Five Scarpetta Novels (153 page)

T
HE LADY NEXT DOOR
lives in a flat-roofed house of curved white concrete and glass that interacts with nature and reflects the water, earth, and sky, and reminds Lucy of buildings she has seen in Finland. At night her neighbor's house looks like an immense lantern lit up.

There is a fountain in the front courtyard, where tall palms and cacti have been wound with strands of colorful lights for the holidays. An inflated green Grinch scowls near the soaring double glass doors, a festive touch that Lucy would find comical if someone else lived inside. In the upper left side of the door frame is a camera that is supposed to be invisible, and as she presses the doorbell she imagines her image filling a closed-circuit video screen. No response, and she presses the button again. Still there is no answer.

Okay. I know you're home because you picked up your newspaper and the flag is up on your mailbox, she thinks. I know you're watching me, probably sitting right there in the kitchen staring at me on your video screen, got the Ai-phone up to your ear to see if I'm breathing or talking to myself, and it just so happens I'm doing both, idiot. Answer your damn door or I'll stand out here all day.

This goes on for maybe five minutes. Lucy waits in front of the heavy glass doors, imagining what the lady is seeing on the video screen and deciding she can't look threatening in jeans, T-shirt, fanny pack, and running shoes. But she has to be annoying as she keeps pressing the bell. Maybe the lady is in the shower. Maybe she isn't looking at the video monitor at all. Lucy rings once more. She's not going to come to the door. I knew you wouldn't, idiot, Lucy silently says to the lady. I could be standing out here having a heart attack on camera and you couldn't be bothered. I guess I'm going to have to make you come to the door. She envisions Rudy pulling out his fake ID to scare the hell out of the Hispanic not even two hours earlier, and she decides, All right then, let's try this and see what you do now. Slipping a thin black wallet out of the back pocket of her tight-fitting jeans, she flashes a badge up close to the not-so-secret camera.

“Hello,” she says out loud. “Police. Don't be alarmed, I live next door, but I'm a cop. Please come to the door.” She rings the bell again and continues holding up her fake credentials directly in front of the pinhole camera.

Lucy blinks in the sunlight, sweating. She waits and listens but doesn't hear a sound. Just when she is about to flash her fake badge again, suddenly there is a voice, as if God is a bitchy woman.

“What do you want?” asks the voice through an invisible speaker near the so-called invisible camera on the upper door frame.

“I've had a trespasser, ma'am,” Lucy replies. “I think you might want to know what's happened next door at my house.”

“You said you're the police,” the unfriendly voice accuses, and the accent is deeply southern.

“I'm both.”

“Both what?”

“Both the police and your neighbor, ma'am. My name's Tina. I wish you'd come to the door.”

Silence, then in less than ten seconds, Lucy sees a figure floating toward the glass doors from the inside, and that figure becomes a woman in her forties dressed in a tennis warm-up suit and jogging shoes. It seems to take her forever to get all the locks undone, but the neighbor does and deactivates the alarm and opens one of the glass doors. At first, she doesn't seem to have any intention of inviting Lucy in, but stands in the doorway, staring at her without a trace of warmth.

“Make this quick,” says the lady. “I don't like strangers and have no interest in knowing my neighbors. I'm here because I don't want neighbors. In case you haven't figured it out, this isn't a neighborhood, anyhow. It's where people come to be private and left alone.”

“What isn't?” Lucy warms up to her task. She recognizes the tribe of the self-consumed, curdled rich and plays a little naive. “Your house isn't or the neighborhood isn't?”

“Isn't what?” The woman's hostility is briefly supplanted by bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

“What's happened next door at my house. He was back,” Lucy replies, as if the woman knows exactly what she means. “Could have been early this morning, but I'm not sure because I was out of town most of yesterday and last night and just landed in Boca on the helicopter. I'm sure I know who he's after but I'm worried about you. It certainly wouldn't be fair if you got caught in the wake, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh,” she says, and she has a very nice boat docked off the seawall behind her house and knows exactly what wake is and how unfortunate and possibly destructive it is to be caught in it. “How can you be police and live in a house like that?” she asks without looking in the direction of Lucy's salmon-colored Mediterranean mansion. “What helicopter? Don't tell me you have a helicopter too.”

