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Chaos
Patricia Cornwell
No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-fourth engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.Someone is following you…One summer evening in New England, two young girls stumble upon a body. Forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta arrives at the scene to find a young woman has been attacked with almost superhuman force.Someone is taunting you…Meanwhile, people close to Scarpetta start receiving suspicious calls. Could they be linked to Scarpetta’s anonymous cyber stalker, Tailend Charlie?Someone wants to destroy you…A second death shocks Scarpetta to her core. Because analysis of the body shows a material that doesn’t exist on earth. And it’s clear that someone, or something, is coming for her, and is hell-bent on creating chaos…






Copyright (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)


This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
First published in the United States by William Morrow,
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2016
Copyright © Cornwell Entertainment, Inc. 2016
Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photograph © Elly De Vries / Arcangel (http://www.arcangel.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=Homepage)
Patricia Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008150655
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008150648
Version: 2018-09-24

Dedication (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
To Staci
—In Memory of Tram—

Epigraph (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
THERE IS LOVE IN ME THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU’VE NEVER SEEN. THERE IS RAGE IN ME THE LIKES OF WHICH SHOULD NEVER ESCAPE.
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Table of Contents
Cover (#u0723d9d5-5e08-58fa-9cbb-df6f26e7372a)
Title Page (#uaf962008-cc4d-51fe-89da-b464726a2e5f)
Copyright (#u65f9fbf8-4818-54e4-9904-6ec23e043f75)
Dedication (#u1002a3c7-aea6-5d3b-ac21-850182462636)
Epigraph (#uf43a7722-00bb-5f95-89e9-85195bdcc6d1)
Prologue (#u834e8f15-4f07-545b-b318-7068d909c129)
Chapter 1 (#u83e10d65-3b89-551e-93df-6e2b6c38e58e)
Chapter 2 (#ud498258f-6fba-5d2a-90f9-18326631365a)
Chapter 3 (#ufa1b3d8f-8e31-5498-a525-c05a08c79c61)
Chapter 4 (#u43089315-a92a-5c88-9844-d0a4aa64bdcb)

Chapter 5 (#ucb28ccc0-cf9a-5edf-b142-8ff87c734a3a)

Chapter 6 (#u3915ba02-3000-5efd-ae23-d9f26f8e6099)

Chapter 7 (#ud17d255d-e5d5-52ea-a6d6-a495f62eace3)

Chapter 8 (#u9943079b-41e8-56b5-99b1-2f6067eff640)

Chapter 9 (#ub83f0d1f-79ee-5387-af6e-643d1da73cd2)

Chapter 10 (#u334ec4ff-c628-5bec-97a0-8d566bfefa21)

Chapter 11 (#ua9c9600d-0b24-59cb-b2e1-cde4ae9bf3e1)

Chapter 12 (#ub188cfe1-0525-5a3c-841c-c77059dc150f)

Chapter 13 (#u8b6d1c28-bd16-5d87-9415-5a2e46d725a0)

Chapter 14 (#u516adbba-0587-5ca4-8a03-fbc1a9cafd32)

Chapter 15 (#u5fce6d85-b5bf-533c-9ba9-a212dba4d3df)

Chapter 16 (#u4bb46578-bffe-51b7-82ed-245d11e6a887)

Chapter 17 (#u3a8e07bc-19e9-5c19-b972-cc5ed72ad5fa)

Chapter 18 (#uc21e207d-0af4-5f14-ad4c-a54f84f4ca8c)

Chapter 19 (#ud572a21a-7c44-5cde-bc69-a41aef5d0713)

Chapter 20 (#uc31c4c8b-8471-576b-911d-5bf15309e773)

Chapter 21 (#u4449d94f-a2b3-5b4f-91cc-13f460b3f262)

Chapter 22 (#uee9f36b4-95b4-5b2a-8420-65aa094efa36)

Chapter 23 (#u89de8fdb-9fe7-51a5-88a4-e274fc9173b1)

Chapter 24 (#u7ef3daeb-d6ad-5189-b878-3f6f02ae55ac)

Chapter 25 (#u8f2ac8f6-ebab-5860-8b19-5c012edd26c9)

Chapter 26 (#u8af763fa-6c50-5200-9d36-c3a742b351e1)

Chapter 27 (#ue867091f-dc4a-57da-bfe1-b9e3ab95b39b)

Chapter 28 (#uf86b0097-4d91-5b86-99a5-7113ad1d567f)

Chapter 29 (#uc4d6ab5f-bf2e-5ec8-a45f-9d27b74b958f)

Chapter 30 (#u8d2c7736-37b1-521e-bd67-d22731e2e93a)

Chapter 31 (#u8acfd7d2-8432-5fa8-bb95-bbe5c1c1d4d9)

Chapter 32 (#u47cb810b-cd2a-58cc-8a95-aeeac2cec9c5)

Chapter 33 (#u10dc54be-943f-5a3e-a3c2-9ccf88d56b7a)

Chapter 34 (#ueeaab758-cc92-5287-8f7e-b975839ac530)

Chapter 35 (#ube14f950-2a7b-55f9-ba1f-3ccde661f571)

Chapter 36 (#u4a82557f-3ef2-5efa-9f25-aa23fa388175)

Chapter 37 (#u1c4ee620-1ced-565c-ad87-583829c818fb)

Chapter 38 (#uda07716c-25d9-58c9-9b87-55b2606517db)

Chapter 39 (#ud37e6274-d12b-57f2-9232-f4fcfaa1dfe2)

Chapter 40 (#ud166c734-0c72-5525-b7af-edb662744a61)

Chapter 41 (#u1035cd9a-00d8-5759-9741-53ff64190e31)

Chapter 42 (#u3d18ecbc-3e15-5c61-a6bd-a6adfb5f289d)

Chapter 43 (#ua23bf3c9-3c2c-5a3b-bd87-41c8c791fa7b)

Chapter 44 (#u4bbd55dd-9fe7-52d3-9c07-2809a2b2e8fb)

Chapter 45 (#u3027ade8-7dbe-52ed-b827-9e67101ab971)

Chapter 46 (#uc2eaedd5-b33e-5f55-9614-eee9782ce43f)

Chapter 47 (#u18d3d9b6-13b5-5e76-964b-06e56dfb6b35)

Keep Reading … (#u6d5ac03e-0310-59ff-a4ab-45012f07c69e)

About the Author (#u9816452b-3329-5c53-bed2-c1989ea26c8f)

Also by Patricia Cornwell (#ufbaddcb6-e0c4-5dbf-9a84-0449f8c48910)

