Five Scarpetta Novels (147 page)

“Let's start the day with a reminder of our boundaries, Henri.” Benton patiently says the same thing he said yesterday morning and the morning before that, when he was making notes on the couch.

“Okay,” she replies from the landing. “Rudy called. That's who it was,” she says.

W
ATER DRUMS
in sinks and X rays are illuminated on every light box as Scarpetta leans close to a gash that almost severed the dead tractor driver's nose from his face.

“I'd do a STAT alcohol and CO on him,” she says to Dr. Jack Fielding, who is on the other side of the stainless-steel gurney, the body between them.

“You noticing something?” he asks.

“I don't smell alcohol, and he's not cherry-pink. But just to be on the safe side. I'm telling you, cases like this are trouble, Jack.”

The dead man is still clothed in his olive-green work pants, which are dusted with red clay and ripped open at the thighs. Fat and muscle and shattered bones protrude from split skin. The tractor ran over the middle of his body, but not while she was watching. It could have happened one minute, maybe five minutes, after she turned the corner, and she is certain that the man she saw was Mr. Whitby. She tries not to envision him alive but every other minute he is there in her mind, standing in front of the huge tractor tire, poking at the engine, doing something to the engine.

“Hey.” Fielding calls out to a young man whose head is shaved, probably a soldier from Fort Lee's Graves Registration Unit. “What's your name?”

“Bailey, sir.”

Scarpetta picks out several other young men and women in scrubs, shoe and hair covers, face masks and gloves who are probably interns from the Army and here to learn how to handle dead bodies. She wonders if they are destined for Iraq. She sees the olive green of the Army and it is the same olive green of Mr. Whitby's ripped work pants.

“Do the funeral home a favor, Bailey, and tie off the carotid,” Fielding says gruffly. When he worked for Scarpetta, he wasn't so unpleasant. He didn't boss people around and loudly find fault with them.

The soldier is embarrassed, his muscular tattooed right arm frozen midair, his gloved fingers around a long crooked surgical needle threaded with #7 cotton twine. He is helping a morgue assistant suture up the Y incision of an autopsy that was begun prior to staff meeting, and it is the morgue assistant and not the soldier who should know about tying off the carotid. Scarpetta feels sorry for the soldier, and if Fielding still worked for her, she would have a word with him and he would not treat anyone rudely in her morgue.

“Yes, sir,” the soldier says with a stricken look on his young face. “Just getting ready to do that, sir.”

“Really?” Fielding asks, and everyone in the morgue can hear what he is saying to the poor young soldier. “You know why you tie off the carotid?”

“No, sir.”

“It's polite, that's why,” Fielding says. “You tie string around a major blood vessel such as the carotid so funeral home embalmers don't have to dig around for it. It's the polite thing to do, Bailey.”

“Yes sir.”

“Jesus,” Fielding says. “I put up with this every day because he lets everyone and their brother in here. You see him in here?” He resumes making notes on his clipboard. “Hell no. He's been here almost four damn months and hasn't done one autopsy. Oh. And in case you haven't figured it out, he likes to make people wait. His favorite thing. Obviously, nobody gave you the rundown on him. Excuse the pun.” He indicates the dead man between them who managed to run himself down with a tractor. “If you'd called me, I'd have told you not to bother coming here.”

“I should have called you,” she says, watching five people struggle to roll an enormous woman off a gurney onto a stainless-steel table. Bloody fluid trickles from her nose and mouth. “She's got a huge panniculus.” Scarpetta refers to the fold or drape of fat that people as obese as the dead woman have over their bellies, and what Scarpetta is really saying to Fielding is that she won't engage in comments about Dr. Marcus when she is standing in his morgue and surrounded by his staff.

“Well, it's my fucking case,” Fielding says, and now he is talking about Dr. Marcus and Gilly Paulsson. “The asshole never even stepped foot in the morgue when her body came in, for Christ's sake, and everyone knew the case was going to cause a stink. His first big stink. Oh, don't give me one of your looks, Dr. Scarpetta.” He never could stop calling her that, even though she encouraged him to call her Kay because they respected each other and she considered him a friend, but he wouldn't call her Kay when he worked for her and he still won't. “No one here is listening, not that I give a damn. You got dinner plans?”

“With you, I hope.” She helps him remove Mr. Whitby's muddy leather work boots, untying the filthy laces and pulling out the dirty cowhide tongues. Rigor mortis is in the very early stages, and he is still limber and warm.

“How the hell do these guys run over themselves, can you tell me that?” Fielding says. “I never can figure it out. Good. My house at seven. I still live in the same place.”

