Benton took a deep, quiet breath. He pressed his lips together and wondered when it was, exactly, that he’d begun to lose faith in himself and his ability to read his environment and react accordingly. For as far back as he could remember, he had possessed the uncanny ability to size up people at a glance or a quick listen. Scarpetta called it his party trick. He’d meet someone or overhear a snippet of a conversation, and that was it. Rarely was he wrong.
But he’d completely missed the danger at the door this time, and still didn’t fully comprehend how he could have been so devastatingly obtuse. He’d watched Pete Marino’s anger and frustration build over the years. He knew damn well it was a matter of time before Marino’s self-loathing and rage reached flashover. But Benton didn’t fear it. He didn’t give Marino enough credit to be feared like that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever imagined Marino having a dick prior to its becoming a weapon.
It made no sense, in retrospect. For virtually everybody else, it was impossible to get past Marino’s rough-hewn machismo and volatility, and that particular recipe was Benton’s bread and butter. Sexual violence, no matter its catalyst, was what kept forensic psychologists in business.
“I’m having homicidal thoughts about him,” Benton said to Dr. Thomas. “Of course, I wouldn’t do it. Just thoughts. I’m having a lot of thoughts. I believed I’d forgiven him and felt proud of myself, really proud of myself, because of the way I handled it. Where would he be without me? All I’ve done for him, and now I want to kill him. Lucy wants to kill him. The reminder this morning didn’t help, and now everyone knows. It’s made it happen all over again.”
“Or maybe happen for the first time. It feels real to you now.”
“Oh, it feels real. It always felt real,” Benton said.
“But it’s different when you read it on the Internet and know a million other people are, too. That’s a different level of real. You’re finally having an emotional response. Before, it was intellectual. Out of self-defense, you processed it in your head. I think this is a breakthrough, Benton. A very unpleasant one. I’m sorry for that.”
“He doesn’t know Lucy’s in New York, and if she sees him—” Benton intercepted his thought. “Well, not true. She wouldn’t really think about killing him, because she’s been through that. She’s long past that. She wouldn’t kill him, just so you know.”
Benton watched the gray sky subtly change the redness of the old bricks beyond his window, and when he shifted in his chair and rubbed his chin, he caught his own male scent and felt stubble that Scarpetta always said looked exactly like sand. He’d been up all night, had never left the hospital. He needed a shower. He needed a shave. He needed food and sleep.
“Sometimes I catch myself by surprise,” he said. “When I say things like that about Lucy? It’s literally a consideration and a reminder of what a warped life I live. The only person who never wanted to kill him is Kay. She still thinks she’s somehow to blame, and it makes me angry. Just incredibly angry. I avoid the subject completely with her, and that’s probably why I didn’t say anything. The whole goddamn world is reading about it on the goddamn Internet. I’m tired. I was up all night with someone I can’t tell you about who is going to be a major problem.”
He stopped looking out the window. He didn’t look at anything.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Dr. Thomas said. “I’ve wondered when you’d cut the crap about what a saint you are. You’re angry as hell, and you’re no saint. There are no saints, by the way.”
“Angry as hell. Yes, I’m angry as hell.”
“Angry at her.”
“Yes, I really am,” Benton said, and admitting it frightened him. “I know it’s not fair. Good God, she’s the one who was hurt. Of course she didn’t ask for it. She’d worked with him for half her life, so why wouldn’t she let him into her house when he was drunk and half out of his mind? That’s what friends do. Even knowing what he felt about her doesn’t make it her fault.”
“He’s wanted her sexually since they first met,” Dr. Thomas said. “Rather much the way you felt. He fell in love with her. As did you. I wonder who fell in love with her first? Both of you met her around the same time, didn’t you? Nineteen-ninety.”
“His wanting her. Well, that had been going on for a long time, true. His feeling that way and her stepping around it and trying so hard not to hurt his feelings. I can sit here and analyze it all I want, but honestly?”
Benton was looking out his window again, talking to the bricks.
“There isn’t anything different she could have done,” he said. “What he did to her absolutely wasn’t her fault. In many ways, it wasn’t his fault. He would never do that sober. Not even close.”
“You certainly sound convinced,” Dr. Thomas said.
Benton turned away from the window and stared at what was on his computer screen. Then he looked out his window again as if the steely cold sky was a message for him, a metaphor. He removed a paper clip from a journal article he was revising and stapled the pages together, suddenly furious. The American Psychological Society probably wasn’t going to accept yet another damn research article on emotional responses to members of social outgroups. Someone from Princeton just published basically the same damn thing Benton was about to submit. He straightened the paper clip. The challenge was to straighten it without a trace of a kink. In the end, they always snapped.
“Of all people, to be so irrational,” he said. “So out of touch. And I have been. From day one. Irrational about everything, and now I’m about to pay for it.”
“You’re about to pay for it because other people know what your friend Pete Marino did to her?”
“He’s not my friend.”
“I thought he was. I thought you thought he was,” Dr. Thomas said.
“We never socialized. We have nothing in common. Bowling, fishing, motorcycles, watching football, and drinking beer. Well, not beer. Not now. That’s Marino. That’s not me. Now that I think about it, I don’t recall ever even going out to dinner with him, just the two of us. Not in twenty years. We have nothing in common. We’ll never have anything in common.”
“He’s not from an elitist New England family? He didn’t go to graduate school, was never an FBI profiler? He’s not on the faculty of Harvard Medical School? Is that what you mean?”
“I’m not trying to be a snob,” Benton said.
“Seems as if the two of you have Kay in common.”
“Not that way. It never went that far,” Benton said.
“How far did it need to go?”
“She told me it never went that far. He did other things. When she finally got undressed in front of me, I could see what he did. She made excuses for a day or two. Lied. I knew damn well she hadn’t shut the hatchback on her wrists.”
Benton remembered bruises as dark as thunderclouds and shaped exactly the way they would be had someone pinned her hands behind her and held her against the wall. She’d offered no explanation at all when Benton finally saw her breasts. No one had ever done anything like that to her before, and he had never seen anything like that before except in cases he worked. When he’d sat on the bed looking at her, he’d felt as if a monstrous cretin had mangled the wings of a dove or mauled a child’s tender flesh. He’d imagined Marino trying to eat her.