About the Publisher (#u861c49ef-2535-5c3e-b12b-3c2709bf2232)
CHAOS
From the Ancient Greek (
or kháos)
A vast chasm or void
Anarchy
The science of unpredictability

PROLOGUE (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
TWILIGHT
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
Beyond the brick wall bordering Harvard Yard, four tall chimneys and a gray slate roof with white-painted dormers peek through the branches of hardwood trees.
The Georgian building is a welcome sight no more than fifteen minutes ahead as the crow flies. But walking wasn’t smart. I was foolish to refuse a ride. Even in the shade it feels like an oven. The atmosphere is stagnant, nothing stirring in the hot humid air.
Were it not for the distant sounds of traffic, the infrequent pedestrian, the vapor trails overhead, I might believe I’m the only human left on a post-apocalyptic earth. I’ve never seen the Harvard campus this deserted except maybe during a bomb scare. But then I’ve also not been witness to such extreme weather in this part of the world, and blizzards and arctic blasts don’t count.
New Englanders are used to that but not temperatures edging past a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The sun is molten in a bone-scrubbed sky that the heat has bleached the blue out of as I’ve heard it described. The greenhouse effect. Global warming. God’s punishment. The Devil’s in his workshop. Mercury in retrograde. El Niño. The end times.
These are some of the explanations for one of the worst heat waves in Massachusetts’s history. Business at my headquarters, the Cambridge Forensic Center, has gone through the roof, and that’s the paradox of what I do. When things are bad they’re normal. When they’re worse they’re good. It’s a gift and a curse that I have job security in this imperfect world, and as I take a shortcut through the center of the campus in the stifling heat, I tweak the talk I’m going to give at the Kennedy School of Government tomorrow night.
Cleverness, a play on words, provocative stories that are real, and maybe my sister Dorothy isn’t the hopeless tool I’ve always believed. She says that I have to be entertaining if I’m to get an auditorium full of jaded Ivy League intellectuals and policy makers to listen. Maybe they’ll even walk around in my shoes for once if I share the dark side, the underbelly, the scary basement no one wants to enter or acknowledge.
As long as I’m not expected to repeat insensitive jokes, certainly not the ones I constantly hear from the cops, rather dreadful slogans that end up on T-shirts and coffee cups. I’m not going to say our day begins when yours ends even if it’s true. Although I suppose it’s all right to quip that the more dire the straits the more necessary I am. Catastrophes are my calling. Dreadful news gets me out of bed. Tragedy is my bread and butter, and the cycle of life and death remains unbroken no matter our IQ.
This is how my sister thinks I should explain myself to hundreds of influential students, faculty, politicos and global leaders tomorrow night. In my opinion I shouldn’t need to explain myself at all. But apparently I do, Dorothy said over the phone last night while our elderly mother was ranting loudly in the background to her thieving South American housekeeper, whose name—no kidding—is Honesty. Apparently Honesty is stealing vast amounts of jewelry and cash again, hiding Mom’s pills, eating her food and rearranging her furniture in the hope she’ll trip and break a hip.
Honesty the housekeeper isn’t doing any such thing and never did or would, and sometimes having a nearly photographic memory isn’t to my advantage. I recall last night’s telephonic drama, including the parts in Spanish, hearing every word of it in my head. I can replay Dorothy’s rapid-fire self-assured voice advising me all the while about how not to lose an audience since clearly I will if left to my own devices. She told me:
Walk right up to the podium and scan the crowd with a deadpan face, and say: “Welcome. I’m Doctor Kay Scarpetta. I take patients without appointments and still make house calls. Wouldn’t you just die to have my hands all over you? Because it can be arranged.” And then you wink.
Who could resist? That’s what you should tell them, Kay! Something funny, sexy and non-PC. And they’re eating out of your hand. For once in your life you need to listen to your little sis very carefully. I didn’t get where I am by not knowing a thing or two about publicity and marketing.
And one of the biggest problems with deadbeat jobs, no pun intended, like working in funeral homes and morgues, is nobody knows the first thing about how to promote or sell anything because why bother? Well to be fair, funeral homes are better at it than where you work. It’s not like it’s part of your job description to make a dead person look presentable or care if the casket is pretty. So you have all of the disadvantages of the funeral business but nothing to sell and nobody to say thank you.
Throughout my career as a forensic pathologist my younger only sibling has managed to equate what I do with being a mortuary scientist or simply someone who deals with messes no one else wants to touch.
Somehow it’s the logical conclusion to my taking care of our dying father when I was a child. I became the go-to person when something was painful or disgusting and needed tending to or cleaning up. If an animal got run over or a bird flew into a window or our father had another nosebleed, my sister would run screaming to me. She still does if she needs something, and she never takes into account convenience or timing.
But at this juncture in life my attitude is the two of us aren’t getting any younger. I’ve decided to make a real effort to keep an open mind even if my sister might be the most selfish human being I’ve ever known. But she’s bright and talented, and I’m no saint either. I admit I’ve been stubborn about acknowledging her value, and that’s not fair.
Because it’s possible she really might know what she’s doing when she mandates that I should speak less like a legal brief or a lab report and more like a pundit or a poet. I need to turn up the volume, the brightness and the color, and I’ve been keeping that in mind as I polish my opening remarks, including cues such as underlines for emphasis and pauses for laughter.
I take a sip from a bottle of water that’s hot enough to brew tea. I nudge my dark glasses up as they continue to slip down my sweaty nose. The sun is a relentless blacksmith hammering in twilight’s fiery forge. Even my hair is hot as my low-heeled tan leather pumps click-click on bricks, my destination now about ten minutes out. Mentally I go through my talk:
Good evening Harvard faculty, students, fellow physicians, scientists and other distinguished guests.
As I scan the crowd tonight I see Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners, mathematicians and astrophysicists who are also writers, painters and musicians.
Such a remarkable collection of the best and the brightest, and we are extremely honored to have the governor here, and the attorney general, and several senators and congressmen in addition to members of the media, and business leaders. I see my good friend and former mentor General John Briggs hiding in the back, slinking low in his seat,cringingover the thought of my being up here. [Pause for laughter]
For those of you who don’t know, he’s the chief of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, the AFMES. In other words, General Briggs would be theforensic surgeon general of the United Stateswere there such a position. And in a little while he’s going to join me during the Q&A part of the program to discuss the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003.
We’re going to share what we’ve learned from materials science and aeromedicine, and also from the recoveries and examinations of the seven astronauts’ remains that were scattered over a fifty-some-mile scene in Texas …
I have to give Dorothy credit.
She’s dramatic and colorful, and I’m somewhat touched that she’s flying in for the lecture even if I have no idea why. She says she wouldn’t miss tomorrow night but I don’t believe her. My sister’s not been to Cambridge in the eight years I’ve headed the CFC. My mother hasn’t either, but she doesn’t like to travel and won’t anymore. I don’t know Dorothy’s excuse.
Only that she’s never been interested until now, and it’s a shame she had to choose tonight of all nights to fly to Boston. The first Wednesday of the month, barring an emergency, my husband Benton and I meet for dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club, where I’m not a member. He is and not because of his FBI status. That won’t get you any special favors at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other Ivy League institutions in the area.
But as a consulting forensic psychologist at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in nearby Belmont, my FBI criminal-intelligence-analyst husband can avail himself of the most marvelous libraries, museums, and scholars in the world anytime he wants. He can help himself to the Faculty Club to his heart’s content.
We can even reserve a guest room upstairs, and we have on more than one occasion been given enough whiskey or wine during dinner. But that’s not going to happen with Dorothy flying in, and I really shouldn’t have said yes when she asked me to pick her up later tonight and drop her off at her daughter Lucy’s house, which will get Benton and me home after midnight.
I don’t know why Dorothy asked me specifically unless it’s her way of making sure we get to spend a little alone time together. When I said yes I’d come and Benton would be with me, her response was “I’m sure. Well it doesn’t matter.” But when she said that I realized it does matter. She has something she wants to discuss with me privately, and even if we don’t get the chance tonight, we have time.
My sister left her return flight open-ended, and I can’t help but think how wonderful it would be if it turned out I’d always been wrong about her. Maybe her real reason for venturing north to New England is she feels the same way I do. Maybe she at long last wants to be friends.
How amazing if we become a united front when coping with our aging mother, with Lucy and her partner Janet, and with their adopted nine-year-old son Desi. And also their newest addition Tesla, a rescue bulldog puppy who’s staying with Benton and me in Cambridge for a while. Someone has to train her, and our greyhound Sock is getting old and likes the company.

