Chapters (48)
- also by patricia cornwell
- title page
- copyright
- dedication
- contents
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- two nights later
- credits
It’s not that I don’t understand why Burke needs to know about Marino, but I wouldn’t have pushed the way she did, were I the investigator. It was wrong. It was badgering. It was bullying. There can be only one answer to how she knew what to confront me with, and I imagine her talking to Benton and have no doubt what he felt compelled to reveal. He couldn’t lie or evade, of course not. I tell myself I can’t blame him for being honest, and he couldn’t truthfully say Marino has never shown a potential for violence—specifically, sexual violence—because he has.
But Burke didn’t need the gory details, questioning me as if she wanted to envision it, as if she intended to humiliate and overpower, to do exactly what Marino did, and that’s what troubles me. I worry what her motive is, and I’m amazed by the way events recede so far into the past that they round a bend and end up in front of us again. What Marino did five years ago is directly in my face, so close I can touch it, I can hear it, I can smell it like a posttraumatic flashback. Nerves that were numb have come alive, tingling and smarting as I drive, and I will get past it, but I won’t forgive Douglas Burke. I blame her for willfully inflicting injury when it wasn’t called for, wasn’t warranted, certainly wasn’t needed to prove her goddamn point.
I follow Massachusetts Avenue through Harvard Square, the cat curled up in the towel on my lap, and it bothers me that I don’t know her name. The need to know it obsesses me, because she’s had her name for quite some time, likely since she was a kitten, and I don’t want to call her something different, something wrong. She’s been through enough.
Out in the weather and God knows what traumas she’s sustained and how lonely and hungry and uncomfortable she’s been, and I imagine Peggy Stanton putting food and water into bowls in the kitchen. I imagine her collecting her pocketbook and keys, going out somewhere and fully intending to return home. But the next time the door opened, it wasn’t her coming in.
A stranger using her house key, and he probably entered through the kitchen door so he wouldn’t be seen by the neighbors or by anyone on the street. This person who somehow abducted and killed her entered her alarm code and walked from room to room, leaving lights on in some of them, and I continue to be suspicious about the flowers and who they were from. I’m bothered by the car key found in the Lalique bowl, where I feel this person deliberately left it.
Left it for whom?