Point of Origin

'I can't entertain the thought that people like her will win,' I said quietly as I sipped red burgundy. 'I will never think that.'

'Pie in the sky.'

'No, Marino. Faith.'

'Yo.' He swallowed more bourbon. 'Fucking faith. You know how many guys I've known to drop dead of heart attacks or get killed on the job? How many of them do you think had faith? Probably every goddamn one of them. Nobody thinks they're gonna die, Doc. You and me don't think it, no matter how much we know. My health sucks, okay? You think I don't know I'm taking a bite of a poison cookie everyday? Can I help it? Naw. I'm just an old slob who has to have his steak biscuits and whiskey and beer. I've given up giving a shit about what the doctors say. So soon enough, I'm gonna stoop over in the saddle and be outta here, you know?'

His voice was getting husky and he was beginning to get maudlin.

'So a bunch of cops will come to my funeral, and you'll tell the next detective to come along how it wasn't all that bad to work with me,' he went on.

'Marino, go to sleep,' I said. 'And you know that's not how I feel at all. I can't even think of something happening to you, you big idiot.'

'You really mean that?' He brightened a bit.

'You know damn well I do,' I said, and I was exhausted, too.

He finished his bourbon and softly rattled the ice in the glass, but I didn't respond, because he'd had enough.

'Know what, Doc?' he said thickly. 'I like you a lot, even if you are a pain in the fucking ass.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I'll see you in the morning.'

'It is morning.'

He rattled ice some more.

'Go to sleep,' I said.

I did not turn off my bedside lamp until two A.M., and thank God it was Fielding's turn to spend Saturday in the morgue. It was almost nine when I got motivated to put my feet on the floor, and birds were raucous in my garden, and the sun was bouncing light off the world like a manic child with a ball. My kitchen was so bright it was almost white, and stainless steel appliances were like mirrors. I made coffee and did what I could to clear my head as I thought of the files downloaded into my computer. I thought of opening sliders and windows to enjoy spring air, and then Carrie's face was before me again.

I went into the great room to check on Marino. He slept the way he lived, struggling against his physical existence as if it were the enemy, the blanket kicked practically to the middle of the floor, pillows beaten into shape, and sheets twisted around his legs.

'Good morning,' I said.

'Not yet,' he mumbled.

He turned over and punched the pillow to submission under his head. He wore blue boxer shorts and an undershirt that stopped six inches short of covering his swollen belly, and I always marveled that men were not shy about fat the way women were. In my own way I very much cared about staying in shape, and when my clothes starting feeling tight around the waist, both my general disposition and libido turned much less agreeable.

'You can sleep a few more minutes,' I said to him.

I gathered up the blanket and spread it across him. He resumed snoring like a wounded wild boar, and I moved to the kitchen table and called Benton at his New York hotel.

'I hope I didn't wake you,' I said.

'Actually, I was almost out the door. How are you?'

He was warm but distracted.

'I'd be better if you were here and she were back behind bars.'

'The problem is, I know her patterns and she knows I know them. So I may as well not know them, if you see what I mean,' he said in that controlled tone that meant he was angry. 'Last night, several of us disguised ourselves as homeless people and went down into the tunnels in the Bowery. A lovely way to spend the evening, I might add. We revisited the spot where Gault was killed.'

Benton was always very careful to say where Gault was killed instead of where you killed Gault.

'I am convinced she's gone back there and will again,' he went on. 'And not because she misses him, but that any reminder of the violent crimes they committed together excites her. The thought of his blood excites her. For her it's a sexual high, a power rush that she's addicted to, and you and I both know what that means, Kay. She'll need a fix soon, if she hasn't already gotten one that we just haven't found out about yet. I'm sorry to be a doomsayer, but I have a gut feeling that whatever she does is going to be far worse than what she did before.'

'It's hard to imagine anything could be worse than that,' I said, though I really did not mean it.

Whenever I had thought that human beings could get no worse, they did. Or perhaps it was simply that primitive evil seemed more shocking in a civilization of highly evolved humans who traveled to Mars and communicated through cyberspace.

'And so far no sign of her,' I said. 'Not even a hint.'

'We've gotten hundreds of leads going nowhere. NYPD's set up a special task force, as you know, and there's a command center with guys taking calls twenty-four hours a day.'

'How much longer will you stay up there?'

'Don't know.'

'Well, I'm sure if she's still in the area, she knows damn well where you are. The New York Athletic Club, where you always stay. Just two buildings from where she and Gault had a room back then.' I was upset again. 'I guess that's the Bureau's idea of sticking you in a shark cage and waiting for her to come and get it.'

'A good analogy,' he said. 'Let's hope it works.'

'And what if it does?' I said as fear cut through my blood and made me angrier. 'I wish you'd come home and let the FBI do its job. I can't get over it, you retire and they don't give you the time of day until they want to use you for bait…!'

'Kay…'

'How can you let them use you…'

'It's not like that. This is my choice, a job I have to finish. She was my case from the start, and as far as I'm concerned, she still is. I can't just relax at the beach knowing she's loose and going to kill again. How can I just look the other way when you, Lucy, Marino - when all of us are very possibly in danger?'

'Benton, don't turn into a Captain Ahab, okay? Don't let this become your obsession. Please.'

He laughed.

'Take me seriously, goddamn it.'

'I promise I'll stay away from white whales.'

'You're already chasing the hell out of one.'

'I love you, Kay.'

As I followed the hallway to my office, I wondered why I bothered saying the same old words to him. I knew his behavior almost as well as I knew my own, and the idea that he wouldn't be doing exactly what he was right now was about as unthinkable as my letting another forensic pathologist take over the Warrenton case because it was my right to take it easy at this stage in my life.

I turned on the light in my spacious paneled office, and opened the blinds to let the morning in. My work space adjoined my bedroom, and not even my housekeeper knew that all of the windows in my private quarters, like those in my downtown office, were bulletproof glass. It wasn't just the Carries of the world who worried me. Unfortunately, there were the countless convicted killers who blamed me for their convictions, and most of them did not stay locked up forever. I had gotten my share of letters from violent offenders who promised to come see me when they got out. They liked the way I looked or talked or dressed. They would do something about it.

The depressing truth, though, was that one did not have to be a detective or profiler or chief medical examiner to be a potential target of predators. Most victims were vulnerable. They were in their cars or carrying groceries into their homes or walking through a parking lot, simply, as the saying goes, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I logged onto America Online and found Lucy's ATF repository research files in my mailbox. I executed a print command and returned to the kitchen for more coffee.

Marino walked in as I was contemplating something to eat. He was dressed, his shirttail hanging out, his face dirty with stubble.