1 (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
My shoes swish through the hot dry grass, and sweat trickles beneath my clothes, down my chest, my back. I’m moving again, seeking shade as the sun settles lower and the slanted light shifts.
Every time I escape the glare it finds me again, the walled-in center of the Harvard campus a maze with its greens and lawns, its quadrangles and courtyards connected by paths and walkways. The stately brick-and-stone buildings draped in ivy live up to the stereotype, and I remember what I felt when I was given a tour at the age of fifteen. It’s as if I’m back in time with every step I take, sweetly, sadly.
It was on one of my few trips outside of Florida during my senior year in high school when I began exploring colleges and what I might amount to in life. I’ll never forget walking exactly where I am now and experiencing a limbic rush at the same time I was self-conscious and out of place. The memory is interrupted when I’m startled by a vibration, what feels and sounds like a large insect buzzing.
I stop walking on the piping-hot sidewalk, looking around, noticing a drone flying high over the Yard. Then I realize the buzzing is my own phone muffled by my suit jacket pocket, where it’s tucked away from the heat and sun. I check to see who’s calling. It’s Cambridge Police Investigator Pete Marino, and I answer.
“Is there something going on that I don’t know about?” he says right off, and the connection is pretty bad.
“I don’t think so,” I puzzle as I bake on the bricks.
“Why are you walking? Nobody should be out walking in this shit.” He’s curt and sounds irritated, and I’m instantly alerted this isn’t a friendly call. “So what the hell got into you?”
“Errands.” I feel on guard, and his tone is annoying. “And I’m walking to meet Benton.”
“Meeting him for what reason?” Marino asks as our cellular connection continues to deteriorate from good to spotty, back to okay and then fractured before it’s better again.
“The reason I’m meeting my husband is to eat dinner,” I reply with a trace of irony, and I don’t want a tense time with yet another person today. “Is everything all right?”
“Maybe you should be the one telling me that.” His big voice suddenly booms painfully in my right ear. “How come you’re not with Bryce?”
My chatterbox chief of staff must have informed Marino about my refusing to get back into the car at Harvard Square, about my violation of protocol and reckless disregard for safety.
Before I can answer, Marino begins confronting me as if I’m a suspect in a crime. “You got out of the car about an hour and a half ago, were inside The Coop for maybe twenty minutes,” he’s saying. “And when you finally exited the store on Mass Ave? Where’d you go?”
“I had an errand on Arrow Street.” The sidewalks in the Yard form a brick spiderweb, and I find myself constantly making adjustments, taking the most efficient path, the quickest and coolest.
“What errand?” he asks as if it’s any of his business.
“At the Loeb Center, picking up tickets for Waitress, the Sara Bareilles musical,” I reply with forced civility that’s beginning to waver. “I thought Dorothy might like to go.”
“From what I hear you were acting as squirrelly as a shithouse rat.”
“Excuse me?” I stop walking.
“That’s the way it’s been described.”
“By whom? Bryce?”
“Nope. We got a nine-one-one call about you,” Marino says, and I’m stunned.
He informs me that his police department was contacted about “a young guy and his older lady friend” arguing in Harvard Square about 4:45 P.M.
This young guy was described as in his late twenties with sandy-brown hair, blue capri pants, a white T-shirt, sneakers, designer sunglasses, and a tattoo of a marijuana leaf. The tattoo isn’t right but the rest of it is.
Supposedly the concerned citizen who called the police recognized me from the news, and it’s disturbing that my clothing description is accurate. I do in fact have on a khaki skirt suit, a white blouse, and tan leather pumps. Unfortunately it’s also correct I have a run in my panty hose, and I’ll strip them off and toss them when I get where I’m going.
“Was I mentioned by name?” I can’t believe this.
“The person said words to the effect that Doctor Kay Scarpetta was arguing with her pothead boyfriend and stormed out of the car.” Marino passes along another outrage.
“I didn’t storm. I got out like a normal person while he stayed behind the wheel and continued to talk.”
“You sure he didn’t get out and open the door for you?”
“He never does and I don’t encourage it. Maybe that’s what someone saw and misinterpreted it as him being angry. Bryce opened his window so we could talk and that was it.”
Marino lets me know that next I became abusive and physically violent, slapping Bryce through the open window I just described while repeatedly jabbing him in the chest with my index finger. He was yelling as if I was causing him injury and terror, and to put it succinctly, what a crock of shit. But I don’t say anything because of the uneasiness in my gut, a hollow tight feeling that’s my equivalent of a red warning flag.
Marino’s a cop. I may have known him forever but Cambridge is his turf. Technically he could give me a hard time if he wants, and that’s a new and insane thought. He’s never arrested me, not that there’s ever been a good reason. But he’s never so much as given me a parking ticket or warned me not to jaywalk. Professional courtesy is a two-way street. But it can quickly become a dead end if you’re not careful.
“I admit I might have been a little out of sorts but it’s not true that I slapped anyone—” I start to say.
“Let’s start with the first part of your statement,” Marino the detective interrupts me. “How little’s a little?”
“Are you interviewing me now? Should you read me my rights? Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re a lawyer.”
“I’m not being funny, Marino.”
“I’m not either. A little out of sorts? I’m asking because he said you started yelling.”
“Before or after I slapped him?”
“Getting pissy doesn’t help anything, Doc.”
“I’m not pissy, and let’s be clear about who you’re even referencing. Let’s start with that. Because you know how Bryce exaggerates.”
“What I know is supposedly the two of you were fighting and disturbing the peace.”
“He actually said that?”
“The witness did.”
“What witness?”
“The one who called in the complaint.”
“Did you talk to this witness yourself?”
“I couldn’t find anybody who saw anything.”
“Then you must have looked,” I point out.
“After we got the call, I cruised the Square and asked around. Same thing I usually get. Nobody saw a damn thing.”
“Exactly. This is ridiculous.”
“I’m concerned someone might be out to get you,” he says, and we’ve been through this so many times over the years.
Marino lives and breathes his phobic conviction that something horrible is going to happen to me. But what he’s really worried about is his own self. It’s the same way he was with his former wife Doris before she finally ran off with a car salesman. Marino doesn’t understand the difference between neediness and love. They feel the same to him.
“If you want to waste taxpayer dollars you can check the CCTV cameras around the Square, especially in front of The Coop,” I suggest. “You’ll see I didn’t slap Bryce or anyone else.”
“I’m wondering if this has to do with your talk at the Kennedy School tomorrow night,” Marino says. “It’s been all over the news because it’s controversial. When you and General Briggs decided to make a presentation about the space shuttle blowing up maybe you should have expected a bunch of fruit loops to come out of the woodwork. Some of them think a UFO shot down the Columbia. And that’s why the space shuttle program was canceled.”
“I’m still waiting for a name of this alleged witness who lied to one of your nine-one-one operators.” I’m not interested in hearing him obsess about conspiracists and the pandemonium they might create at the Kennedy School event.
“He wouldn’t identify himself to the operator who took the call,” Marino says. “He was probably using one of those track phones you can buy right there at the CVS. It’s one of those numbers you can’t trace to anyone. Not that we’re done trying, but that’s how it’s looking, and it’s pretty much what we’re up against these days.”
I pass through the shade of a huge old oak with low-spreading branches that are too lush and green for September. The early evening heat presses down like a flaming hand, flattening and scorching the life out of everything, and I switch my shopping bag to my other arm. My messenger-style briefcase also has gotten very heavy, packed with a laptop, paperwork and other personal effects, the wide strap biting into my shoulder.
“Where are you exactly?” Marino’s voice is cutting in and out.
“Taking a shortcut.” I’m not interested in giving him my precise whereabouts. “And you? You’re muffled every other minute or talking in a barrel. Are you in your car?”
“What’d you do, take the Johnston Gate so you can cut through the Yard to Quincy Street?”
“How else would I go?” I’m evasive now in addition to being slightly breathless as I trudge along.
“So you’re near the church,” he says.
“Why are you asking? Are you coming to arrest me?”
“As soon as I find my handcuffs. Maybe you’ve seen them?”
“Maybe ask whoever you’re dating these days?”
“You’re gonna exit the Yard through the gate across from the museums. You know, at the light that will be on your left on the other side of the wall.” It seems like a directive rather than an assumption or a question.
“Where are you?” as my suspicions grow.
“What I just suggested would be most direct,” he says. “Past the church, past the Quad.”