“I'll tell you how they often do it,” she says as she remembers Mr. Whitby standing in front of the tractor tire, doing something to the engine. “They're having some sort of mechanical problem and get off the seat and stand right in front of that huge back tire and fool with the starter, possibly trying to jump it with a screwdriver, forgetting the tractor's in gear. It's their bad luck it starts. In his case, running him over midsection.” She points at the dirty tire tread pattern on Mr. Whitby's olive work pants and his black vinyl jacket that is embroidered with his name, T. Whitby, in thick red thread. “When I saw him, he was standing in front of the tire.”

“Yeah. Our old building. Welcome back to town.”

“Was he found under the tire?”

“Went right over him and kept going.” Fielding pulls off mud-stained socks that have left the impression of their weave on the man's large white feet. “Remember that big yellow painted metal pole sticking up from the pavement near the back door? The tractor ran into it and that's what stopped it, otherwise it might have busted right through the bay door. I guess it wouldn't matter since they're tearing the place down.”

“Then he's not likely to be an asphyxia. A diffuse crush injury the width of that tire,” she says, looking at the body. “Exsanguination. Expect an abdominal cavity full of blood, ruptured spleen, liver, bladder, bowels, crushed pelvis, my guess. Seven o'clock it is.”

“What about your sidekick?”

“Don't call him that. You know better.”

“He's invited. He looks pretty goofy in that LAPD cap.”

“I warned him.”

“What do you think cut his face? Something underneath or in back of the tractor?” Fielding asks, and blood trickles down the side of Mr. Whitby's stubbly face as Fielding touches the partially severed nose.

“It may not be a cut. As the tire progressed over his body, it pulled his skin with it. This injury,” she points at the deep, jagged wound over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, “may be a tear, not a cut. If it's really an issue, you should be able to see rust or grease under the scope, and significant tissue bridging from the shearing effect as opposed to cutting. One thing I would do if I were you is answer all questions.”

“Oh yeah.” Fielding glances up from his clipboard, from the clothing and personal-effects form he is filling out with a ballpoint pen tied to the steel clamp.

“A very good chance this man's family is going to want relief for their suffering,” she says. “Death at the workplace, a notorious workplace.”

“Oh yeah. Of all places to die.”

Fielding's latex-gloved fingers are stained red as he touches the wound on the man's face, and warm blood drips freely as he manipulates the nearly severed nose. He flips up a page on the clipboard and begins to draw the injury on a body diagram. He leans close to the face, peering intensely through plastic safety glasses. “Don't see any rust or grease,” he says. “But that doesn't mean it's not there.”

“Good idea.” She agrees with the direction of his thoughts. “I'd swab it, get the labs to check it out, check everything. I wouldn't be surprised if someone says this man was run over or pushed off the tractor or in front of it, or was slammed in the face with a shovel first. You never know.”

“Oh yeah. Money, money, money.”

“Not just money,” she replies. “Lawyers make it all about money. But at first, it's all about shock, pain, loss, about its being somebody else's fault. No family member wants to believe this was a stupid death, that it was preventable, that any experienced tractor driver knows better than to stand in front of a back tire and fool with the starter, bypassing the default safety of a normal ignition, which allows the tractor to start only in neutral, not in gear. But what do people do? They get too comfortable, are in a hurry and don't think. And it's human nature to deny the probability that someone we care about caused his or her own death, intentionally or inadvertently. But you've heard my lectures before.”

When Fielding was starting out, he was one of her forensic fellows. She taught him forensic pathology. She taught him how to perform not just competent but meticulous and aggressive medico-legal scene investigations and autopsies, and it saddens her to remember how unabashedly eager he was to work across the table from her and take it all in, to go with her to court when time allowed and listen to her testify, to sit down in her office and go over his reports, to learn. Now he is worn out and has a skin condition and she is fired and both of them are here.

“I should have called you,” she says, and she unbuckles Mr. Whitby's cheap leather belt and unbuttons and unzips his torn olive pants. “We'll work on Gilly Paulsson and figure her out.”

“Oh yeah,” Fielding says, and he didn't used to say “Oh yeah” so often, either.

H
ENRI
W
ALDEN
wears fleece-lined suede slippers that make no sound on the carpet as she drifts like a black apparition toward the tan leather wing chair across from the couch.

“I took my shower,” she says, perching on the chair and drawing her slender legs under her.

Benton catches the deliberate flash of young flesh, the pale recesses of high inner thighs. He does not look or react the way most men would.

