“Isn’t it true, Dr. Scarpetta, that you started an intimate relationship with Benton Wesley while he was still married to someone else?” Jill Donoghue asks, and I have no choice but to answer.

I am alone.

I look at the faces of the men and women on the jury and say, “If by intimate you mean we fell in love with each other. Yes, we did. We’ve been together the better part of twenty years now, and are married.”

The woman juror in dark red nods, and Donoghue says, “So it would be fair to say that truth is whatever you decide it is.”

“It would not be fair to say that.”

“It would be fair to say that if someone is married, so what.”

“That’s your opinion, not mine,” I reply, because Steward isn’t going to do a damn thing.

“It would be fair to say you don’t honor the law but do as you please.”

“It most assuredly would not be fair to say that,” I reply.

“But Benton Wesley was married.”

“He was.”

“And you took him from his wife and three daughters.”

“He divorced his wife. I did not take him from her or anyone.”

“Dr. Scarpetta? Would it be accurate to say that truth is what you decide it is?” She tries again.

“It would not be accurate to say that,” I repeat.

“Was it accurate when you stated in an e-mail to Dan Steward that Channing Lott’s wife has turned into a bar of soap?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’m sorry. Then what did you say?”

“On which occasion?”

“Well, let me produce the e-mail,” she replies.

It appears on the flat screens around the room, the e-mail addresses in it blacked out, redacted, and she asks me if I recognize what I’m seeing, and I do, and then she reads it out loud:

Dan—

To answer your question in general and by no means specifically about Mildred Lott. If a body were dumped in the ocean near Gloucester in March and remained submerged in cold water for months, hydrolysis and hydrogenation of the fatty cells that compose subcutaneous fat tissues would result in the formation of bacterial-resistant adipocere, a postmortem artifact that basically turns a body into soap.

“Do you remember e-mailing that to Dan Steward, Dr. Scarpetta?”

“I don’t remember those exact words.”

“What do you remember, then?”

“I remember telling Mr. Steward that if a body remains submerged in cold water for a period of weeks or months, the result would be a process of decomposition known as saponification.”

“Turning into soap,” she emphasizes.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Not in a manner of speaking, Dr. Scarpetta. That’s what you said in this e-mail, correct?”

“I believe I said ‘basically turns into soap.’”

“Just to clarify, can a dead human body literally turn into soap under any circumstances?” she asks.