2 (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
I walk through a black wrought-iron gate in the brick wall bordering the Yard, and I look up and down Quincy Street.
On the other side of it the entire block is taken up by the recently renovated brick-and-concrete Harvard Art Museum that includes six levels of galleries under a glass pyramid roof. I wait near a line of parked cars glaring in angled sunlight that is slowly waning, and I check the time and weather on my phone.
It’s still an oppressive ninety-three degrees at 6:40 P.M., and I don’t know what I was thinking a little while ago. But I simply couldn’t take it anymore as Bryce prattled nonstop while he drove along the river toward the Anderson Memorial Bridge, turning right at the red-roofed Weld Boathouse, following John F. Kennedy Street to Massachusetts Avenue.
I didn’t think I could listen to one more word, and I instructed him not to wait for me as I climbed out of the SUV in front of the college bookstore, The Coop. Harvard Square with its shops and Red Line subway stop is always populated even in the most miserable weather. There’s going to be foot traffic and a fairly steady panhandling population 24/7.
It wasn’t an appropriate place for Bryce to roll down his window and argue like a boy-toy lover with a lady boss mature enough to be a cougar. He wouldn’t listen or leave me, and started sounding slightly hysterical, which unfortunately is his personality. He wanted me to state “for the record” why I no longer desired his assistance and to inform him “chapter and verse” if he’d “done something.” He kept repeating that he just knew he’d “done something” and wouldn’t listen each time I denied it.
The curious were watching like hawks. A homeless man sitting on the sidewalk in front of CVS, shading himself with his cardboard sign, stared at us with the beady eyes of a magpie. It wasn’t exactly an ideal spot to park a vehicle that has OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER and the CFC’s crest, the scales of justice and caduceus painted in blue on the doors. The SUV’s back windows are blacked out, and I understand the impact when one of our marked vehicles pulls up.
After I managed to shoo Bryce off, I shopped inside The Coop for gifts for my mother and sister. I made sure my clingy chief of staff really was gone when I finally emerged from the air-conditioning into the brutal heat, heading out on Brattle Street.
I swung by the American Repertory Theater, the ART in the Loeb Center, to pick up six tickets for Waitress, having reserved the best orchestra seats in the house. After that I backtracked on Massachusetts Avenue, cutting through the Yard and ending up where I am now on Quincy Street.
I pass the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts on my left, and I must look like a holy mess. After all the trouble I went to before my ill-advised ride, showering in my office, changing into a suit that’s now wrinkled and sweat-stained. I dabbed on Benton’s favorite Amorvero perfume that he finds in Italy. It’s the signature fragrance of the Hotel Hassler in Rome, where he proposed to me. But I can’t smell the exotic scent anymore as I sniff my wrist, waiting at an intersection. Heat rises in shimmering waves from the tar-smelling pavement, and I hear Marino’s big voice before I see him.
“You know what they say about mad Englishmen and dogs going out in this shit?”
I turn around at the garbled cliché and he’s stopped at a light, the driver’s window open of his unmarked midnight-blue SUV. Now I know why the reception was so bad when we talked a moment ago. It’s what I suspected. He’s been cruising the area looking for me, talking to people in the Square. He turns on his emergency flashers and whelps his siren, cutting between cars in the opposite lane, heading toward me.
Marino double-parks, climbs out, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing him in a suit and tie. Smart attire wasn’t designed with the likes of him in mind. Nothing really fits him except his own skin.
Almost six-foot-five, he weighs two hundred and fifty pounds give or take thirty. His tan shaved head is smooth like polished stone, his hands and feet the size of boats. Marino’s shoulders are the width of a door, and he could bench-press five of me he likes to brag.
He’s handsome in a primitive way with a big ruddy face, heavy brow and prominent nose. He has a caveman jaw and strong white teeth, and he tends to explode out of business clothes like the Incredible Hulk. Nothing dressy and off the rack looks quite right on him, and part of the problem is he shouldn’t be left to his own devices when he shops, which isn’t often or planned. It would be helpful if he would clean out his closets and garage occasionally but I’m pretty sure he never has.
As he steps up on the sidewalk I notice the sleeves of his navy-blue suit jacket are above the wrist. His trouser cuffs are high-waters that show his gray tube socks, and he has on black leather trainers that aren’t laced all the way up. His tie is almost color coordinated and just as unfashionable, black-and-red-striped and much too wide, possibly from the 1980s when people wore polyester bell-bottoms, Earth Shoes and leisure suits.
He has his reasons for what he wears, and the tie no doubt is woven of special memories, maybe a bullet he dodged, a perfect game he bowled, the biggest fish he ever caught or an especially good first date. Marino makes a point of never throwing out something that matters to him. He’ll wander into thrift shops and junk stores looking for a past he liked better than the here and now, and it’s ironic that a badass would be so sentimental.
“Come on. I’ll drop you off.” His eyes are blacked out by vintage Ray-Ban aviator glasses I gave to him a few birthdays ago.
“Why would I need a ride?” The entrance to the brick path leading from the concrete sidewalk to the Faculty Club is just up ahead, a minute’s walk from here at most.
But he isn’t going to take no for an answer. He steers me off the sidewalk, raising a big mitt of a hand to stop traffic as we cross the street. He’s not holding me but I’m not exactly free as he guides me into the front seat of his police vehicle, where I struggle awkwardly with my bags while the run in my panty hose races from my knee down to the back of my shoe as if trying to escape Marino’s madness.
I can’t help but think, Here we go again. Another spectacle. To some it might look like I’m being picked up and questioned by the police, and I wonder if I’ll be hearing that next.
“Why are you riding around looking for me, since it seems that’s what you’re doing?” I ask as he shuts the door. “Seriously, Marino.” But he can’t hear me.
He walks around and climbs into the driver’s seat, and the interior is spotless and tricked out with every siren, light, toolbox, storage chest and piece of crime-scene equipment known to man. The dark vinyl is slick and I smell Armor All. The cloth seats hardly look sat on, the console as clean as new and the glass sparkles as if the SUV was just detailed. Marino is meticulous about his vehicles. His house, office and attire are another story.
“Did I tell you how much I hate the damn phone?” he starts complaining as he shuts his door with a thud. “Some things we don’t need to be talking about on a wireless device that has access to every damn thing about your life.”
“Why are you dressed up?”
“I had a wake. Nobody you know.”
“I see.” I don’t really.
Marino isn’t the type to put on a suit and tie for a wake. He’ll barely do that for a funeral or a wedding, and he’s certainly not dressing up in weather like this unless he has a special reason he’s not saying.
“Well you look nice, and you smell good. Let me see. Cinnamon, sandalwood, a hint of citrus and musk. British Sterling always reminds me of high school.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I didn’t know we had a subject.”
“I’m talking about spying. Remember when the biggest worry was someone riding around with a scanner,” he says. “Trying to hack into your house phone that way? Remember when there weren’t cameras in your face everywhere? I stopped by the Square a while ago to see who might be hanging around, and some snotty asshole college kid started filming me with his phone.”
“How do you know it was a college kid?”
“Because he looked like a spoiled little brat in his flip-flops, baggy shorts and Rolex watch.”
“What were you doing?”
“Just asking a few questions about what they might have seen earlier. You know, there’s always the usual suspects hanging out in front of The Coop, the CVS. Not as many in this heat but they’d rather be free and footloose in the great unwashed outdoors than in a nice shelter out of the elements. Then the kid was pointing his phone at me like I’m going to shoot someone for no reason and maybe he’ll get lucky and catch it on film. Meanwhile some damn drone was buzzing around. I hate technology,” he adds grumpily.
“Please tell me why I’m sitting here because clearly I don’t need a ride since I’ve already arrived at my destination.”
“Yeah you don’t need a ride, all right. I’d say the damage is already done.” He looks me up and down, his sunglasses lingering too long on the run in my hose.
“And I’m sure you didn’t pick me up just to tell me that.”
“Nope. I want to know what’s really going on with Bryce.” Marino’s Ray-Bans seem to pin me in my seat.
“I didn’t know anything was—beyond his being more frazzled and annoying than usual.”
“Exactly. And why might that be? Think about it.”
“Okay, I’m thinking about it. Possibly because of the heat and how busy work has been. As you well know we’ve had an overload of weather-related cases, and he and Ethan are having trouble with that same abusive neighbor, and let’s see … I believe Bryce’s grandmother had her gallbladder removed the other week. In other words there’s been a lot of stress. But who the hell knows what’s going on with him or anyone, Marino?”
“If there’s a reason we shouldn’t trust Bryce, now’s the time to spill it, Doc.”
“It seems to me we’ve discussed this enough,” I say over the blasting air-conditioning, which is going to chill me to my marrow because my clothes are so damp. “I don’t have time to ride around with you right now, and I need to make some effort to clean up before dinner.”
I start to get out, and he reaches for my arm again.