“Lord, you're getting warm,” Lucy says with a resigned sigh. “It's a long story. It's all connected to Hollywood, you know. I just moved here from L.A., you know. I should have stayed in Beverly Hills where I belong, but this damn movie, excuse my French. Well, I'm sure you've heard all about what happens when you make a movie deal, and all that goes into it when they plan on filming on location.”

“Next door?” Her eyes open wide. “They're filming a movie next door at your house?”

“I really don't think it's a good idea for us to have this conversation out here.” Lucy looks around cautiously. “Do you mind if I come in? But you've got to promise this is all between us chickens. If word got out…well, you can imagine.”

“Ha!” The woman points a finger at Lucy and gives her a toothy smile. “I knew you were a celebrity.”

“No! Please don't tell me I'm that transparent!” Lucy says with horror as she walks into a minimally furnished living room, all in white, with a two-story-high glass wall that overlooks the granite-paved patio, the pool, and the twenty-seven-foot speedboat that she seriously doubts her spoiled, vain neighbor knows how to start, much less sail. The name of the boat is
It's Settled,
the port of call supposedly Grand Cayman, a Caribbean island that has no income tax.

“That's quite a boat,” Lucy says as they sit on white furniture that seems suspended between the water and sky. She sets a cell phone on the glass coffee table.

“It's Italian.” The woman smiles a secretive, not-so-nice smile.

“Reminds me of Cannes,” Lucy says.

“Oh yes! The film festival.”

“No, not that so much. The Ville de Cannes, the boats, oh the yachts. Just past the old clubhouse you turn on Quai Number One, very near the Poseidon and Amphitrite boat rentals out of Marseilles. Nice fellow who works there, Paul, drives this bright yellow old Pontiac, a strange sight to see in the South of France. You just keep walking past the storage units, turn on Quai Number Four, and go to the end toward the lighthouse. I've never seen so many Mangustas and Leopards in my life. I once had a Zodiac with a pretty muscular Suzuki engine, but a big boat? Who has the time? Well, maybe you do.” She gazes at the dry-docked speedboat. “Of course, the sheriff's department and Customs will nail you good if you go more than ten miles an hour in that thing through here.”

The lady is clueless. She is pretty but not in a way that Lucy finds appealing. She looks very rich and pampered and addicted to Botox, collagen, thermal treatments, whatever new magic is offered by the dermatologist. It may have been years since she was able to frown. But then, she doesn't need negative facial gestures. For her face to look angry and mean would be redundant.

“As I said, I'm Tina. And you are…?”

“You can call me Kate. That's what my friends call me,” the spoiled rich lady replies. “I've been in this house for seven years and never once has there been a problem, except with Jeff, who I am happy to report is off living his life in the Cayman Islands, among other places. I guess what you're telling me is you're not really a police officer.”

“I really apologize if I slightly misled you, but I didn't know what else to do to get you to come to the door, Kate.”

“I saw a badge.”

“Yes, I held it up so you would. It's not real—not really. But when I'm in training for a part, I live it as much as I can, and my director suggested that I not only move into the house where we're shooting, but go ahead and carry a badge and drive the same cars the special agent does, and all the rest.”

“I knew it!” Kate shoots that finger at her again. “The sports cars. Ah! It's all part of your role, isn't it?” She settles her long-legged thin body back into the depths of her big white chair and plumps a pillow in her lap. “You don't look familiar, though.”

“I try not to.”

Kate attempts a frown. “But I would think you would look at least a little familiar. And I can't think who you are, anyway. Tina who?”

