"How come she's not here with you?" Henri asks. "It's your vacation, isn't it? And she's not here. A lot of people don't have sex after a while. That's one reason I don't want to be with anyone, not for long. No sex. Usually after six months, people stop having sex. She's not here because I am." Henri stares at him.
"That's correct," he replies. "She's not here because you are, Henri."
"She must have been mad when you told her she couldn't come."
"She understands," he says, but now he isn't being entirely honest.
Scarpetta understood and she didn't. You can't come to Aspen right now, he told her after he got Lucy's panicked phone call. I'm afraid a case has come up and I have to deal with it.
You're leaving Aspen, then, Scarpetta said.
I can't talk about the case, he replied, and for all he knows, she thinks he is anywhere but in Aspen right now.
This really isn't fair, Benton, she said. I set aside these two weeks for us. I have cases too.
Please bear with me, he replied. I promise I'll explain later.
Of all times, she said. This is a very bad time. We needed this time.
They do need this time, and instead he is here with Henri. "Tell me about your dreams last night. Do you remember them?" he is saying to Henri.
Her nimble fingers fondle her left big toe, as if it is sore. She frowns. Benton gets up. Casually, he picks up the Clock and walks across the living room to the kitchen. Opening a cupboard, he places the pistol on a top shelf, and pulls out two cups and pours coffee. He and Henri drink it black.
"May be a little strong. I can make more," and he sets her cup on an end table and returns to his place on the couch. "Night before last you dreamed about a monster. Actually, you called it 'the beast,' didn't you?" His keen eyes find her unhappy ones. "Did you see the beast again last night?"
She doesn't answer him, and her mood has dramatically altered from what it was earlier this morning. Something happened in the shower, but he'll get to that later.
"We don't have to talk about the beast if you don't want to, Henri. But the more you tell me about him, the more likely I am to find him. You want me to find him, don't you?"
"Who were you talking to?" she asks in the same hushed, childlike voice. But she is not a child. She is anything but innocent. "You were talking about me," she persists as the sash of her robe loosens and more flesh shows.
"I promise I wasn't talking about you. No one knows you're here, no one but Lucy and Rudy. I believe you trust me, Henri." He pauses, looking at her. "I believe you trust Lucy."
Her eyes get angry at the mention of Lucy's name.
"I believe you trust us, Henri," Benton says, sitting calmly, his legs crossed, his fingers laced and in his lap. "I would like you to cover yourself, Henri."
She rearranges her robe, tucking it between her legs and tightening the sash. Benton knows exactly what her naked body looks like, but he does not imagine it. He has seen photographs, and he will not look at them again unless it is necessary to review them with other professionals and eventually with her, when she is ready or if she is ready. For now, she represses the facts of the case either unwillingly or willingly, and acts out in ways that would seduce and infuriate weaker human beings who neither care about nor understand her ploys. Her relentless attempts to sexually arouse Benton are not simply about transference but are a direct manifestation of her acute and chronic narcissistic needs and her desire to control and dominate, degrade and destroy anyone who dares to care about her. Henri's every action and reaction are about self-hate and rage.
"Why did Lucy send me away?" she asks.
"Can you tell me? Why don't you tell me why you're here?"
"Because…" She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her robe. "The beast."
Benton's eyes are steady on her from his safe position on the couch, the words on rhe legal pad unreadable from where she sits and well beyond her reach. He does not encourage her conversation. It is important that he be patient, incredibly patient, like a hunter in the woods who stands perfectly still and barely breathes.
"It came into the house. I don't remember."
Benton watches her in silence.
"Lucy let it into the house," she says.
Benton will not push her, but he will not allow misinformation or outright lies. "No. Lucy did not let it into the house," Benton corrects her. "No one let it into the house. It came in because the back door was unlocked and the alarm was off. We've talked about this. Do you remember why the door was unlocked and the alarm was off?"
She stares at her toes, her hands still.
"We've talked about why," he says.
"I had the flu," she replies, staring at a different toe. "I was sick and she wasn't home. I was shivering and went out in the sun, and I forgot to lock the door and reset the alarm. I had a fever and forgot. Lucy blames me."
He sips his coffee. Already, it has gotten cold. Coffee doesn't stay hot in the mountains of Aspen, Colorado. "Has Lucy said it's your fault?"
"She thinks it." Henri is staring past him now, out the windows behind his head. "She thinks everything is my fault."
"She's never told me she thinks it's your fault," he says. "You were telling me about your dreams," he goes back to that. "The dreams you had last night."
She blinks and rubs her big toe again.
"Is it hurting?"
She nods.
"I'm sorry. Would you like something for it?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing would help."
She isn't talking about her right big toe, but is making the connection between its having been broken and her now finding herself in his protective care more than a thousand miles from Pompano Beach, Florida, where she almost died. Henri's eyes heat up.
"I was walking on a trail," she says. "There were rocks on one side, this sheer wall of rocks very close to the trail. There were cracks, this crack between the rocks, and I don't know why I did it, but I wedged myself into it and got stuck." Her breath catches and she shoves blond hair out of her eyes, and her hand shakes. "I was wedged between rocks… I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get free. And nobody could get me out. When I was in the shower I remembered my dream. The water was hitting my face, and when I held my breath I remembered my dream."
"Did someone try to get you out?" Benton doesn't react to her terror or pass judgment on whether it is real or false. He doesn't know which it is. With her, there is so little he knows.
She is motionless in her chair, struggling for breath.
"You said nobody could get you out," Benton goes on, calmly, quietly, in the unprovocative tone of the counselor he has become for her. "Was another person there? Or other people?"
"I don't know."
He waits. If she continues to struggle for breath, he will have to do something about it. But for now, he is patient, the hunter waiting.
I can't remember. I don't know why, but for a minute I thought someone… it occurred to me in my dream, maybe, that someone could chip away at the rocks. Maybe with a pickax. And then I thought, no. The rock is way too hard. You can't get me out. No one can. I'm going to die. I was going to die, I knew it, and then I couldn't take it anymore, so the dream stopped." Her rambling rendition stops as abruptly as the dream apparently did. Henri takes a deep breath and her body relaxes. Her eyes focus on Benton. "It was awful," she says.
"Yes," he says. "It must have been awful. I can't think of anything more frightening than not being able to breathe."
She flattens her hand against her heart. "My chest couldn't move. I was breathing very shallowly, you know? And then 1 just didn't have the strength."
"No one would be strong enough to move the rocky face of a mountain," he replies.
"I couldn't get air."
Her assailant may have tried to smother or asphyxiate her, and Benton envisions the photographs. One by one he holds up the photographs in his mind and examines Henri's injuries, trying to make sense of what she has just said. He sees blood trickling from her nose and smeared across her cheeks and staining the sheet beneath her head as she lies on her belly on the bed. Her body is naked and uncovered, her arms stretched out above her head and palms down on the bed, her legs bent, one more bent than the other.