3 (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
“Stay.” He says it as if he’s addressing his German shepherd Quincy, who’s currently not in the cage in back. As it turns out, in addition to being a failed cadaver dog, he’s also a fair-weather man’s best friend.
Named after the legendary medical examiner on TV, this Quincy doesn’t venture out to any crime scene when the conditions are inclement. I suspect Marino’s furry sidekick is safely at home right now on his Tempur-Pedic bed in the den with the air-conditioning and DOGTV on.
“I’m going to drop you off the last damn fifty feet. Sit and enjoy the cool,” Marino says.
I move my arm because I don’t like being grabbed even gently.
“You need to hear me out.” He shoves the gearshifter in drive. “Like I said, I didn’t want to go into it over the phone. We sure as hell can’t know who’s spying anymore, right? And if Bryce is compromising the CFC’s security or yours I want us to find out before it’s too late.”
I remind Marino that we use personal proprietary smartphones and have the benefit of encryption, firewalls and all sorts of special and highly secure apps. It’s unlikely that our conversations or e-mails can be hacked. My computer-genius-niece Lucy, the CFC cyber-crimes expert, makes very sure of that.
“Are you talking with her at all about any of this?” I ask. “If you’re so worried we’re being spied on don’t you think you could take it up with her? Since that’s her job?”
Just as I’m saying this my phone rings and it’s Lucy requesting her own version of FaceTime, meaning she’d like us to see each other as we talk.
“What timing,” I say right off as her keenly pretty face fills the display on my phone. “We were just talking about you.”
“I’ve only got a minute.” Her eyes are green lasers. “Three things. First, my mom just called and her plane is going to be delayed a little bit. Well, I shouldn’t say a little bit even if that’s how she described it. We don’t know for how long at this point. And I’m not a hundred percent sure what’s going on with air traffic control. But there’s a hold on all outbound traffic at the moment.”
“What’s she being told?” I ask as my heart sinks.
“They’re changing gates or something. Mom and I didn’t talk long but she said it may be closer to ten thirty or eleven by the time she gets here.”
It’s nice of my sister to let me know, it flashes in my mind. As busy as Benton and I are, and she wouldn’t think twice about making us wait at the airport half the night.
“Second, the latest just landed from Tailend Charlie.” Lucy’s eyes are moving as she talks, and I try to figure out where she is. “I haven’t listened to it yet. As soon as I’m freed up from the nine-one-one bullshit call I will.”
“I assume what was sent was another audio clip in Italian,” I point out because Lucy isn’t fluent and wouldn’t be able to translate all or possibly any of it.
She says yes, that at a glance the latest communication from Tailend Charlie is like the other eight I’ve received since the first day of September. The anonymous threat was sent at the same time of day, is the same type of file and the recording is the same length. But she hasn’t listened, and I tell her we’ll deal with it later.
Then she asks, “Where are you? In whose car?” She’s vivid against a backdrop of complete darkness, as if she’s in a cave.
Yet her rose-gold hair is shiny in ambient light that wavers like a movie is playing in the background. Shadows flicker on her face, and it occurs to me she might be inside the Personal Immersion Theater, what at the CFC we call the PIT.
I tell her I’m with Marino, and that brings her to the third and most important point; she says, “Have you seen what’s on Twitter?”
“If you’re asking then I’m sure it’s not good,” I reply.
“I’m sending it to you now. Gotta go.” And then Lucy is gone from the small rectangular screen just like that.
“What?” Marino is scowling. “What’s on Twitter?”
“Hold on.” I open the e-mail Lucy just sent, and click on the tweet she cut-and-pasted. “Well as you suspected, there appears to be a video of you talking to some of the usual suspects in Harvard Square.”
I show it to him and can feel his wounded pride as he watches the distant figure of himself lumbering about, barking questions at homeless people loitering in front of various businesses. Marino herds one man in and out of the shade as this person tries to duck questions in a most animated fashion. The indistinguishable noise of Marino raising his voice while the man shuffles from pillar to post is embarrassing. And the caption is worse. OccupyScarpetta with a hashtag.
“What the hell?” Marino says.
“I guess the gist is that you’re territorial about me and were asking a lot of questions because of it. I presume that’s how my name ended up in the tweet.” His lack of a response answers my question. “But I doubt it will do any real damage except to your ego,” I add. “It’s silly, that’s all. Just ignore it.”
He isn’t listening, and I really do need to go.
“I’d like a minute to clean up.” It’s my way of telling Marino I’ve had enough of being held hostage in his truck full of gloom and doom. “So if you’ll unlock the doors and release me please? Maybe we can talk tomorrow or some other time.”
