Five Scarpetta Novels (168 page)

D
AWN IS
on the ocean and tangerine and rose spread along the dusky blue horizon as if the sun is a broken egg. Rudy Musil pulls his combat green Hummer into Lucy's driveway and pushes the remote to open her electric gate, and instinctively he looks around, looks everywhere and listens. He doesn't know why, but he is so unsettled this morning that he jumped out of bed and decided he would check on Lucy's house.

The black bars of the metal gate slowly roll open, shuddering at intervals along the track because it curves, and although the gate is curved too, it doesn't like curves, it seems. Just one of many design flaws, Rudy often thinks when he comes to Lucy's salmon-color mansion. The biggest design flaw of all was the one she made when she bought this damn house, he thinks. Living like a filthy-rich damn drug dealer, he thinks. The Ferraris are one thing. He can understand wanting the best cars and the best helicopter. He likes his Hummer, for that matter, but it's one thing to want a rocket or a tank and another thing to want an anchor, a huge gaudy anchor.

He noticed it when he pulled into the driveway but he doesn't take a second look or think anything about it until he pulls past the open gate and gets out of the Hummer. Then he backtracks to pick up the newspaper and sees the flag is up on the mailbox. Lucy doesn't get mail at her house and she isn't home to put the flag up. She wouldn't put the flag up even if she were home. All deliveries and outgoing mail are handled at the training camp and office a half hour south in Hollywood.

This is weird, he thinks, and he walks over to the mailbox and stands near it, the newspaper in one hand, the other hand pushing his sun-streaked hair down because it is in cowlicks this early morning. He hasn't shaved or showered either, and he needs to. All night he thrashed about, sweating in bed, unable to get comfortable no matter what he did. He looks around, thinking. No one is out. No one is jogging or walking the dog. One thing he certainly has noticed about this neighborhood is that people keep to themselves and don't enjoy their rich homes or even their modest ones. Rarely does anyone sit on the patio or use the pool, and those who have boats rarely go out in them. What a weird place, he thinks. What an unfriendly, peculiar, nasty place, he thinks, angrily.

Of all places to move, he thinks. Why here? Why the hell here? Why the hell do you want to be around assholes? You've broken all your rules, Lucy, every one of them, Lucy, he thinks as he yanks open the mailbox door and looks inside and instantly jumps to one side. He backs up ten feet without thinking and his adrenaline kicks in before what he's seeing registers.

“Shit!” he says. “Holy shit!”

D
OWNTOWN TRAFFIC
is bad, as usual, and Scarpetta is driving because Marino is moving slowly. The injuries to places best not discussed seem to be his greatest source of pain, and he is walking slightly bowlegged and was awkward when he climbed into the SUV a few minutes earlier. She knows what she saw, but the outraged reddish-purple hue of fragile tissue was nothing more than a silent scream compared with the loud noise pain must be making now. Marino will not be himself for a while.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him again. “I'm trusting you to tell me.” What she means is implicit. She's not going to ask him to take off his clothes one more time. She will look at him if he asks, but she hopes it won't be necessary. Besides, he won't ask.

“I think I'm better,” he replies, staring out at the old police department on 9th Street. The building has looked bad for years, paint peeling and tiles around the top border missing. Now it looks worse because it is silent and empty. “I can't believe how many years I wasted in that joint,” he adds.

“Oh come on.” She flips up the blinker and it click-clicks like a loud watch. “That's no way to talk. Let's don't start the day with that kind of talk. I'm trusting you to tell me if the swelling gets worse. It's very important you tell me the truth.”

“It's better.”

“Good.”

“I put the iodine stuff on myself this morning.”

“Good,” she says. “Keep applying it every time you get out of the shower.”

“It doesn't sting as much anymore. Really not at all. What if she's got some kind of disease like AIDS? I've been thinking about it. What if she does? How do I know she doesn't?”

“You don't know, unfortunately,” Scarpetta says, moving slowly along Clay Street, the huge brown Coliseum crouching in the midst of empty parking lots off to their left. “If it makes you feel any better, when I looked around her house, I didn't see any prescription medicines that would indicate she has AIDS or any other sexually transmitted disease or any infection of any sort. That doesn't mean she isn't HIV-positive. She might be and not know it. The same could be said for anyone you've been intimate with. So if you want to worry yourself sick, you can.”