“Mangusta.” She offers the name of her favorite boat, fairly certain the neighbor won't directly connect Mangusta with earlier comments about Cannes, but rather will think that Mangusta sounds familiar, somewhat familiar.

“Actually, yes, I have heard the name. It seems. Maybe,” Kate says, encouraged.

“I haven't been in much, not big roles although some of the films have been big. This is my break, you might say. I started out on off-off-Broadway and then made the jump to off-off-movies, whatever I could get. And I just hope it won't drive you crazy when all the trucks and everything roll in, but fortunately that's not until summer, and it may not happen at all because of this crazy person who seems to have followed us here.”

“What a pity.” She leans forward in the big white chair.

“Tell me about it.”

“Oh dear.” Kate's eyes darken and she looks worried. “From the West Coast? That's where he followed y'all from? You said you have a helicopter?”

“I'm pretty sure,” Lucy answers. “If you've never been stalked, you can't really understand what a nightmare it is. I would never wish it on anyone. I thought coming here would be the best thing we ever did. But somehow he found us and followed us. I'm sure it's him, pretty sure. God help me if we now have two stalkers, so I hope it's him, oddly. And yes, I travel in helicopters when needed, but not all the way from the West Coast.”

“At least you don't live alone,” Kate comments.

“My roommate, another actress, just moved out and went back west. Because of the stalker.”

“What about that good-looking boyfriend of yours? Actually, I wondered early on if he might be an actor, someone famous. I've been trying to figure out who he is.” She smiles wickedly. “Hollywood is written all over that one. What's he been in?”

“Trouble mostly.”

“Well, if he does you wrong, darling, you just come see Kate, here.” She pats the pillow in her lap. “I know what to do about some things.”

Lucy looks out at
It's Settled
shining long, sleek, and white in the sun. She wonders if Kate's ex-husband is boat-less and hiding from the IRS in the Cayman Islands. She says, “Last week the wacko came on my property, or at least I assume it was him. I'm just wondering…”

Kate's unlined tight face registers a blank. “Oh,” she then says. “The one stalking y'all? Why no, I didn't see him, not that I'm aware of, but then there are a lot of people roaming about, all these yard men, pool people, construction workers, and so on. But I did notice all the police cars and the ambulance. It scared me to death. That's just the sort of thing that ruins an area.”

“You were home then. My roommate, former roommate, was in bed with a hangover. She may have gone out to sit in the sun.”

“Yes. I saw her do that.”

“You did?”

“Oh yes,” Kate replies. “I was upstairs in the gym and just happened to look down and I saw her come out the kitchen door. I do remember she had on pajamas and a robe. And now that you tell me she had a hangover, that explains it.”

“Do you remember what time?” Lucy asks as her cell phone on the coffee table continues to record their conversation.

“Let me see. Nine? Or close enough.” Kate points behind her, toward Lucy's house. “She sat by the pool.”

“And then what?”

“I was on the elliptical machine,” she says, and in Kate's way of thinking everything is about Kate. “Let me see, I believe I was distracted by something on one of the morning shows. No, I was on the phone. I do remember looking out and she was gone, apparently had gone back into the house. She wasn't out there long, my point is.”

“How long were you on the elliptical machine, and do you mind showing me your gym so I can see exactly where you were when you saw her?”

“Sure, come right on, darling.” Kate gets up from her big white chair. “How about something to drink? I believe I could use a little mimosa right about now, with all this talk about stalkers and big noisy movie trucks rolling in and helicopters and all. I usually do the elliptical machine for thirty minutes.”

Lucy picks up her cell phone from the coffee table. “I'll have whatever you're having,” she says.

T
HE HOUR
is half past eleven when Scarpetta meets Marino by the rental car in the parking lot of her former building. Dark clouds remind her of angry fists flailing across the sky, and the sun ducks in and out of them and sudden gusts of wind snatch at her clothing and hair.

