She felt his body heat and smelled him. Then the air between them was cool again as she stepped back and returned to the counter, and began documenting injuries and making other notes while he watched her back. She could feel his mismatched eyes, only they weren’t as warm. They felt like cool drops of water. His devotion, his idealization, was beginning to chill. To him she wasn’t bigger than life on CNN. She was a woman, a real person who was disappointing him, betraying him. Almost without exception, that was the path of hero worship, because it was never really about the object of it.

“Nothing’s any better than it was thousands of years ago,” Oscar said to her back. “The fighting, the ugliness, the lies and hatefulness. People don’t change.”

“If you believe that,” she asked, “why would you want to go into psychology?”

“If you want to figure out where evil comes from, you have to follow where it goes,” he said. “Did it end up in a stab wound? Did it end up in the decapitated head of a hiker? Did it end up in discrimination? What part of our brain remains primitive in a world where violent aggression and hatred are counterproductive to survival? Why can’t we knock out that part of our genetic coding the way we knock out genes in mice? I know what your husband’s doing.”

He talked fast and in a flinty tone while she retrieved a silicone casting extruder gun and a polyvinylsiloxane refill cartridge from her crime scene case.

“The research he’s doing into that sort of thing. At his Harvard hospital, McLean. Using MRI. Functional MRI. Are we any closer to figuring it out? Or will we just keep tormenting, torturing, raping and killing and starting wars and committing genocide and deciding some people don’t deserve basic human rights?”

Locking the cartridge in place, she removed the pink cover cap and pressed the trigger, squeezing the white base and clear catalyst on a paper towel until there was a steady flow. She attached the mixing tip and returned to the table, explaining she was going to use a silicone compound on his fingertips and his injuries.

“This is very good for taking elastic impressions of rough or smooth surfaces, such as your fingernails and even your fingerprint pads,” she said. “There are no harmful side effects, and your skin should have no reaction to it. The scratches and nail marks are scabbed over and this shouldn’t hurt them, but if at any point you want me to stop, just tell me. I’m confirming I have your consent to do this.”

“Yes,” he said.

He went very still as she touched his hands, careful of his injured thumb.