Marino pulls away from his illegal double-parking spot. He eases to the curb in front of the Faculty Club, set back on acres of grassy lawn behind a split-rail paling.
“You’re not taking this seriously enough.” He looks at me.
“Which part?”
“We’re under surveillance, and the question is who and why. For sure someone’s got Bryce tagged. How else can you explain the marijuana tattoo?”
“There’s nothing to explain. He doesn’t have a tattoo of any description.”
“He does. Specifically, a marijuana leaf, as it was referred to in the call,” Marino says.
“No way. He’s so afraid of needles he won’t even get a flu shot.”
“Obviously you don’t know the story. The tattoo is right here.” Marino leans over and jabs a thick finger at his outer left ankle, which I can’t see very well from where I’m sitting even if I knew to look. “It’s fake,” he says. “I guess you didn’t know that part.”
“It would seem I don’t know much.”
“The marijuana leaf is a temporary tattoo. It’s a joke from last night when he and Ethan were with friends. And typical of Bryce? He figured he could wash it off before he went to bed, but a lot of these temporary tattoos can last for the better part of a week.”
“Obviously you’ve talked to him.” I look at Marino’s flushed shiny face. “Did he reach out to you?”
“I got hold of him when I heard about the nine-one-one call. When I asked him about the tattoo he sent me a selfie of it.”
I turn away to look in the sideview mirror at cars moving past. It occurs to me that I don’t know what Benton is driving tonight. It could be his Porsche Cayenne Turbo S or his Audi RS 7. It could be a bureau car. I was busy with the dogs, with Sock and Tesla, when my husband left this morning at dawn, and I didn’t see or hear him drive away.
“The tattoo’s a problem, Doc,” Marino says. “It gives credibility to the phone call. It pretty much proves that whoever complained about you and Bryce disturbing the peace saw you—unless there’s some other reason this person knows about the tattoo and what the two of you were wearing.”
I recognize the sound of a turbocharged engine changing pitch, and I listen as it gets closer, louder.
“You’re still picking her up tonight?” Marino asks.
“Who?” I watch Benton’s blacked-out RS 7 coupe glide past slowly, downshifting, sliding into the space in front of us.
“Dorothy.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Well if you need any help I’m happy to get her,” Marino says. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that anything I can do, just say the word. Especially now since it’s sounding like she’s going to be so late.”
I don’t recall telling him that my sister was coming—much less who was picking her up at the airport. He also didn’t just hear this for the first time when Lucy called a moment ago. It’s obvious he already knew.
“That’s nice of you,” I say to him, and his dark glasses are riveted to the back of the Audi as Benton maneuvers it so close against the curb that a knife blade barely would fit between it and the titanium rims.
The matte-black sedan rumbles in a growly purr like a panther about to lunge. Through the tinted back windshield I can make out the shape of my husband’s beautiful head, and his thick hair that’s been white for as long as I’ve known him. He sits straight and wide-shouldered, as still as a jungle cat, his gray-tinted glasses watching us in the rearview mirror. I open my door, and the heat slams me like a wall when I step back out into it, and I thank Marino for the ride even though I didn’t want it.
I watch Benton climb out of his car. He unfolds his long lank self, and my husband always looks newly minted. His pearl-gray suit is as fresh as when he put it on this morning, his blue-and-gray silk tie perfectly knotted, his engraved antique white-gold cuff links glinting in the early evening light.
He could grace the pages of Vanity Fair with his strong fine features, his platinum hair and horn-rim glasses. He’s slender and ropy strong, and his quiet calm belies the iron in his bones and the fire in his belly. You’d never know what Benton Wesley is truly like to look at him right now in his perfectly tailored suit, hand-stitched because he comes from old New England money.
“Hi,” he says, taking the shopping bag from me but I hold on to my briefcase.
He watches Marino’s dark blue SUV pull back out into traffic, and the heat rising off the pavement makes the air look thick and dirty.
“I hope your afternoon’s been better than mine.” I’m conscious of how wilted I am compared to my perfectly put-together husband. “I’m sorry I’m such a train wreck.”
“What possessed you to walk?”
“Not you too. Did Bryce send out a be on the lookout for a deranged woman with a run in her stockings prowling the Harvard campus?”
“But you really shouldn’t have, Kay. For lots of reasons.”
“You must know about the nine-one-one call. It would seem to be the headline of the day.”
He doesn’t answer but he doesn’t need to. He knows. Bryce probably called him because I doubt Marino would.