“Is Fielding coming with us?” Marino asks, unlocking the SUV. “I'm assuming you want me to drive. Some son of a bitch held her down and smothered her. Goddamn son of a bitch. Killing a kid like that. Had to be somebody pretty big, don't you think, to hold her down and she can't move?”

“Fielding's not coming. You can drive. When you can't breathe, you panic and struggle like hell. So her assailant didn't have to be huge, but he did have to be big and strong enough to keep her down, to pin her down. More than likely, she's a mechanical asphyxiation, not a smothering.”

“And that's what ought to be done to his ass when he gets caught. Let a couple uh huge prison guards pin him down and sit on his chest so he can't breathe, see how he likes it.” They climb in and Marino starts the engine. “I'll volunteer. Let me do it. Jesus, doing that to a kid.”

“Let's save the ‘Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out' part for later,” she says. “We have a lot to handle. What do you know about Mama?”

“Since Fielding's not coming, I assume you called her.”

“I told her I want to talk to her and that was about the extent of it. She was a little strange on the phone. She thinks Gilly died of the flu.”

“You going to tell her?”

“I don't know what I'm going to tell her.”

“Well, one thing's for sure. The Feds will be thrilled when they hear you're making house calls again, Doc. Nothing thrills them more when they get their hooks in a case that ain't any of their business and then you show up making your damn house calls.” He smiles as he drives slowly through the crowded lot.

Scarpetta doesn't care what the Feds think, and she looks out at her former building called Biotech II, at its clean gray shape trimmed with deep red brick, at the covered morgue bay that reminds her of a white igloo sticking out to one side. Now that she's back, she may as well have been here all along. It doesn't feel strange that she is headed to a death scene, most likely a crime scene, in Richmond, Virginia, and she doesn't care what the FBI or Dr. Marcus or anyone else thinks about her house calls.

“Got a feeling your pal Dr. Marcus will be thrilled too,” Marino adds sarcastically, as if he is following her thoughts. “Did you tell him Gilly's a homicide?”

“No,” she replies.

She didn't bother looking for Dr. Marcus or telling him anything after she finished with Gilly Paulsson and cleaned up and changed back into her suit and looked at some microscopic slides. Fielding could give Dr. Marcus the facts and pass on that she would be happy to brief him later and can be reached on her cell phone, if necessary, but Dr. Marcus won't call. He wants as little to do with the Gilly Paulsson case as possible, and Scarpetta now believes he decided long before he contacted her in Florida that he wasn't going to benefit from this fourteen-year-old girl's death, that nothing but trouble was headed his way if he didn't do something to deflect it, and what better deflection than calling in his controversial predecessor, Scarpetta the lightning rod? He's probably suspected all along that Gilly Paulsson was murdered and for some reason decided not to dirty his hands with the case.

“Who's the detective?” Scarpetta asks Marino as they wait for traffic rolling off I-95 to pass on 4th Street. “Anyone we know?”

“Nope. He wasn't here when we was.” He finds an opening and guns the engine, rocketing them into the right lane. Now that Marino's back in Richmond, he's driving the way he used to drive in Richmond, which is the way he used to drive when he started out as a cop in New York.

“Know anything about him?”

“Enough.”

“I suppose you're going to wear that cap all day,” she says.

“Why not? You got a better cap for me to wear? Besides, Lucy will feel good knowing I'm wearing her cap. Did you know police headquarters moved? It ain't on Ninth Street anymore, is down there near the Jefferson Hotel in the old Farm Bureau Building. Aside from that, the police department hasn't changed except for the paint job on the marked units and they let them wear baseball caps too, like they're NYPD.”

“I guess baseball caps are here to stay.”

“Huh. So don't be griping about mine anymore.”

“Who told you the FBI's gotten involved?”

“The detective. His name's Browning, seems all right but he's not been doing homicides long and the cases he has worked are of the urban renewal variety. One piece of shit shooting another piece of shit.” Marino flips open a notepad and glances at it as he drives through town toward Broad Street. “Thursday, December fourth, he gets a call for a DOA and responds to the address where we're now heading in the Fan, over there near where Stuart Circle Hospital used to be before they turned it into high-dollar condos. Or did you know that? It happened after you left. Would you want to live in a former hospital room? No thank you.”

