"That was his file," Anna points out. "Correspondence to him. When he spoke about it to me, he never referred to what was happening to him as Bureau business. He seemed to take the threats, the crank calls, as something personal, and I am not aware that he ever shared these things with other agents. He was so paranoid, mostly because some of the threats involved you. I was led to believe I am the only person he told. I know this. I said to him many times that I believed he should tell the FBI." She shook her head. "He would not," she says again.

I empty the coffee filter into the trash and feel a spike of old resentment. Benton kept so much from me. "A shame," I reply. "Maybe if he'd told some of the other agents, none of this would have happened."

"Would you like more coffee?"

I am reminded that I did not go to bed last night. "I guess I'd better," I reply.

"Some Viennese coffee," Anna decides, opening the refrigerator and picking through bags of coffee. "Since I am feeling nostalgic for Austria this morning." She says this with a hint of sarcasm, as if she is silently berating herself for divulging details of her past. She pours beans into the grinder and the kitchen is filled briefly with noise.

"Benton got disillusioned with the Bureau in the end," I think out loud. "I'm not sure he trusted people around him anymore. Competitiveness. He was the unit chief and knew everybody was going to fight over his job the minute he even mentioned he was ready to retire. Knowing him, he handled his problems in total isolation_the same way he worked his cases. If nothing else, Benton was a master of discretion." I am running through every possibility. Where would Benton have kept the file? Where might it be? He had his own room in my house where he stored his belongings and plugged in his laptop. He had file drawers. But I have been through those and never saw anything even similar to what Anna has described.

Then I think of something else. When Benton was murdered in Philadelphia, he was checked into a hotel. Several bags of his personal effects were returned to me, including his briefcase, which I opened. I went through it just as the police had. I know I didn't see anything like this Tlip file, but if it is true Benton was suspicious that Carrie Grethen might have had something to do with the crank calls and notes he was getting, might he not have carried the Tlip file with him when he was working new cases possibly connected to her? Wouldn't he have brought the file to Philadelphia?

I go to the phone and call Marino. "Merry Christmas," I say. "It's me."

"What?" he blurts out, half asleep."Oh shit. What time is it?"

"A few minutes past seven."

"Seven!" Groan. "Hell, Santa ain't even come yet. What you calling me so early for?"

"Marino, this is important. When the police went through Benton's personal effects in the hotel room in Philadelphia, did you go through them?"

A big yawn and he blows out loudly. "Damn, I gotta quit staying up so late. My lungs are killing me, got to quit smoking. Me and some of the guys and Wild Turkey hung out last night." Another yawn. "Hold on. I'm coming to. Let me switch channels. One minute it's Christmas, next you're asking about Philadelphia?"

"That's right. The stuff you guys found in Benton's hotel room."

"Yeah. Hell, yeah I went through it."

"Did you take anything? Anything, for example, that might have been in his briefcase? A file, for example, that might have had letters in it?"

"He had a couple files in there. Why do you want to know?"

I am getting excited. My synapses are firing, clearing my head and pumping energy into my cells. "Where are these files now?" I ask him.

"Yeah, I remember some letters. Weirdo shit that I thought I should pay some attention to. Then Lucy blew Carrie and Joyce out of the air and turned them into fish chum, and that exceptionally cleared the case, I guess you could say. Shit. I still can't believe she had a fucking AR-fifteen in the damn helicopter and…"

"Where are the files?" I ask him again and I can't keep the urgency out of my voice. My heart is pounding. "I need to see a file that had the weird letters. Benton called it his Tlip file. T-L-P. As in The Last Precinct. Maybe where Lucy got the idea for the name."

"The Last Precinct. You mean where Lucy's going to work_McGovern's place in New York? What the hell's that got to do with some file in Benton's briefcase?"

"Good question," I tell him.

"Okay. It's somewhere. I gotta find it, and I'll be over."

Anna has gone back to her bedroom, and I occupy myself with thinking about our holiday meal as I wait for Lucy and McGovern to get here. I start pulling food out of the refrigerator as I replay what Lucy told me about McGovern's new company in New York. Lucy said the name The Last Precinct started out as a joke. Where you go when there is nowhere left. And in Anna's letter, she said Benton told her The Last Precinct is where he would end up. Cryptic. Riddles. Benton believed his future was somehow connected to what he was putting in that file. The Last Precinct was death, I then consider. Where was Benton going to end up? He was going to end up dead. Is this what he meant? Where else might he have ended up?

Days ago, I promised Anna I would cook Christmas dinner if she did not mind an Italian in her kitchen who does not go near a turkey or what people stuff in turkeys during the holidays. Anna has made a valiant effort at shopping. She even has cold-pressed olive oil and fresh buffalo mozzarella. I fill a large pot with water and go back to Anna's bedroom to tell her She can't go to Hilton Head or anywhere else until she has eaten a little cucina Scarpetta and sampled a little wine. This is a family day, I tell her as she brushes her teeth. I don't care about special grand juries or prosecutors or anything else un- til after dinner. Why doesn't she make something Austrian? At this she almost spits out toothpaste. Never, she says. If both of us were in the kitchen at the same time, we would kill each other.

For a while, the mood seems to lift in Anna's house. Lucy and McGovern appear around nine and gifts are piled under the tree. I start mixing eggs and flour and work it all together with my fingers on a wooden cutting board. When the dough is the right consistency, I wrap it in plastic and start looking for the hand-cranked pasta machine Anna claims to have somewhere as I jump from thought to thought, barely hearing what Lucy and McGovern are chatting about.

"It's not that I can't fly when it's not VFR conditions." Lucy is explaining something about her new helicopter, which apparently has been delivered to New York. "I have my instrument rating. But I'm not interested in having an instrument-rated single-engine helicopter because with only one engine, I want to see the ground at all times. So I don't want to be flying above the clouds on crappy days."

"Sounds dangerous," McGovern comments.

"It's not in the least. The engines never quit in these things, but it pays to always consider the worst-case scenario."

I begin kneading the dough. It is my favorite part of making pasta, and I always refrain from using food processors because the warmth of the human touch gives a texture to fresh pasta that is unlike anything agitating steel blades can effect. I get into a rhythm, pushing down, folding over, giving half-turns, pressing hard with the heel of my good hand as I, too, think of worst-case scenarios. What might Benton have believed was the worst-case scenario for him? If he was thinking that his metaphorical Last Precinct was where he would end up, what would have been the worst-case scenario? This is when I decide he didn't mean death when he said he would end up in The Last Precinct. No. Benton of all people knew there are far worse things than death.

"I've given her lessons off and on. Talk about a quick study. But people who use their hands have an advantage," Lucy is saying to McGovern, talking about me.