4 (#uae2f268a-757e-5538-a906-04752c87c64c)
A bicycle bell jingles cheerily on the sidewalk behind us, and we step out of the way as a young woman rides past.
She brakes in front of us as if she might be going to the same place we are, and I offer a commiserating smile when she dismounts, wearing sporty dark glasses, hot and red-faced. Unclipping the chin strap of her robin’s-egg-blue bike helmet, she takes it off, and I notice her pulled-back long brown hair, her blue shorts and beige tank top. Instantly I get a weird feeling.
I take in her blue paisley printed neckerchief, her off-white Converse sneakers and gray-and-white-striped bike socks as she stares at her phone, then at the Georgian brick Faculty Club as if expecting someone. She types with her thumbs, lifts her phone to her ear.
“Hey,” she says to whoever she’s calling. “I’m here,” and I realize the reason she’s familiar is I met her about a half hour ago.
She was at the Loeb Center when I was buying the theater tickets. I remember seeing her as I wandered into the lobby to use the ladies’ room. At most she’s in her early twenties, and she has a British accent, what strikes me as a slightly affected or theatrical one. I was aware of it when she was talking with other staff and several actors at the American Repertory Theater.
She was across the room taping index cards of recipes on walls already covered with hundreds of them. In this particular production of Waitress members of the audience are invited to share their own favorite treats and tasty family secrets, and before I left I wandered over to take a look. I love to cook, and my sister loves sweets. The least I could do is make something special for her while she’s here. I was jotting down a recipe for peanut butter pie when the young woman paused as she was taping up another card.
“I warn you. It’s lethal,” she said to me, and she had on a whimsical gold skull necklace that made me think of pirates.
“Excuse me?” I glanced around, not sure at first that she was talking to me.
“The peanut butter pie. But it’s better if you add chocolate, dribble it over the top. The real stuff. And don’t swap out the graham-cracker crust for anything you think might be better. Because it won’t be, I promise. And use real butter—as you can tell I’m not into low-fat anything.”
“You don’t need to be,” I replied because she’s wiry and strong.
This same young woman is in front of Benton and me on the sidewalk along Quincy Street, holding her iPhone in its ice-blue case, clamping it back into its black plastic holder, and she accidently fumbles her water bottle, sending it tumbling. It thuds to the sidewalk, rolling in our direction, and Benton bends down to pick it up.
“Sorry. Thanks very much.” She looks hot, her face flushed and dripping.
“You definitely don’t want to be without this today.” He returns the bottle to her, and she secures it in its holder as I notice a young man trotting through the grass of the Faculty Club.
Her rimless sunglasses are directed at him as she remounts the bike, steadying herself, the toes of her sneakers touching the sidewalk. He’s dark and thin, in slacks and a button-up shirt as if he works in an office. Then he’s in front of her, hot and grinning, handing her a FedEx envelope that’s labeled but not sealed.
“Thanks,” he says. “Just put the tickets in and it’s ready to go.”
“I’ll drop it off on my way home. See you later.” She kisses him on the lips.
Then he trots away, back toward the Faculty Club, where I gather he must work. She puts on her helmet, not bothering with the strap that’s supposed to be snug under her chin. Turning to me, she flashes a smile.
“You’re the peanut-butter-pie lady,” she says.
“What a nice way to be characterized. Hello again.” I smile back at her, and I almost remind her to lock her chin strap.
But I don’t know her. I don’t want to be overbearing, especially after being accused of yelling at Bryce and disturbing the peace.
“Please be careful out here,” I say instead. “The heat index is hazardous.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” She grips the flat riser handlebars, pushing down the pedals with long strong strokes.
“Not always,” Benton says.
I feel the hot air stir sluggishly as she rides past.
“Enjoy the pie and the play!” she tosses back at us, and she reminds me of my niece, sharp-featured, bold and extremely fit.
I watch her bare legs pumping, her calf muscles bunching as she picks up speed, cutting across the street, threading through the same gate I used earlier. I remember being that age when the best and worst was before me, and I wanted to know everything up front as if my fate could be negotiated. Who would I be with and what would I become? Where would I live and would I make a difference to anyone? I speculated, and at times tried to force my life in the direction I thought it should go. I wouldn’t do that now.
I watch the young woman’s retreating figure getting smaller, more distant and remote as she pedals through the Yard, between the sprawling brick Pusey and Lamont libraries. I don’t understand why anyone would want to know the future. I wonder if she does, and the conservative answer is probably. But the more likely one is absolutely. Whereas I don’t anymore.
“What did Marino want?” Benton lightly, affectionately touches my back as we follow the sidewalk.
Up ahead on our left is the split-rail paling, and set far back is the brick-and-white-trimmed neo-Georgian building, two stories with a glass-domed conservatory. The four tall chimneys rise proudly and symmetrically from different corners, and ten dormers stand sentry along the slate hipped roof.
The long walkway of dark red pavers winds through rockery and ornamental shrubs. The sun has dipped behind buildings, and the oppressive air is like a steam room that’s slowly cooling.
Benton has taken off his suit jacket, and it’s neatly folded over his arm as we walk past the bright pink bottlebrushes of summer sweet, purple mountain laurel, and white and blue hydrangeas. None of it stirs in the breathless air, and only a scattering of dark green leaves shows the slightest blush of red. The longer it’s hot and parched, the more unlikely it is that there will be much in the way of fall colors this year.
As Benton and I talk, I do the best I can to answer his questions about Marino’s intentions, explaining he was emphatic that he didn’t want me out walking by myself. But I don’t think it’s his only agenda. I have the distinct impression that Benton doesn’t either.
“At any rate,” I continue telling the story, “he was out and about all the while he was on the phone, basically bird-dogging me while he pretended he wasn’t. Then he drove me the last fifty feet, and that’s where you found me a few minutes ago.”
“The last fifty feet?” Benton repeats.
“It’s what he mandated. I was to get into his car and he would drive me the last fifty feet. Specifically the last damn fifty feet.”