“Do you know why the FBI is involved, or do I have to wait for that part?” she asks.

“Richmond invited them. That's just one of many pieces that doesn't make sense. I got no idea why Richmond P.D. invited the Feds to stick their noses in or why the Feds want to.”

“What does Browning think?”

“He's not particularly revved up about the case, thinks the girl probably had a seizure or something.”

“He thinks wrong. What about the mother?”

“She's a little different. I'll get to that.”

“And the father?”

“Divorced, lives in Charleston, South Carolina, a doctor. An irony, ain't it? A doctor would know damn well what a morgue is like, and here's his little girl inside a body bag in the morgue for two damn weeks because they can't decide on who's making the arrangements or where she's going to be buried and God knows what else they're fighting about.”

“What I'd do pretty soon is take a right on Grace,” Scarpetta says. “And we'll just follow it straight there.”

“Thank you, Magellan. All those years I drove in the city. How'd I do it without you navigating?”

“I don't know how you function at all when I'm not around. Tell me more about Browning. What did he find when he got to the Paulsson house?”

“The girl was in bed, on her back, pajamas on. Mother was hysterical, as you might imagine.”

“Was she under the covers?”

“The covers were thrown back, in fact they were mostly on the floor, and the mother told Browning they were like that when she got home from the drugstore. But she's having memory problems, as you probably know. I think she's lying.”

“About what?”

“Not sure. I'm basing everything on what Browning told me over the phone, meaning as soon as I talk to her, I start all over again.”

“What about evidence someone might have broken into the house?” Scarpetta asks. “Anything to make us think that?”

“Nothing to make Browning think that, apparently. Like I said, he's not revved up about it. Never a good thing. If the detective's not revved up about it, then the crime scene techs probably aren't revved up either. If you don't think anyone broke in, where the hell do you start dusting for prints, for example?”

“Don't tell me they didn't even do that.”

“Like I said, when I get there, I start all over again.”

They are now in an area called the Fan District, which was annexed by the city soon after the Civil War and was eventually dubbed the Fan because it is shaped like one. Narrow streets wind and wend and dead-end without cause and have fruity names like Strawberry, Cherry, and Plum. Most homes and row houses have been restored to an earlier charmed state of generous verandas and classical columns and fancy ironwork. The Paulsson home is less eccentric and ornate than most, a modest-sized dwelling with simple lines, a flat brick facade, a full front porch, and a false mansard slate roof that reminds Scarpetta of a pill-box hat.

Marino pulls in front near a dark blue minivan and they get out. They follow a brick walkway that is old and worn smooth and slick in spots. The late morning is overcast and cold, and Scarpetta would not be surprised to see a little snow, but she hopes there will be no freezing rain. The city has never adapted to adverse winter weather, and at the mere mention of snow, Richmonders raid every grocery store and market in town. Power lines are above ground and don't last long when grand old trees get uprooted or snapped off by blasting winds and heavy sleeves of ice, so Scarpetta sincerely hopes there will be no freezing rain while she's in town.

The brass knocker on the black front door is shaped like a pineapple, and Marino raps three times. The loud, sharp clank of it is startling and seems insensitive because of the reason for this visit. Footsteps sound, moving quickly, and the door swings open wide. The woman on the other side is small and thin, and her face is puffy, as if she doesn't eat enough but drinks plenty and has been crying a lot. On a better day, she might be pretty in a rough, dyed-blond way.

“Come in,” she says, her nose stopped up. “I have a cold but I'm not contagious.” Her bleary eyes touch Scarpetta. “Then who am I to tell a doctor that? I assume you're the doctor, the one I just talked to.” It is a safe assumption since Marino is a man and is wearing black fatigues and an LAPD baseball cap.