“Believe me, I don't want to worry,” he replies. “But it's not like you can wear a rubber if someone's biting you. It's not like you can protect yourself. You can't exactly have safe sex if someone's biting you.”

“The understatement of the year,” she replies as she turns onto 4th Street. Her cell phone rings, and it worries her when she recognizes Rudy's number. Rarely does he call her, and when he does, it is either to wish her a happy birthday or to pass along bad news.

“Hi, Rudy,” she says, slowly winding around the back parking lot of the building. “What's up?”

“I can't get hold of Lucy,” his stressed voice sounds in her ear. “She's either out of range or has her cell phone off. She headed out in the helicopter this morning for Charleston,” he says.

Scarpetta glances over at Marino. He must have called Lucy after Scarpetta left his room last night.

“It's a damn good thing,” Rudy says. “A damn good thing.”

“Rudy, what's going on?” Scarpetta asks, and she is getting more unnerved by the second.

“Someone put a bomb in her mailbox,” he says, talking fast. “It's too much to go into. Some of it she needs to tell you.”

Scarpetta creeps almost to a halt inside the parking lot, heading in the direction of the visitors' slots. “When and what?” she asks.

“I just found it. Not even an hour ago. Came by to check on the place and saw the flag up on the mailbox, which didn't make sense. I opened it and this big plastic cup's inside, the whole thing colored orange with marker, and the lid's colored green with a piece of duct tape around the lid and over the opening, you know, the little spout you drink out of, and I couldn't see what was in it so I got one of those long poles out of the garage, what do you call it. Has the grippers on the end for changing lightbulbs that are high up. I picked the damn thing up with it, carried it out back, and took care of it.”

She takes her time parking, the car barely moving while she listens. “How did you manage that? I hate to ask.”

“Shot it. Don't worry. With snake shot. It was a chemical bomb, a bottle bomb, you know the type. With little pieces of tinfoil balled up inside.”

“Metal to accelerate the reaction.” Scarpetta starts going through the differential diagnosis of the bomb. “Typical in bottle bombs made out of household cleaners that contain hydrochloric acid like the Works for toilet bowls that you can get from Wal-Mart, the grocery store, a hardware store. Unfortunately, the recipes are available on the Internet.”

“It had an acid odor, more like chlorine, but since I shot it by the pool, maybe that's what I was smelling.”

“Possibly granulated pool chlorine and some type of sugary soda pop. That's also popular. A chemical analysis will tell.”

“Don't worry. One will be done.”

“Anything left of the cup?” she asks.

“We'll check for prints and get anything we find right into IAFIS.”

“Theoretically, you can get DNA from prints, if they're fresh. It's worth a try.”

“We'll swab the cup and the duct tape. Don't worry.”

The more he says don't worry, the more she will.

“I haven't called the police,” he adds.

“It's not my place to advise you about that.” She has given up advising him or anyone associated with him. The rules of Lucy and her people are different and creative and risky, and quite often they are inconsistent with what is legal. Scarpetta has ceased demanding to know details that will keep her awake at night.

“This may be related to some other things,” Rudy says. “Lucy needs to tell you. If you talk to her before I do, she needs to call me ASAP.”

“Rudy, you'll do what you want. But let me just say I hope there aren't any other devices out there, that whoever did this didn't leave more than one, didn't have more than one target,” she says. “I've had cases of people who died when these chemicals exploded in their faces or were thrown in their faces and it got into the airway and lungs. The acids are so strong the reaction doesn't even need to go to completion before the thing blows.”

“I know, I know.”

“Please find some way to make sure there aren't other victims or potential victims out there. That's what concerns me if you handle things on your own.” It is her way of saying that if he doesn't intend to call the police, he should at least be responsible enough to do what he can to protect the public.

“I know what to do. Don't worry,” he says.

“Jesus,” Scarpetta says, ending the call and looking over at Marino. “What in God's name is going on down there? You must have called Lucy last night. Did she tell you what's going on down there? I haven't seen her since September. I don't know what's going on.”

“An acid bomb?” He is sitting up straighter in his seat, always ready to pounce if anyone is after Lucy.

“A chemical-reaction bomb. The kind of bottle bombs we had trouble with out of Fairfax. Remember all those bombs in northern Virginia some years ago? A bunch of kids with too much time on their hands who thought it was funny blowing up mailboxes and a woman died?”

