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heard.”
    “Yes, ma’am, I’m looking. Checkout was scheduled for Saturday.”
    “Yes, three more days. Well, I’m puzzled. You don’t know why he suddenly left at midnight?” I’m rambling a bit, trying to work through what doesn’t make sense.
    “Mr. Wesley didn’t say. I’ve been reading about the cases around here his unit’s working, what little there is, the FBI being so hush-hush, which only makes it worse, you ask me, because I’d rather know what we’re dealing with. You know there are those of us who don’t wear guns and badges and travel in packs and we have to worry about even going to the mall or a movie. It would be nice to know what’s going on around here, and I got to tell you, Dr. Scarpetta, there are a lot of nervous people, a lot of people really scared including me. If I had my way, my wife wouldn’t leave the house anymore.”
    I thank him and extricate myself as politely as I can, contemplating the possibility that there’s been another awful case somewhere. Perhaps Benton has been deployed to a new location. But it’s not like him not to let me know. I check to see if he’s e-mailed me. He hasn’t.
    “He probably didn’t want to wake me up,” I say to my lazy old dog. “That’s one of the perks if you’re sick. You already feel bad enough and then people make you feel worse because they don’t want to bother you.”
    I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I pass, pale in rumpled black silk pajamas, blond hair plastered to my head, blue eyes glassy. I’ve lost a few pounds and look haunted from dreams that seem a replay of a past I miss and don’t. I need a shower but it will have to wait.
    Opening dresser drawers, I find underwear, socks, black cargo pants, and a black long-sleeved shirt with the CFC crest embroidered in gold. I retrieve my Sig nine-millimeter from the bedside table and zip the pistol inside a quick-release fanny pack as I wonder,
Why
bother?
Nobody cares what I wear to a muddy death scene. I don’t need a concealed weapon if Marino is picking me up.
    Even the smallest decision seems overwhelming, possibly because I haven’t had to make any important ones over recent days. Heat up chicken broth and refill Sock’s water bowl, feed him, don’t forget his glucosamine chondroitin. Drink fluids, as much as you can stand. Don’t touch the cases on the floor by the bed, the autopsy and lab reports awaiting your review and initialing, not when you have a fever. And of course I’ve done a lot of online shopping with so much time to drift in and out of thoughts and dreams and spend money on all the people I want to make happy and am grateful for, even if they disappoint me like my mother and my sister Dorothy and maybe Marino, too
.
    Confined to the bedroom, with Benton some 450 miles south of here, and it’s a good thing I’ve reminded myself until I almost believe it. Most physicians really are bad patients and I might be the worst. When I got home from Connecticut he wanted to leave Washington, D.C., right then and I knew that wasn’t what he should do. He was trying to be a good husband. He said he’d catch the next flight but I wouldn’t hear of it. When he’s in pursuit of a predator there’s no room for anything else, not even me. It doesn’t matter what I’m going through and I told him no.
    “I’m not dying but other people are.” I was adamant on the phone with him. “I’ve seen enough death. I just saw more of it than anyone ever should. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people.”
    “I’m coming home. A few days early and it’s not going to matter. You can trust me on that. Things are bad here, Kay.”
    “A mother has a son with severe developmental problems so she teaches him how to use a damn Bushmaster assault rifle, for God’s sake?”
    “You need me with you and I need to come home.”
    “Then maybe he can massacre an entire elementary school so he feels powerful for a moment before he takes his own