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.
“Have you ever felt competitive with him?” Dr. Thomas’s voice was distant as Benton envisioned stigmatas he didn’t want to remember.
He heard himself say, “What’s bad, I guess, is I never felt much of anything about him.”
“He’s spent a lot more time with Kay than you have,” Dr. Thomas said. “That might make some people feel competitive. Feel threatened.”
“Kay’s never been attracted to him. If he were the last person on the planet, she wouldn’t be.”
“I guess we won’t know the answer to that unless there’s just the two of them left on the planet. In which case, you and I still won’t know.”
“I should have protected her better than I did,” Benton said. “That’s one thing I know how to do. Protect people. Those I love, and myself, or people I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’m an expert at it or I would have been dead a long time ago. A lot of people would be.”
“Yes, Mr. Bond, but you weren’t home that night. You were up here.”
Dr. Thomas may as well have thrown a punch. Benton silently took it, could barely breathe. He worked the paper clip back and forth, bending and unbending, until it broke.
“Do you blame yourself, Benton?”
“We’ve been through this. And I’ve had no sleep,” he answered.
“Yes, we’ve been through all sorts of facts and possibilities. Such as you’ve never allowed yourself a chance to feel the personal insult of what Marino did to Kay, who you quickly married afterwards. Maybe too quickly? Because you felt you had to hold everything together, especially since you didn’t protect her, didn’t prevent it? No different than what you do when you handle a criminal case, really. You take over the investigation, handle it, micromanage it, keep it a safe distance from your psyche. But the same rules don’t apply in our personal lives. You’re telling me you have homicidal feelings toward Marino, and in our last several conversations, we’ve delved into what you call your sexual acting out with Kay, although she isn’t necessarily aware of it, is that still correct? Nor is she aware that you’re aware of other women in a way that’s unsettling to you? Still true?”
“It’s normal for men to feel attractions they don’t do anything about.”
“Only men do that?” Dr. Thomas asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“What’s Kay aware of?”
“I’m trying to be a good husband,” Benton said. “I love her. I’m in love with her.”
“Are you worried you’ll have an affair? Cheat?”
“No. Absolutely not. I would never do that,” he said.
“No. Not. Never. You cheated on Connie. Left her for Kay. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it.”
“I’ve never loved anybody as much as I love Kay,” Benton said. “I would never forgive myself.”
“My question is whether you completely trust yourself.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you completely trust her? She’s very attractive, and now she must have a lot of fans because of CNN.