“Obviously what he wanted was to have a private face-to-face conversation with you. Maybe it’s true he didn’t want to talk over the phone. Or he used that as an excuse. Or it could be both,” Benton says as if he knows, and he probably does because it’s not hard for him to profile Pete Marino.
“So tell me why you decided to go for a stroll all by yourself, dressed in a suit and carrying heavy bags?” Benton gets around to that. “Aren’t you the one who warns everybody about the heat index—the way you just did with the woman on the bicycle a minute ago?”
“I suppose that’s why there’s the cliché about practicing what you preach.”
“This isn’t about practicing what you preach. It’s about something else.”
“I thought a walk might do me good,” I reply, and he’s silent. “And besides I had the theater tickets to pick up.”
I explain that I also had gifts to find at the college bookstore, The Coop. The T-shirt, nightgown and handsome coffee-table book may not be the most original presents I’ve ever bought but they were the best I could muster after wandering the aisles. As Benton knows all too well, my sister is difficult to shop for.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what she likes,” I’m saying, and he isn’t answering.
A popular musical and a peanut butter pie, for example, and Dorothy also will be very pleased with the skimpy Harvard tee that she can wear with her skimpier leggings or jeans. Her Ivy League shirt will be amply filled by her surgically enhanced bosom, and no doubt she’ll inspire many scintillating conversations in the bars of South Beach and Margaritaville.
“And the Cambridge photography book is something she can carry back to Miami as if it was her idea,” I explain as Benton listens without a word, the way he does when he has his own opinion and it’s different from mine. “And that’s exactly how my sister will play it when she shares pictures of Harvard, MIT, the Charles River with Mom. It will be all about Dorothy, which is fine if it means Mom enjoys her gift and feels remembered.”
“It’s not fine,” Benton says as we pass through the deepening shadows of tall boxwood hedges.
“Some things won’t change. It has to be fine.”
“You can’t let Dorothy get to you this way.” His tinted glasses look at me.
“I assume you’ve heard the nine-one-one call.” I change the subject because my sister has wasted quite enough of my time. “Apparently Marino has a copy but he wouldn’t play it for me.”
Benton doesn’t respond, and if he’s listened to the recording he’s not going to tell me. Had he been made aware of it, he might have requested a copy from the Cambridge Police Department, citing that the FBI wants to make sure a government official wasn’t misbehaving or being threatened.
My husband could come up with anything he wants to gain access to the 911 recording, and he’s quite friendly with the commissioner, the mayor, pretty much everybody who’s powerful around here. He didn’t need Marino’s help.
“As you may or may not know, someone complained about me supposedly disturbing the peace.” It sounds even more bizarre as I hear myself describe such a thing to someone whose typical day involves terrorists and serial killers.
I glance at him as we near the proud brick building in the gathering dusk, and his face doesn’t register whatever reaction he might be having.
“I assume Bryce told you about it after Marino confronted him, wanting to know exactly what happened in Harvard Square when he dropped me off,” I add.
“Marino’s feeling insecure about you,” Benton says, and I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question.
“He’s always insecure,” I reply. “But he’s also acting oddly. He was pushy about wanting to drive to the airport. He was overly interested in helping pick up Dorothy.”
“I wonder how he knows she’s coming here. Did you tell him? Because I didn’t.”
“Since we had almost no warning, I really haven’t had a chance to tell hardly anyone,” I reply. “Maybe Lucy mentioned it to him.”
“Or Desi might have. He and Marino have gotten to be real pals,” Benton says, and he can mask his emotions better than anyone I know but he can’t fool me.
I can tell when something hurts him, and the blossoming relationship between Marino and Desi obviously does. I’ve worried it would as Marino spends increasing amounts of time with a mercurial and insatiably inquisitive boy whose genetics are largely unknown to us. We don’t know what to expect. We can’t predict who he might take after.
It should be Janet’s late sister Natalie since it was her egg she’d had frozen when she was only in her twenties. Long before she did anything about it she was researching surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I remember her talking about being a single parent, and in retrospect it seems she had a premonition that her days on earth would be few. And they were. Seven years after Desi was born she would die of pancreatic cancer. It’s such a shame she’s not here to watch him change rapidly like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.
“Look, I get it,” Benton is saying. “I’m not nearly as much fun as Marino. He’s already taken Desi fishing, started teaching him about guns, given him his first sip of beer.”
“Fishing is one thing but I’m not happy if Lucy and Janet think the rest of it is okay.”
“The point is—”
“The point is that you don’t need to be fun the same way Marino is,” I reply. “In fact I’m hoping you might be a good example.”
“Of what? A boring adult?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a sexy brilliant federal agent who drives fast cars and wears designer clothes. Desi just doesn’t know you yet.”
“Apparently Desi does know me. Marino told him I’m a retired school principal, and Desi asked me about it. I told him it was a hundred years ago when I was just out of college and working on my master’s degree,” Benton says.
“Did you explain that when you were getting started, a lot of FBI agents came from educational and legal backgrounds? That in other words yours was simply a sensible career path?” Even as I say it I’m aware that it’s too much explanation, and the well has been poisoned.
“There was no reason for Marino to bring that up except to make Desi afraid of me. Which is harmful and ill-advised because he’s headstrong enough already. I’ve noticed that increasingly he doesn’t like being told what to do.”
“I agree he doesn’t like to be controlled. But then most of us don’t.”
“Marino’s goal is to be Good Time Uncle Pete while I’m the school principal,” Benton says, and I watch the darkness settle heavily, hotly.
We’ve reached the wide brick patio arranged with wooden tables, red umbrellas, and potted shrubs and flower beds. On this last Wednesday of September, there shouldn’t be an empty chair out here. But there’s no one sitting outside the Faculty Club, no one in the world but us.

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