Five Scarpetta Novels (125 page)

“You filled her with all this guns and ammo and crime-solving shit! You turned her into a fucking little computer nerd by the time she was ten, when little girls should be going to birthday parties and riding ponies and making friends!”

I let her rail on, paying attention to the road.

“You exposed her to a big, ugly redneck cop, and let's face it. He's really your only close relationship with a man. I hope like hell you don't sleep with a pig like that. And I have to tell you, as sorry as I am about what happened to Benton, he was weak. Not enough sap in that tree, oh no. No yolk in that egg.

“Huh. You were the
man
in that relationship,
Miss doctor-lawyer-chief.
I've told you before and I'll tell you again, you're nothing but a man with big tits. You fool everybody because you look
so elegant
in your Ralph
Lau-ren and ritzy-titzy car. You think you're so fucking sexy with those big tits, always making me feel something's wrong with me and making fun of me when I ordered Mark Eden and all those other contraptions. And remember what Mother said?

“She gave me a photograph of a man's hairy hand and said, ‘That's what makes a woman's breasts get big.'”

“You're drunk,” I said.

“We were teenagers and you made fun of me!”

“I never made fun of you.”

“You made me feel stupid and ugly. And you had this blond hair and a chest and all the boys talked about you. Especially since you were smart, too. Oh, you've always thought you're so fucking smart because I couldn't do anything but English.”

“Stop it, Dorothy.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don't, Dorothy.”

“But you don't fool me. Oh, no.”

She shook her head from side to side, wagging her finger in my face.

“Oh, no. You can't fool me. I've always suspected the truth about you.”

I was parked in front of the Berkeley Hotel, and she didn't even notice. She was screaming, tears streaming down her face.

“You're a closet diesel dyke,” she said hatefully.
“And you turned my daughter into one!
And now she almost gets killed and she thinks I'm lower than a sewer!”

“Why don't you go inside your hotel and get some sleep,” I said to her.

She wiped her eyes and looked out the window, surprised to see her hotel, as if it were a spaceship that had silently landed.

“I'm not dumping you out on the roadside, Dorothy. But right now I think it's best we're not together.”

She sniffled, her rage fading like fireworks in the night.

“I'll get you to your room,” I said.

She shook her head, her hands motionless in her lap, tears sliding down her miserable face.

“She didn't want to see me,” she said in a voice as quiet as a breath. “The minute I came off the elevator in that hospital, she looked as if someone had just spat on her food.”

A group of people were walking out of the Tobacco Company. I recognized the men who had been at Dorothy's table. They were walking unsteadily and laughing too loudly.

“She's always wanted to be just like you, Kay. Do you have any idea how that feels?” she cried. “I'm a somebody, too. Why can't she want to be like me?”

She suddenly moved over and hugged me. She cried into my neck, sobbing, shaking. I wanted to love her. But I didn't. I never had.

“I want her to adore me, too!” she exclaimed, carried away by emotion and alcohol and her own addiction to drama. “I want her to admire me, too! I want her to brag about me like she does you! I want her to think I'm brilliant and strong, that everyone turns around and looks at me when I walk into a room. I want her to think and say all those things she thinks and says about you! I want her to ask
my
advice and want to grow up to be just like me.”

I put the car in gear and drove up to the entrance of the hotel.

“Dorothy,” I said, “you're the most selfish person I've ever known.”

I
t was almost nine o'clock by the time I got home, and I worried that I should have brought Dorothy with me instead of leaving her at the hotel. I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she had gone right back across the street to the bar. Maybe there were a few lonely men left she could amuse.

I checked my telephone messages, annoyed by hang-ups. There were seven of them, and caller-ID read
unavailable
each time. Reporters didn't like to leave messages, even at my office, because it gave me the option of not calling them back. I heard a car door shut in the driveway and almost wondered if it were Dorothy, but when I checked, a yellow taxi was driving away as Lucy rang the bell.

She was carrying one small suitcase and a tote bag and dropped them in the foyer, shoving the door shut without hugging me. Her left cheek was one dark purple bruise, and several smaller ones were beginning to turn yellow at the edges. I had seen enough injuries like that to know she had been punched.

“I hate her,” she started in, glaring at me as if I were to blame. “Who told her to come here? Was it you?”

“You know I would never do something like that,” I said.
“Come on. Let's talk. We have so much talking to do. My God, I was beginning to think I was never going to see you again.”

I sat her in front of the fire and tossed in another log. Lucy looked awful. She had dark circles under her eyes, her jeans and sweater were hanging off her, her reddish-brown hair was falling over her face. She propped a foot up on my coffee table. Velcro ripped as she took off her ankle holster and gun.

