"He victimizes to the end, dominates and controls another human being to the end, forces a person to commit an act that will scar forever." Benton pauses before he adds, "You kill someone, you never forget him, now do you? We have to take the letters seriously. I do believe they are from him-fingerprints, DNA or not."

"Yeah, well I believe they're from him, too, and that he means what he says, and that's why I'm here, if you ain't figured it out yet. If we can get Wolfman to sing, we move in on all his daddy's lieutenants and put the Chandonne cartel out of business. And you got nothing to worry about anymore."

"Who is we?"

"I wish you'd quit saying that!" Marino gets up to help himself to another beer. Anger and frustration flare again. "Don't you get it?" he calls out, rummaging inside the refrigerator. "After May seventh, after we got the goods and Wolfman's dead, there ain't no reason for you to be Tom what's-his-name anymore!"

"Who is we?"

Marino snorts like a bull as he pops open a bottle of Dos Equis this time. " We is me. We is Lucy."

"Does Lucy know you came to see me today?"

"No. I didn't tell no one and won't."

"Good." Benton doesn't move in his chair.

"Wolfman gives us pawns to knock off the board," Marino plans on without him. "Maybe he's already given us our first pawn by ratting out Rocco. I can only figure that somebody must have ratted him out if he's suddenly a fugitive."

"I see. How honorable of Chandonne, if your son is his first pawn. Will you visit Rocco in prison, Pete?"

Marino suddenly smashes the beer bottle in the sink. Glass shatters. He strides over to Benton and gets in his face.

"Shut up about him, you hear me? I hope he gets fucking AIDS in prison and dies! All the suffering he's caused! Now it should be his goddamn turn!"

"Whose suffering?" Benton doesn't flinch at Marino's hot, beery breath. "Your suffering?"

"Start with his mother's suffering. And keep on going." Marino still has a hard time thinking about Doris, his ex-wife and Rocco's mother.

She was Marino's sweetheart when he was in his prime. He still thought of her as his sweetheart long after he stopped paying attention to her. He was stunned when she left him for another man.

While this is crossing Marino's mind, he is yelling at Benton, "You can come home, you fucking idiot! You can live your life again!"

Marino sits down on the couch, breathing hard, his face a deep red that reminds Benton of the 575M Maranello Ferrari he has seen around Cambridge. Its color is a deep burgundy called Barcetta, and thinking of that car reminds him of Lucy, who has always been in love with fast, powerful machines.

"You can see the Doc, and Lucy, and…"

"Untrue," Benton whispers. "Jean-Baptiste Chandonne has manipulated himself into this position. He is exactly where he wants to be. Connect the dots, Pete. Go back to how it started after he was arrested. He shocked everyone by offering an unsolicited confession to yet another murder, this one in Texas, and then, of all things, pled guilty. Why? Because he wanted to be extradited to Texas. It was his choice, not the governor of Virginias."

"No way," Marino challenges. "Our ambitious Virginia governor didn't want to piss off Washington by pissing off France-the anti-death penalty capital of the world. So we gave Chandonne to Texas."

Benton shakes his head. "Not so. Jean-Baptiste gave Jean-Baptiste to Texas."

"And how the hell would you know, anyway? You talking to people? I thought you didn't talk to no one."

Benton doesn't reply.

"I don't get it," Marino goes on. "Why would Wolfman give a shit about Texas?"

"He knew he would die quickly there, and he wanted to die quickly. It was part of his master plan. He had no intention of rotting on death row for ten or fifteen years. And his chances of gamesmanship are much greater in Texas. Virginia might very well fold to political pressure and stay his execution.

"Virginia is also claustrophobic. His every move would be watched. He would get away with much less, because law-enforcement and corrections officers would make it their mission to ensure his safety and good behavior. He would be monitored to the extreme. Don't tell me that if he were in Virginia, his mail wouldn't be secretly checked. The hell with his legal rights."

"Virginia would want to fry his ass," Marino argues. "After what he done."

"He killed a store clerk. He killed a cop. He almost killed the chief medical examiner. The governor at that time is now a senator and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He didn't piss off Washington because he wasn't about to piss off the French. The governor of Texas, now in his second term and a trigger-happy Republican, by the way, doesn't give a damn who he pisses off."

"The chief medical examiner? You just can't bring yourself to say her name, can you?" Marino exclaims, incredulous.

19

A FEW YEARS BACK, Lucy Farinelli's Aunt Kay recalled an anecdote about the decapitated head of a German soldier who died in World War II.

His body was discovered buried in sand somewhere in Poland, she recounted to Lucy, and arid conditions remarkably preserved his Aryan short blond hair, attractive features and even the stubble on his chin. When Scarpetta saw the head in a Polish forensic medical institute showcase while visiting as a forensic lecturer, she thought of Madame Tussaud s, she said. "His front teeth are broken," Scarpetta went on with the story, explaining that she didn't think the damaged teeth were a postmortem artifact or due to an antemortem injury that had occurred at or around the boyish Nazi's death. He simply had poor dental care. "Loose-contact gunshot wound to the right temple," she cited the Nazi's cause of death. "The angle of the wound points the way the gun was directed-in this case, downward. Often in a suicide, the muzzle will be straight on or directed upward. There's no soot in this case, because the wound was cleaned, the hair around it shaved at the morgue, where the mummified remains were sent to make certain the death wasn't recent, or so I was told when I was lecturing at the Pomorska Akademia Medyczna."

The only reason Lucy is reminded of the decapitated Nazi as her car is being searched at Germany's northeast border is that the German guard is a handsome, blue-eyed blond and seems much too young to be infected with ennui as he leans inside her black rental Mercedes and sweeps the leather seats with a flashlight. Next he sweeps the black carpeted floor, the strong beam illuminating Lucy's scuffed leather briefcase and red Nike duffel bags in back. He makes several bright stabs at the front passenger seat, then moves around to the trunk, popping it open. He shuts it with scarcely a glance.

Had he bothered to unzip those two duffelbags and dig through clothing, he would have discovered a tactical baton. It looks rather much like a black rubber fishing pole handle, but with a quick flip of the wrist extends into a two-foot-long thin rod of carbonized steel capable of shattering bone and shearing soft tissue, including the internal organs of the belly.

Lucy is prepared to explain the weapon, which is relatively unknown and unused except by law enforcement. She would claim that her overly protective boyfriend gave her the baton for self-defense because she is a businesswoman and often travels alone. She really isn't quite sure how to use the thing, she would sheepishly explain, but he insisted and promised it was perfectly all right to pack it. If police confiscated the baton, so what? But Lucy is relieved that it is not discovered and that the officer in his pale green uniform checking her passport from inside his booth does not seem curious about this young American woman driving alone late at night in a Mercedes.