Book of the Dead (5 page)

    
“I’d like to know if mood disorders run in her family,” Benton says. “I don’t suppose you bothered to ask.”

    
“I didn’t. I’m sorry I wasn’t astute enough to think of it.”

    
“It would be extremely useful to know if she had a psychiatric history her family’s been secretive about.”

    
“It’s well known she’d struggled with an eating disorder,” Scarpetta says. “She’s talked openly about it.”

    
“No mention of a mood disorder? Nothing from her parents?” Benton continues his cool interrogation of the captain.

    
“Nothing more than her ups and downs. Typical teenager.”

    
“Do you have children?” Benton reaches for his wine.

    
“Not that I know of.”

    
“A trigger,” Scarpetta says. “Something was going on with Drew that no one’s telling us. Perhaps what’s in plain view? Her behavior’s in plain view. Her drinking’s in plain view. Why? Did something happen?”

    
“The tournament in Charleston,” Captain Poma says to Scarpetta. “Where you have your private practice. What is it they call it? The Lowcountry? What is Lowcountry, exactly?” He slowly swirls his wine, his eyes on her.

    
“Almost sea level, literally low country.”

    
“And your local police have no interest in this case? Since she played a tournament there just maybe two days before she was murdered?”

    
“Curious, I’m sure – ” Scarpetta starts to say.

    
“Her murder has nothing to do with the Charleston police,” Benton interrupts. “They have no jurisdiction.”

    
Scarpetta gives him a look, and the captain watches both of them. He’s been watching their tense interaction all day.

    
“No jurisdiction hasn’t stopped anybody from showing up and flashing their badges,” Captain Poma says.

    
“If you’re alluding to the FBI again, you’ve made your point,” says Benton. “If you’re alluding to my being former FBI again, you’ve definitely made your point. If you’re alluding to Dr. Scarpetta and me – we were invited by you. We didn’t just show up, Otto. Since you’ve asked us to call you that.”

    
“Is it me or is this not perfect?” The captain holds up his glass of wine as if it is a flawed diamond.

    
Benton picked the wine. Scarpetta knows more about Italian wines than he does, but tonight he finds it necessary to assert his dominance, as if he has just plummeted fifty rungs on the evolutionary ladder. She feels Captain Poma’s interest in her as she looks at another photograph, grateful the waiter doesn’t seem inclined to come their way. He’s busy with the table of loud Americans.

    
“Close-up of her legs,” she says. “Bruising around her ankles.”

    
“Fresh bruises,” Captain Poma says. “He grabbed her, maybe.”

    
“Possibly. They aren’t from ligatures.”

    
She wishes Captain Poma wouldn’t sit so close to her, but there’s no where else for her to move unless she pushes her chair into the wall. She wishes he wouldn’t brush against her when he reaches for photographs.

    
“Her legs are recently shaven,” she goes on. “I would say shaven within twenty-four hours of her death. Barely any stubble. She cared about how she looked even when she was traveling with friends. That might be important. Was she hoping to meet someone?”

    
“Of course. Three young women looking for young men,” Captain Poma says.

    
Scarpetta watches Benton motion for the waiter to bring another bottle of wine.

    
She says, “Drew was a celebrity. From what I’ve been told, she was careful about strangers, didn’t like to be bothered.”

    
“Her drinking doesn’t make much sense,” Benton says.

    
“Chronic drinking doesn’t,” Scarpetta says. “You can look at these photographs and see she was extremely fit, lean, superb muscle development. If she’d become a heavy drinker, it would appear it hadn’t been going on long, and her recent success would indicate that as well. Again, we have to wonder if something recently had happened. Some emotional upheaval?”

    
“Depressed. Unstable. Abusing alcohol,” Benton says. “All making the person more vulnerable to a predator.”

    
“And that’s what I think happened,” Captain Poma says. “Randomness. An easy target. Alone at the Piazza di Spagna, where she encountered the gold-painted mime.”

    
The gold-painted mime performed as mimes do, and Drew dropped another coin into his cup, and he performed once more to her delight.

    
She refused to leave with her friends. The last thing she ever said to them was, “Beneath all that gold paint is a very handsome Italian.” The last thing her friends ever said to her was, “Don’t assume he’s Italian.” It was a valid comment, since mimes don’t speak.

    
She told her friends to go on, perhaps visit the shops of Via dei Condotti, and she promised to meet them at the Piazza Navona, at the fountain of rivers, where they waited and waited. They told Captain Poma they tasted free samples of crispy waffles made of eggs and farina and sugar, and giggled as Italian boys shot them with bubble guns, begging them to buy one. Instead, Drew’s friends got fake tattoos and encouraged street musicians to play American tunes on reed pipes. They admitted they had gotten somewhat drunk at lunch and were silly.

    
They described Drew as “a little drunk,” and said she was pretty but didn’t think she was. She assumed people stared because they recognized her, when often it was because of her good looks. “People who don’t watch tennis didn’t necessarily recognize her at all,” one of the friends told Captain Poma. “She just didn’t get how beautiful she was.”