“You got anything to drink in this house?” she asked. “Some bourbon or something? There was no damn heat in the back of the taxi and the window wouldn't close. I'm frozen. Look at my hands.”

She held them out. The nails were blue. I took both of them in mine and held them tight. I moved closer to her on the couch and put my arms around her again. She felt so thin.

“What happened to all that muscle?” I tried to be funny.

“I haven't had much food . . .” She stared into the fire.

“They don't have food in Miami?”

She wouldn't smile.

“Why did Mother have to come? Why can't she just leave me alone? All my life she doesn't do a goddamn fucking thing except subject me to all her men, men, men,” she said. “Parade herself around with all these dicks fawning over her while I had nobody. Hell, they had nobody, either, and didn't even know it.”

“You've always had me.”

She shoved her hair out of her eyes and didn't seem to hear me.

“You know what she did at the hospital?”

“How did she know where to find you?” I had to have that question answered first, and Lucy knew why I asked it.

“Because she's my birth mother,” she said with singsong sarcasm. “So she's listed on various forms whether I like it or not, and of course she knows who Jo is. So Mom tracks
down Jo's parents here in Richmond and finds out everything because she's so manipulative and people always think she's wonderful. The Sanderses tell her where Jo's room is and Mother shows up at the hospital this morning and I didn't even know she was here until I was sitting there in the waiting area and she walked in like the prima donna she is.”

She clenched and unclenched her fists as if her fingers were stiff.

“Then guess what?” she went on. “Mom puts on this big sympathetic act with the Sanderses. Is bringing them coffee, sandwiches, giving them all her little pearls of philosophy. And they're talking and talking, and I'm just sitting there like I don't exist, and then Mom comes over and pats my hand and says,
Jo isn't having any visitors today.

“I ask her who the hell she is, telling me that. She says the Sanderses wanted her to tell me because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. So I finally just fucking leave. Mom may still be there for all I know.”

“She's not,” I said.

Lucy got up and stabbed a log with the poker. Sparks swarmed as if in protest.

“She's gone too far. This time she's done it,” my niece said.

“Let's don't talk about her. I want to talk about you. Tell me what happened in Miami.”

She sat on the rug, leaning against the couch, staring into the fire. I got up and went to the bar and poured her a Booker's bourbon.

“Aunt Kay, I've got to see her.”

I handed Lucy the drink and sat back down. I massaged her shoulders and she began to loosen up, her voice getting drowsy.

“She's in there and doesn't know I'm waiting for her. Maybe she thinks I can't be bothered.”

“Why in the world would she think that, Lucy?”

She didn't answer me, but seemed drawn into smoke and flames. She sipped her drink.

“When we were driving there in my hot little V-twelve Benz,” she said in a distant voice, “Jo had this bad feeling and she told me she did. I said it was normal to have a
bad feeling
when you're about to do a takedown. I even kidded her about it.”

She paused, just staring at flames as if she were seeing something else.

“We get to the door of the apartment that these One-Sixty-Fiver assholes are using as their clubhouse,” she resumed, “and Jo goes first. There're six of them in there instead of three. Right away we know we're had and I know what they're going to do. One of them grabs Jo and sticks a gun to her head to make her tell them where the Fisher Island place is we'd set up for the hit.”

She took a deep breath and was silent, as if she couldn't go on. She sipped the bourbon.

“God, what is this stuff? The vapors alone are knocking me out.”

“A hundred and twenty proof. Usually I'm not a pusher, but it wouldn't be such a bad thing for you to be knocked out right now. Stay here with me for a while,” I said.

“ATF and DEA did everything right,” she told me.

“These things happen, Lucy.”

“I had to think so fast. The only thing I knew to do was act like I didn't care if they blew her brains out or not. Here they are holding a gun to her head and I start acting pissed off at her, which wasn't at all what they were expecting.”

She took another swallow of bourbon. It was hitting her hard.

“I walked up to this Moroccan asshole with the gun and get right in his face and tell him to go ahead and waste her, that she's a stupid bitch and I'm sick of her always getting in my way. But if he does her now, all he's going to do is fuck himself and everybody else.”

She stared into the fire, eyes wide and unblinking, as if watching it again in her mind.

“I say,
You think I didn't expect you would use us and then do this? You think I'm stupid? Well, guess what? I forgot to tell you Mr. Tortora is expecting our company
—and I look at my watch—
in exactly one hour and sixteen minutes. I thought it would be nice to entertain him before you motherfuckers showed up and blew his guts out and took all his guns and money and fucking cocaine. What happens if we don't show up? You think he won't get nervous?”

I couldn't take my eyes off Lucy. Images flew at me from all directions. I imagined her playing out this dangerous act, and I saw her in battle dress when she was at fire scenes and flying a helicopter and programming computers. I envisioned her as the irritating, irrepressible child I had virtually raised. Marino was right. Lucy thought she had so much to prove. Her first impulse had always been to fight.