“Why do you care?” she asks him, and she has asked him this every morning since she got here.

“It makes you feel better, doesn't it, Henri?”

She nods, staring at him like a cobra.

“Little things are important. Eating, sleeping, being clean, exercise. Regaining control.”

“I heard you talking to someone,” she says.

“That's a problem,” he replies, his eyes steady on hers over the rim of his glasses, the legal pad in his lap as before, but there are more words on it, the words “Black Ferrari” and “without permission” and “was followed from the camp, likely” and “point of contact, the black Ferrari.”

He says, “Private conversations are supposed to be just that. Private. So we need to go back to our original agreement, Henri. Do you remember what it was?”

She pulls off her slippers and drops them on the carpet. Her delicate bare feet are on the chair cushion, and when she bends over to study them, the red robe falls open slightly. “No.” Her voice is barely audible and she shakes her head.

“I know you remember, Henri.” Benton repeats her name often to remind her who she is, to personalize what has been depersonalized and, in some regards, irrevocably damaged. “Our agreement was respect, remember?”

She bends more deeply and picks at an unpainted toenail, her stare fixed on what she is doing, her nakedness beneath her robe offered to him.

“Part of having respect is allowing each other privacy. And modesty,” he says, quietly. “We've talked about boundaries a lot. Violating modesty is a violation of boundaries.”

Her free hand crawls up to her chest and gathers the robe together while she continues to study and manipulate her toes. “I just woke up,” she says, as if this explains her exhibitionism.

“Thank you, Henri.” It is important for her to believe that Benton does not want her sexually, not even in his fantasies. “But you didn't just get up. You got up, came in, and we talked, and then you took a shower.”

“My name isn't Henri,” she says.

“What would you like me to call you?”

“Nothing.”

“You have two names,” he says. “You have the name you were christened at birth and the name you used in your acting career and still use.”

“Well, I'm Henri, then,” she says, looking down at her toes.

“So I'll call you Henri.”

She nods, looking at her toes. “What do you call her?”

Benton knows who she means but he doesn't answer.

“You sleep with her. Lucy's told me all about it.” She emphasizes the word “all.”

Benton feels a flash of anger but he doesn't show it. Lucy would not have told Henri all about his relationship with Scarpetta. No, he reminds himself. This is Henri goading him again, testing his boundaries again. No, crashing through his boundaries again.

“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 right big toe, as if it is sore. She frowns. Benton gets up. Casually, he picks up the Glock 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 the 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 I 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.

Benton examines another photograph, focusing on it in his memory as Henri gets up from her chair. She mutters that she wants more coffee and will get it herself. Benton processes what she says and the fact that his pistol is in the kitchen cabinet, but she doesn't know which cabinet because her back was to him when he tucked the pistol out of sight. He watches her, reading what she is doing in the moment while he reads the hieroglyphics of the injuries, the peculiar marks on her body. The tops of her hands were red because he or she, and Benton will not assume the gender of her assailant, bruised her. She had fresh contusions on the tops of her hands, and she had several reddish areas of contusion on her upper back. Over the next few days, the redness from subcutaneous broken blood vessels darkened to a stormy purple.

Benton watches Henri pour more coffee. He thinks about the photographs of her unconscious body in situ. The fact that her body is beautiful is of no importance beyond Benton's consideration that all details of her appearance and behavior may have been violent triggers to the person who tried to murder her. Henri is thin but most assuredly not androgynous. She has breasts and pubic hair and would not appeal to a pedophile. At the time of the assault, she was sexually active.

He watches her return to the leather chair, both hands cupping the mug of coffee. It doesn't bother him that she is inconsiderate. A polite person would have asked if he would like more coffee too, but Henri is probably one of the most selfish, insensitive people Benton has ever met and was selfish and insensitive before the attack and will always be selfish and insensitive. It would be a good thing if she were never around Lucy again. But he has no right to wish that or make it happen, he tells himself.

“Henri,” Benton says, getting up for more coffee, “are you up for doing a fact-check this morning?”

“Yes. But I can't remember.” Her voice follows him into the kitchen. “I know you don't believe me.”

“Why do you think that?” He pours more coffee and returns to the living room.

“The doctor didn't.”

“Oh yes, the doctor. He said he didn't believe you,” Benton says as he sits back down on the couch. “I think you know my opinion of that doctor, but I'll express it again. He thinks women are hysterical and doesn't like them, certainly he has no respect for them, and that's because he is afraid of them. He's also an ER doctor, and he knows nothing about violent offenders or victims.”