wants to kill him. The reminder this morning didn’t help, and now everyone knows. It’s made it happen all over again.”