“Look. Give me time, Kay. And I don’t fault you. We’ll work our way past this. I want to touch you again and not think of him. There, I’ve said it. Yes, it bothers the hell out of me.” He reaches for her hand. “Because I feel partly to blame. Maybe more than partly. Nothing would have happened if I’d been here. I’m going to change that. Unless you don’t want me to.”
“Of course I do.”
“I’d be happy if Marino stays away,” Benton says. “But I don’t wish any harm to him, and I hope nothing has happened to him. I’m trying to accept that you defend him, worry about him, still care about him.”
“The plant pathologist is coming in an hour. We have spider mites.”
“And I thought what I have is a headache.”
“If something’s happened to him, especially if he did it to himself, I won’t get over it,” Scarpetta says. “Maybe my worst flaw. I forgive people I care about, and then maybe they do it all over again. Please find him.”
“Everybody’s trying to find him, Kay.”
A long silence, nothing but birds. Bull appears in the garden. He starts uncoiling the hose.
“I need to take a shower,” Scarpetta says. “I’m a disgrace, didn’t take a shower over there. Wasn’t the most private locker room, and I had nothing to change into, why you put up with me I’ll never know. Don’t worry about Dr. Self. A few months in prison would be good for her.”
“She’ll film her shows there and make more millions. Some woman inmate will become her slave and knit her a shawl.”
Bull waters a bed of pansies, and there’s a rainbow in the spray of the hose.
The phone rings again. Benton says, “Oh, God,” and answers it. He listens because he’s skilled at listening, and, if anything, he doesn’t talk enough, and Scarpetta tells him so when she feels lonely.
“No,” Benton says. “I appreciate it, but I agree there’s no reason for us to be there. I won’t speak for Kay, but I don’t think we’d do anything but get in the way.”
He ends the call and says to her. “The captain. Your knight in shining armor.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t be so cynical. He hasn’t earned your wrath. You should be grateful.”
“He’s on his way to New York. They’re going to search Dr. Self’s penthouse apartment.”
“To find what?”
“Drew was there the night before she flew to Rome. Who else was there? Possibly Dr. Self’s son. Probably the man Hollings suggested was the chef. The most mundane answer is often the right one,” Benton says. “I had the flight checked. Alitalia. Guess who was on the same flight Drew was?”
“Are you saying she was waiting for him at the Spanish Steps?”
“It wasn’t the gold-painted mime. That was a ruse, because she was waiting for Will and she didn’t want her friends to know. My theory.”
“She’d just ended it with her coach.” Scarpetta watches Bull fill the shallow pond. “After Dr. Self brainwashed her to do it. Another theory? Will wanted to meet Drew, and his mother didn’t put two and two together and realize he was the one sending the obsessive e-mails signed the Sandman. Inadvertently, she matchmade Drew with her killer.”
“One of those details we may never know,” Benton says. “People don’t tell the truth. After a while, they don’t even know it.”
Bull stoops down to deadhead pansies. He looks up at the same time Mrs. Grimball is looking down from her upstairs window. Bull pulls a leaf bag close and minds his own business. Scarpetta can see her nosy neighbor lifting a phone to her ear.
“That’s it,” Scarpetta says as she gets up, smiles, and waves.
Mrs. Grimball looks their way and slides up the window while Benton watches with no expression on his face, and Scarpetta keeps waving as if she has something urgent to say.
“He just got out of jail,” Scarpetta calls out. “And if you send him back, I’ll burn your house down.”
The window quickly shuts. Mrs. Grimball’s face disappears from the glass.
“You didn’t just say that,” Benton says.
“I’ll say whatever the hell I want,” Scarpetta says. “I live here.”
