During the four weeks she had been a patient, Benton had spent as much time as possible in New York, not only to be with Scarpetta but to be away from Dodie. He’d been so relieved when she was discharged this past Sunday afternoon, he’d checked several times to make sure she’d actually been picked up and driven home, not to an estate in Greenwich, because that was another lie. She’d been deposited at a small house in Edgewater, New Jersey, where she apparently lived alone, having gone through four husbands, all dead or having fled years ago. Poor bastards.

Benton picked up the phone and dialed the extension of Bellevue’s chief of forensic psychiatry, Dr. Nathan Clark, and asked if he had a minute. While Benton waited, he looked at the FedEx envelope again, certain details continuing to perplex and concern him and prompt him to act in ways he knew he shouldn’t. There was no return address on the airbill, and his address here at Bellevue was handwritten in a functional calligraphy that was so precise it looked like a printed typeface. Not at all what he would have expected from someone like Dodie, whose only writing while she’d been at McLean was a large, looping scrawl when she’d had to sign her name on various forms. He slid the thick glossy card out of its envelope, a big fat Santa on the front of it being chased by a furious rolling pin-wielding Mrs. Claus, and the caption “Who Are You Calling a Ho!” He opened the card and Dodie Hodge’s recorded off-key voice began to sing, to the tune of “A Holly, Jolly Christmas”:

Have a Ho-Dee, Do-Dee Christmas

And When You Think of Me

Stick Some Mistletoe Where It Ought to Go

And Hang an Angel from Your Tree

Merry, Merry Christmas, Benton and Kay!

Over and over, the same maddening lyrics and greeting in her childish, breathy voice.

“Not exactly Burl Ives,” Dr. Clark said as he walked in with his coat, his hat, his beat-up leather satchel with its long strap that reminded Benton of a mailbag from the days of the pony express and covered wagons.

“If you can stand it, it will keep going until the recording time runs out,” Benton said. “Exactly four minutes.”

Dr. Clark placed his belongings in a chair and came over to where Benton sat, leaning close to get a look at the card, steadying himself by placing both hands on the edge of the desk. In his early seventies, he’d recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a cruel punishment for a gifted man whose body had always been as agile as his mind. Tennis, skiing, mountain climbing, piloting his own plane-there wasn’t much he hadn’t tried and succeeded at, his love of life boundless. He’d been cheated by biology, by genetics, by the environment, maybe something as mundane as exposure to lead paint or old plumbing that had caused free-radical damage to the basal ganglia of his remarkable brain. Who the hell knew how he’d ended up with such a scourge. But it was advancing rapidly. Already he was stooped, his movements retarded and clumsy.

Benton closed the card, and Dodie’s voice abruptly stopped mid-lyric. “Homemade, obviously,” he said. “The typical talking card has a recording time of as little as ten seconds, maybe as long as forty-five, but not four minutes. From what I understand, the way you create a longer recording is to buy a bare voice module that has more memory. You can order them on the Internet, then basically build your own greeting card. Which is what this particular former patient of mine did. Or someone did it for her.”

He picked up the card in his white cotton-gloved hands and turned it at different angles so Dr. Clark could see the edges, see how it had been pieced together with exactness and care.

“She found this greeting card, or someone did,” Benton continued to explain, “and made her recording on a module, which was glued to the inside, then a square of paper was glued over it, possibly the blank side of another greeting card that was cut out. Which is why the inside of her card is completely blank. She didn’t write anything on it. She didn’t write anything the entire time she was at McLean. She says she doesn’t write.”

“Graphophobic?”

“That and medication, so she says.”

“A perfectionist who can’t cope with criticism.” Dr. Clark went around to the other side of the desk.

“A malingerer.”

“Ah. A factitious disorder. For what motive?” Already Dr. Clark wasn’t trusting what Benton was saying.

“Money and attention are her two strongest motivating forces. But maybe there’s something else,” Benton said. “I’m beginning to wonder who and what we had at McLean for a month. And why.”

Dr. Clark sat slowly, carefully, the smallest physical act no longer taken for granted by him. Benton noticed how much his colleague had aged just since the summer.

“I’m sorry to bother you about this,” Benton added. “I know you’re busy.”

“Never a bother, Benton. I’ve missed talking to you and have been thinking I should call. I’ve been wondering how you are.” Dr. Clark said it as if they had things to talk about and Benton had been elusive. “So she refused pencil-and-paper tests.”

“Wouldn’t do the Bender Gestalt, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure drawing, digit symbol substitution, letter cancellation, not even trail making,” Benton said. “Nothing that required her to write or draw.”

“What about psychomotor function tests?”

“No block designs or grooved pegboard, no finger tapping.”

“Interesting. Nothing that measures reaction time.”

“Her latest excuse was the medication she was taking, said it gave her tremors, caused her hands to shake so badly she couldn’t hold a pen and she didn’t want to humiliate herself by trying to write or draw or manipulate objects.” Benton couldn’t help but think of Dr. Clark’s own condition as he explained Dodie Hodge’s alleged complaints.

“Nothing that requires her to physically perform on demand, nothing that might, in her mind, invite criticism, judgment. She doesn’t want to be scored.” Dr. Clark stared out the window behind Benton’s head, as if there was something to look at besides beige hospital brick and the encroaching night. “What medication?”

“My guess, nothing now. She’s not exactly compliant and has no interest in substances unless they make her feel good. Alcohol, for example. While she was hospitalized, she was taking Risperdal.”

“Which can cause tardive dyskinesia. But atypically,” Dr. Clark considered.

“She wasn’t having muscle spasms or twitches except ones she faked,” Benton said. “Of course, she claims her condition is permanent.”

“Theoretically a possible permanent side effect from Risperdal, especially in older women.”

“In her case, it’s malingering, it’s bullshit. She has some agenda,” Benton repeated. “Thank God I followed my instincts, mandated that all of my sessions with her be recorded on video.”

“And how did she feel about that?”

“She dressed the part. Whatever character came to mind, whatever her mood. Seductress or Salvation Army or Strega.”

“Do you fear she could be violent?” Dr. Clark asked.

“She has violent preoccupations, claims to have recovered memories of satanic cult abuse, her father killing children on stone altars and having sexual intercourse with her. No evidence that any such thing ever occurred.”

“And what evidence might there be?”

Benton didn’t answer. He wasn’t allowed to check on a patient’s veracity. He wasn’t supposed to investigate. It was so counterintuitive for him to operate this way, it was almost intolerable, and the boundaries were blurring.

“Doesn’t like to write but likes drama,” Dr. Clark said, watching him closely.

“Drama is the common denominator,” Benton said, and he knew Dr. Clark was already on the road to truth.

He sensed what Benton had done-or that he had done something. It occurred to Benton that subconsciously he’d orchestrated the conversation about Dodie because he really needed to talk about himself.