Benton shuts the door and doesn’t turn on the light. He sits in the dark at Marino’s desk and for the first time realizes that no matter what he’s said, he’s never taken Marino seriously or been particularly inclusive. If he’s truthful about it, he’s always thought of him as Scarpetta’s sidekick — an ignorant, bigoted, crass cop who doesn’t belong in the modern world, and as a result of that and any number of other factors, is unpleasant to be around and not entirely helpful. Benton has endured him. He’s underestimated him in some departments and understood him perfectly fine in others, but failed to recognize the obvious. As he sits at Marino’s little-used desk and stares out the window at the lights of Charleston, he wishes he had paid more attention to him, to everything. What he’s needed to know is in his reach and has been.
The time in Venice is almost four o’clock in the morning. It’s no wonder Paulo Maroni left McLean, and now has left Rome.
“Were you asleep?” Benton asks.
“If you cared, you wouldn’t be calling. What’s going on that you need to call me at this unseemly hour? Some development in the case, I hope?”
“Not a good one, necessarily.”
“Then what?” Dr. Maroni’s voice has an undercurrent of reluctance, or maybe it’s resignation that Benton hears.
“The patient you had.”
“I’ve told you about him.”
“You’ve told me what you wanted to tell me, Paulo.”
“What more could I help you with?” Dr. Maroni says. “In addition to what I’ve said, you’ve read my notes. I’ve been a friend and not asked you how that happened. I haven’t blamed Lucy, for example.”
“You might want to blame yourself. Do you think I haven’t figured out that you wanted us to access your patient’s file? You left it on the hospital network. You left file-sharing on, meaning anybody who could figure out where it was could get into it. For Lucy, yes, it would be no effort. For you, it was no mistake. You’re too smart for that.”
“And so you admit Lucy violated my confidential electronic files.”
“You knew we’d want to see your patient notes. So you arranged it before you left for Rome. Which was earlier than you planned, by the way. Conveniently, right after you learned that Dr. Self was about to be a patient at McLean. You allowed it. She couldn’t have been admitted at the Pavilion if you hadn’t allowed it.”
“She was manic.”
“She was calculating. Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s interesting you would think I might,” Dr. Maroni says.
“I’ve talked to Dr. Self’s mother.”
“Is she still such an unpleasant woman?”
“I imagine she hasn’t changed,” Benton says.
“People like her rarely do. Sometimes they burn out as they get older. In her case, she’s likely worse. As Marilyn will be. As she already is.”
“I imagine she hasn’t changed much, either. Although her mother blames her daughter’s personality disorder on you,” Benton says.
“And we know that’s not what happens. She doesn’t have a Paulo-induced personality disorder. She came by it honestly.”
“This isn’t amusing.”
“Certainly, it isn’t.”
“Where is he?” Benton asks. “And you know exactly who I mean.”
“In those long-ago days, a person was still a minor at age sixteen. Do you understand?”
“And you were twenty-nine.”
“Twenty-two. Gladys would insult me by making me that much older. I’m sure you can understand why I had to leave,” Dr. Maroni says.
“Leave or flee? If you ask Dr. Self, it’s the latter when she describes your hasty exit of several weeks ago. You were inappropriate with her and fled to Italy. Where is he, Paulo? Don’t do this to yourself, and don’t do it to anyone else.”
“Would you believe it if I told you she was inappropriate with me?”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s not what I give a goddamn about. Where is he?” Benton says.
“Statutory rape is what they would have called it, you know. Her mother threatened it and, indeed, wanted to believe Marilyn wouldn’t have sex with a man she happened to meet during spring break. She was so beautiful and exciting, and offered her virginity, and I took it. I did love her. I did flee from her, this is true. I recognized she was toxic way back then. But I didn’t return to Italy as I led her to believe. I returned to Harvard to finish medical school, and she never knew I was still in America.”
“We’ve done DNA, Paulo.”
“After the baby was born, she still didn’t know. I wrote her letters, you see. And had them mailed from Rome.”
“Where is he, Paulo? Where’s your son?”
“I begged her not to get an abortion, because it’s against my religious beliefs. She said if she had the baby, I would have to raise it. And I did the best I could with what turned out to be a miscreant, a devil with a high IQ. He spent most of his life in Italy, and some of his time with her until he turned eighteen. He’s the one who is twenty- nine. Perhaps Gladys was playing her usual games…. Well. In many ways, he belongs to neither of us and hates both of us. Marilyn more than me, although when I saw him last, I feared for my safety. Perhaps my life. I thought he was going to attack me with a piece of ancient sculpture, but I managed to soothe him.”
“This was when?”
“Right after I got here. He was in Rome.”
“And he was in Rome when Drew Martin was murdered. At some point, he returned to Charleston. We know he was just in Hilton Head.”
“What can I say, Benton? You know the answer. The tub in the photograph is the very tub in my apartment at Piazza Navona, but then you didn’t know I live at Piazza Navona. If you had, you might have asked me questions about my apartment so near the construction site where Drew’s body was found. You might have wondered about the coincidence of my driving a black Lancia over here. He probably killed her in my apartment and transported her in my car, not too far. Perhaps a block. In fact, I’m sure he must have. So maybe I would have been better off if he had struck me in the head with that ancient sculpted foot. What he’s done is unthinkably reprehensible. But then, he’s Marilyn’s son.”
“He’s your son.”
“He’s an American citizen who didn’t want to go to a university and continued his foolishness by joining the American Air Force to be a photographer in your fascist war, where he was wounded. His foot. I believe he did it to himself after he put his friend out of his misery by shooting him in the head. But regardless, if he were unbalanced before he went, he was cognitively and psychologically unrecognizable when he came back. I admit I wasn’t the father I should have been. I sent him supplies. Tools, batteries, medical necessities. But I didn’t go to see him after it was over. I didn’t care. I admit it.”
“Where is he?”
“After he joined the Air Force, I washed my hands of him. I admit it. He amounted to nothing. After all that — after my sacrificing so much to keep him on this earth when Marilyn would have had it otherwise — he amounted to nothing. Imagine the irony. I spared his life because the church says abortion is murder, and look what he does. He kills people. He killed them over there because it was his job, and now he kills them because it’s madness.”
“And his child?”
“Marilyn and her patterns. Once she has a pattern, try to break it — told the mother to keep him just as I told Marilyn to keep our son. It probably was a mistake. Our son isn’t fit to be a father, even if he loves his son very much.”
“His little boy is dead,” Benton says. “Starved and beaten to death and left in a marsh to be eaten by