    
Captain Poma talks on through their main course, and Benton, for the most part, drinks, and Scarpetta knows what he thinks – she should avoid the captain’s seductions, should somehow move out of range, which in truth would require nothing less than her leaving the table, if not the trattoria. Benton thinks the captain is full of shit, because it defies common sense that a medico legale would interview witnesses as if he is the lead detective in the case, and the captain never mentions the name of anyone else involved in the case. Benton forgets that Captain Poma is the Sherlock Holmes of Rome, or, more likely, Benton can’t stomach the thought, he is so jealous.

    
Scarpetta makes notes as the captain recounts in detail his long interview with the gold-painted mime, who has what appears to be an infallible alibi: He was still performing in his same spot at the base of the Spanish Steps until late afternoon – long after Drew’s friends returned to look for her. He claimed to vaguely remember the girl, but he had no idea who she was, thought she was drunk, and then she wandered off. In summary, he paid little attention to her, he said. He is a mime, he said. He acted like a mime at all times, he said. When he’s not a mime, he works at night as a doorman at the Hotel Hassler, where Benton and Scarpetta are staying. At the top of the Spanish Steps, the Hassler is one of the finest hotels in Rome, and Benton insisted on staying there in its penthouse for reasons he has yet to explain.

    
Scarpetta has barely touched her fish. She continues to look at the photographs as if for the first time. She doesn’t contribute to Benton and Captain Poma’s argument about why some killers grotesquely display their victims. She adds nothing to Benton’s talk of the excitement these sexual predators derive from the headline news or, even better, from lurking nearby or in the crowd, watching the drama of the discovery and the panic that follows. She studies Drew’s mauled naked body, on its side, legs together, knees and elbows bent, hands tucked under the chin.

    
Almost as if she’s sleeping.

    
“I’m not sure it’s contempt,” she says.

    
Benton and Captain Poma stop talking.

    
“If you look at this” – she slides a photograph closer to Benton – “without the usual assumption in mind that this is a sexually degrading display, you might wonder if there’s something different. Not about religion, either. Not praying to Saint Agnes. But the way she’s positioned.” She continues to say things as they come to her. “Something almost tender about it.”

    
“Tender? You’re joking,” Captain Poma says.

    
“As in sleeping,” Scarpetta says. “It doesn’t strike me that she’s displayed in a sexually degrading way – victim on her back, her arms, her legs spread, et cetera. The more I look, I don’t think so.”

    
“Maybe,” Benton says, picking up the photograph.

    
“But nude for everyone to see,” Captain Poma disagrees.

    
“Take a good look at her position. I could be wrong, of course, just trying to open my mind to other interpretations, putting aside my prejudices, my angry assumptions that this killer is filled with hate. It’s just a feeling I’m getting. The suggestion of a different possibility, that maybe he wanted her found but his intention wasn’t to sexually degrade,” she says.

    
“You don’t see contempt? Rage?” Captain Poma is surprised, seems genuinely incredulous.

    
“I think what he did made him feel powerful. He had a need to overpower her. He has other needs that at this moment we can’t possibly know,” she says. “And I’m certainly not suggesting there’s no sexual component. I’m not saying there isn’t rage. I just don’t think these are what drive him.”

    
“Charleston must feel very lucky to have you,” he says.

    
“I’m not sure Charleston feels anything of the sort,” she says. “At least, the local coroner most likely doesn’t.”

    
The drunk Americans are getting louder. Benton seems distracted by what they’re saying.

    
“An expert like yourself right there. Very lucky is how I would consider it if I were the coroner. And he doesn’t avail himself of your talents?” Captain Poma says, brushing against her as he reaches for a photograph he doesn’t need to look at again.

    
“He sends his cases to the Medical University of South Carolina, has never had to contend with a private pathology practice before. Not in Charleston or anywhere. My contracts are with some of the coroners from outlying jurisdictions where there’s no access to medical examiner facilities and labs,” she explains, distracted by Benton.

    
He indicates for her to pay attention to what the drunk Americans are saying.

    
“…I just think when it’s undisclosed this and undisclosed that, it’s fishy,” one of them pontificates.

    
“Why would she want anybody to know? I don’t blame her. It’s like Oprah or Anna Nicole Smith. People find out where they are, they show up in droves.”

    
“How sickening. Imagine being in the hospital…”

    
“Or in Anna Nicole Smith’s case, in the morgue. Or in the damn ground…”

    
“…And mobs of people out there on the sidewalk, yelling out your name.”

    
“Can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, is what I say. Price you pay for being rich and famous.”

    
“What’s going on?” Scarpetta asks Benton.

    
“It would seem our old friend Dr. Self had some sort of emergency earlier today and is going to be off the air for a while,” he replies.

    
Captain Poma turns around and looks at the table of noisy Americans. “Do you know her?” he asks.

    
Benton says, “We’ve had our run-ins with her. Mainly, Kay has.”

    
“I believe I read something about that when I was researching you. A sensational, very brutal homicide case in Florida that involved all of you.”

    
“I’m glad to know you researched us,” Benton says. “That was very thorough.”

    
“Only to make myself familiar before you came here.” Captain Poma meets Scarpetta’s eyes. “A very beautiful woman I know watches Dr. Self regularly,” he says, “and she tells me she saw her on the show last fall. It had something to do with her winning that very big tournament in New York. I admit I don’t pay much attention to tennis.”