“I'm Dr. Scarpetta.” She offers her hand. “I'm so very sorry about Gilly.”

Mrs. Paulsson's eyes brighten with tears. “Come in, won't you? I've not been much of a housekeeper of late. I just made some coffee.”

“Sounds good,” Marino says, and he introduces himself. “Detective Browning's talked to me. But I thought we'd start from square one, if that's all right.”

“How do you take your coffee?”

Marino has the good sense not to offer his usual line: like my women, sweet and white.

“Black is fine,” Scarpetta says, and they follow Mrs. Paulsson along a hallway of old pine planking, and off to their right is a comfortable small living room with dark green leather furniture and brass fireplace tools. To the left is a stiff formal parlor that doesn't look used, and the chill of it reaches out to Scarpetta as she walks past.

“May I take your coats?” Mrs. Paulsson asks. “There I go asking about coffee when you're at the front door and asking about your coats when we get to the kitchen. Don't mind me. I'm not right these days.”

They slip out of their coats and she hangs them on wooden pegs in the kitchen. Scarpetta notices a bright red handknit scarf on one of the pegs and for some reason wonders if it might have been Gilly's. The kitchen has not been remodeled in recent decades and has an old-fashioned black-and-white-checkered floor and old white appliances. Its windows overlook a narrow yard with a wooden fence, and behind the back fence is a low roof of slate that is missing tiles and piled with dead leaves in the eaves and patched with moss.

Mrs. Paulsson pours coffee and they sit at a wooden table by a window that offers a view of the back fence and the mossy slate roof beyond. Scarpetta notices how clean and orderly the kitchen is, with its rack of pots and pans hanging from iron hooks over a butcher's block and the drain board and sink empty and spotless. She notices a bottle of cough syrup on the counter near the paper-towel dispenser, a bottle of nonprescription cough syrup with an expectorant. Scarpetta sips her black coffee.

“I don't know where to start,” Mrs. Paulsson says. “I don't really know who you are for that matter, except when Detective Browning called me this morning, he said you were experts from out of town and would I be home. Then you called.” She looks at Dr. Scarpetta.

“So Browning called you,” Marino says.

“He's been nice enough.” She looks at Marino and seems to find something interesting about him. “I don't know why all these people are…Well, I guess I don't know much.” Her eyes fill up again. “I should be grateful. I can't imagine having this happen and no one cares.”

“People certainly care,” Scarpetta says. “That's why we're here.”

“Where do you live?” Her eyes are fixed on Marino, and she lifts her coffee, taking a sip, looking carefully at him.

“Based down in South Florida, a little north of Miami,” Marino replies.

“Oh. I thought maybe you were from Los Angeles,” she says, her eyes moving up to his cap.

“We got L.A. connections,” Marino says.

“It's just amazing,” she says, but she doesn't look amazed, and Scarpetta begins to see something else peek out from Mrs. Paulsson, some other creature that coils within. “My phone hardly stops ringing, a lot of reporters, a whole lot of those people. They were here the other days.” She turns around in her chair, indicating the front of the house. “In a big TV truck with this tall antenna or whatever it is. It's indecent, really. Of course, this FBI agent was here the other day and she said it's because no one knows what happened to Gilly. She said it's not as bad as it might be, whatever that means. She said she's seen a whole lot worse, and I don't know what could be worse.”

“Maybe she meant the publicity,” Scarpetta says kindly.

“What could be worse than what happened to my Gilly?” Mrs. Paulsson asks, wiping her eyes.

“What do you think happened to her?” Marino asks, his thumb stroking the rim of his coffee cup.

“I know what happened to her. She died of the flu,” Mrs. Paulsson replies. “God took her home to be with Him. I don't know why. I wish someone would tell me.”

“Other people don't seem to be so sure she died of the flu,” Marino says.

“That's the world we live in. Everybody wants drama. My little girl was in bed with the flu. A lot of people have died of the flu this year.” She looks at Scarpetta.