“I didn't think they really believed me,” she said. “So I turn to Jo. I'll never forget the look in her eyes, the pistol barrel right against her temple. Her eyes.” She paused. “They're so calm as she looks in mine because . . .”

Her voice shook.

“Because she wants me to know she loves me . . .” Lucy chokes on sobs. “She loves me! She wants me to know because she believes . . .” Her voice went up and stopped. “She believes we're going to die. And that's when I start yelling at her. I call her a stupid fucking bitch and slap her face so hard my hand goes numb.

“And she just looks at me as if I'm all there is, blood trickling out of her nose and the sides of her mouth, a red river down her face, dripping off her chin. She didn't even cry. She's out of the story, lost her role, her training, everything she damn well knows what to do. I grab her. I shove her hard to the ground and get on top of her, swearing and slapping and yelling.”

She wiped her eyes and stared straight ahead.

“And what's so awful, Aunt Kay, is part of it's real. I'm so angry with her for quitting on me, for just giving up. She was going to just give up and die, goddamn it!”

“Like Benton did,” I quietly said.

Lucy wiped her face on her shirt. She didn't seem to hear what I'd said.

“I'm so fucking tired of people giving up and leaving me,” she said in a shattered voice. “When I need them and they fucking give up!”

“Benton didn't give up, Lucy.”

“I just keep swearing at Jo, screaming and hitting her and telling her I'm going to kill her as I straddle her, shaking her by her hair. It wakes her up, maybe even pisses her off, too, and she starts fighting back. Calls me a Cuban cunt and spits blood in my face, punches me, and by this time the guys are laughing and whistling and grabbing their crotches . . .”

She took another long breath and shut her eyes, barely able to sit up. She leaned against my legs, firelight playing on her strong, beautiful face.

“She starts really struggling. My knees are so tight against her sides I'm surprised I didn't break her ribs, and while we're going at each other like that, I tear open her shirt, and this really gets the guys going and they don't see me grab my gun out of my ankle holster. I start firing. I just fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire . . .” Her voice trailed off.

I bent over and put my arms around her.

“You know? I'm wearing those wide-legged street jeans to hide my Sig. They say I fired eleven rounds. I don't even remember dropping the empty magazine, putting in a full one. Racking it back. Agents are everywhere and somehow I'm dragging Jo out the door. And she's bleeding heavily from her head.”

Lucy's lower lip trembled as she tried to go on, her voice far away. She wasn't here. She was there, living it again.

“Fire. Fire. Fire. Her blood on my hands.”

Her voice rose to God.

“I hit her and hit her. I can still feel the sting of her cheek against the palm of my hand.”

She looked at her hand as if it should be put to death.

“I felt it. How soft her skin was. And she bled. I made her bleed. The skin I had touched and loved. I drew blood from it. Then the guns, the guns, the guns, and smoke and ringing in my ears and it's a blaze when it happens like that. It's over and never started. I knew she was dead.”

She bowed her head and wept quietly, and I stroked her hair.

“You saved her life. And you saved yours,” I finally said. “Jo knows what you did and why you did it, Lucy. She should love you all the more.”

“I'm in trouble this time, Aunt Kay,” she said.

“You're a hero. That's what you are.”

“No. You don't understand. It doesn't matter if it was a good shooting. It doesn't matter if ATF gives me a medal.”

She sat up and got to her feet. She stared down at me with defeat in her eyes and another emotion I didn't recognize. Maybe it was grief. She'd never shown grief when Benton was murdered. All I'd ever seen was rage.

“The bullet they took out of her leg? It's a Hornady Custom Jacketed hollowpoint. Ninety grains. What I had in my gun.”

I didn't know what to say.

“I'm the one who shot her, Aunt Kay.”

“Even if you did . . .”

“What if she never walks again . . . ? What if she's finished in law enforcement because of me?”

“She won't be jumping out of helicopters anytime soon,” I said. “But she's going to be fine.”

“What if I permanently damaged her face with my fucking fist?”

“Lucy, listen to me,” I said. “You saved her life. If you
killed two people to do that, then so be it. You had no choice. It's not that you wanted to.”

“The hell I didn't,” she said. “I wish I'd killed all of them.”

“You don't mean that.”

“Maybe I'll just be a mercenary soldier,” she bitterly said. “Got any murderers, rapists, carjackers, pedophiles, drug dealers you need to get rid of? Just call one-eight-hundred-L-U-C-Y.”

“You can't bring Benton back through killing.”

Still, it was as if she didn't hear me.

“He wouldn't want you to feel this way,” I said.

The telephone rang.

“He didn't abandon you, Lucy. Don't be angry with him because he died.”