“Dammit,” he says.

“Easily accessible and terribly dangerous. A pH of one or less, so acidic it's off the scale. It could have blown up in Lucy's face. I hope to God she wouldn't have pulled it out of the mailbox herself. I never know with her.”

“At her house?” Marino asks, getting angrier. “The bomb was at that mansion of hers down in Florida?”

“What did she say to you last night?”

“I just told her about Frank Paulsson, what was going on up here. That was it. She said she'd take care of it. At that huge house of hers with all the cameras and shit? The bomb was at her house?”

“Come on,” Scarpetta says, opening her car door. “I'll tell you as we go in.”

C
LOSE TO
the window, the morning light warms the desk where Rudy sits typing on the computer. He hits keys and waits, then rapidly types and waits some more, pressing arrows and scrolling, searching the Internet for what he believes is there. Something is there. The psycho saw something that set him off. Rudy now knows the bomb isn't random.

He's been at the training camp office for the past two hours doing nothing but maneuvering through the Internet while one of the forensic scientists in the nearby private lab has scanned prints and partial prints into IAFIS, and already there is news. Rudy's nerves are screaming like one of Lucy's Ferraris in sixth gear. He dials the phone and tucks the receiver under his chin as he types and stares at the flat video screen.

“Hey, Phil,” he says. “Big plastic cup with the Cat in the Hat on it. Big Gulp type of cup. Lid originally white. Yeah, yeah, the type of big cup you get in a convenience store, a gas station, and fill it up yourself. The Cat in the Hat, though. How unusual. Can we track it? No, I'm not kidding. That's a proprietary thing, right? But the movie, it's not recent. Last year, Christmastime, right? No, I didn't go see it and quit being funny. Seriously, what place would still have Cat in the Hat cups left after all this time? Worst case, he's had 'em for a while. But we gotta try. Yeah, we got prints on it. This guy's not even trying. I mean, he doesn't give a rat's ass about leaving his prints all the hell over the place. On the drawing he taped to the boss's door. Inside the bedroom where Henri was attacked. Now on a bomb. And now we got a hit in IAFIS. Yeah, can you believe it? No, don't have a name yet. Might not, either. The hit's on a latent-to-latent search, matching up with partials from some other case. We're checking. That's all I've got right now.”

He hangs up and turns back to the computer. Lucy has more search engines in the Internet than Pratt & Whitney has jet turbines, but she has never worried that information on the World Wide Web might have to do with her. Not so long ago, she had no reason to worry. Special operatives don't usually court publicity unless they're inactive and hungry for Hollywood, but then Lucy got hooked into Hollywood, and then she got hooked into Henri, and then life changed dramatically and for the worse. Damn Henri, he thinks as he types. Damn her. Damn failed actress Henri who decided to be a cop. Damn Lucy for recruiting her.

He starts a new search, typing in the key words “Kay Scarpetta” and “niece.” Now this is interesting. He picks up a pencil and starts twirling it between his fingers like a baton as he reads an article that ran last September on the AP. It is a very short article and simply states that Virginia has appointed a new chief medical examiner, Dr. Joel Marcus from St. Louis, and it mentions his taking Scarpetta's place after years of limbo and chaos and so on. But Lucy's name appears in the brief article. Since leaving Virginia, the article says, Dr. Scarpetta has worked as a consultant for the private investigation firm The Last Precinct, founded by her niece, former FBI agent Lucy Farinelli.

Not quite true, Rudy thinks. Scarpetta doesn't exactly work for Lucy, but that doesn't mean they don't find themselves involved in the same cases now and then. There is no way Scarpetta would ever work for Lucy, and he can't blame her, and he's not sure how he works for Lucy. He had forgotten all about the article, and now he remembers getting angry with Lucy about it and demanding to know how the hell her name and the name of The Last Precinct ended up in a damn story about Dr. Joel Marcus. The last thing TLP needs is publicity, and there never used to be publicity until Lucy got involved with the entertainment industry, and then all sorts of gossip started leaking into the newspapers and onto television magazine shows.

He executes another search, squinting his eyes, trying to come up with something he hasn't thought of, and then his fingers seem to type on without the rest of him and he types in the key words “Henrietta Walden.” A waste of time, he thinks. Her name when she was a B-list out-of-work actress was Jen Thomas or something forgettable like that. He reaches for his Pepsi without looking at it and can't believe his good fortune. The search returns three results.

“Come on, be something,” he says to the empty office as he clicks on the first entry.

A Henrietta Taft Walden died a hundred years ago, was some sort of wealthy abolitionist from Lynchburg, Virginia. Whoa, that must have gone over like a lead balloon. He can't imagine being an abolitionist in Virginia around the time of the Civil War. Gutsy lady, he'll give her that. He clicks on the second entry. This Henrietta Walden is alive but ancient and lives on a farm, also in Virginia, raises show horses and recently gave a million dollars to the NAACP. Probably a descendant of the first Henrietta Walden, he thinks, and he wonders if Jen Thomas borrowed the name Henrietta Walden from these somewhat noteworthy female abolitionist types, one dead, one barely alive. If so, why? He envisions Henri's striking blond looks and uppity ball-busting attitude. Why would she be inspired by women who were passionate about the plight of blacks? Probably because it was the liberal Hollywood thing to do, he cynically decides, clicking on the third entry.

This one is a short article from
The Hollywood Reporter.
It was published in mid-October:

Rudy prints the article and sits in the chair, his fingers lightly resting on the keyboard as he stares at the screen and contemplates whether Lucy knows about the article. How could she not be furious, if she knew, and if she does know, why didn't she fire Henri months ago? Why didn't Lucy tell him? Such a breach of protocol is hard to imagine. It shocks him that Lucy would allow it, assuming she did. He can't think of a single instance when someone who works for TLP gave an interview to the media or even indulged in loose talk unless it was part of a highly planned operation. There is only one way to find out, he thinks, reaching for the phone.

“Hey,” he says when Lucy answers. “Where are you?”

“In St. Augustine. On a fuel stop.” Her voice is wary. “I already know about the fucking bomb.”

“Not what I'm calling about. I guess you talked to your aunt.”

“Marino called. I don't have time to chat about it,” she says angrily. “Something else going on?”

“Did you know your friend gave an interview about coming on board with us?”

“None of this is about her being my friend.”

“We'll argue about that later,” Rudy says, acting far calmer than he feels, and he is seething. “Just answer me. Did you know?”

“I know nothing about an article. What article?”

Rudy reads it to her over the phone, and after he's finished, he waits to see how she'll react, and he knows she will react and that makes him feel a little better. All along this hasn't been fair. Now, maybe Lucy will be forced to admit it. When Lucy doesn't respond, Rudy asks, “Are you there?”

“Yes,” she answers him abruptly and testily. “I didn't know.”

“Well, now you do. Now we have another whole solar system to take a look at. Like her rich family and whether there's any connection between it and the so-called Waldens and who the hell knows what else. But bottom line, did the psycho see this article, and if so, why and what the hell is that about? Not to mention, her acting name is this abolitionist's name and she's from Virginia. So are you, sort of. Maybe when you got hooked up with her it wasn't exactly coincidental.”

“That's ridiculous. Now you're really going off,” Lucy says hotly. “She was on a list of LAPD cops who worked security…”

“Oh bullshit,” Rudy replies, and his anger is showing too. “Fuck the list. You interviewed local police and there she was. You knew damn well how inexperienced she was in private protection, but you hired her anyway.”

“I don't want to talk about this on a cell phone. Not even on our cell phones.”

“I don't either. Talk to the shrink.” That's his code name for Benton Wesley. “Why don't you call him, I'm serious. Maybe he'll have some ideas. Tell him I'm e-mailing the article to him. We've got prints. Same psycho who did your pretty little sketch also left the little gift in your mailbox.”

“Big surprise. Like I said, who wants two of them? I've talked to the shrink,” she then says. “He'll be monitoring what I do here.”

“Good thinking. Oh, I almost forgot. I found a hair sticking to the duct tape. The duct tape on the chemical bomb.”

“Describe it.”

“About six inches long, curly, dark. Looks like head hair, obviously. More later, call me from a landline. I got a lot of work to do,” he says. “Maybe your friend knows something, if you can get her to tell the truth for once.”

“Don't call her my friend,” Lucy says. “Let's don't fight about this anymore.”