Five Scarpetta Novels (20 page)

Wherever I looked, death certificates, call sheets and autopsy reports had blown about like autumn leaves. They were on the floor, in bookshelves and caught in the branches of my ficus tree.

“I also believe you shouldn't assume that just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not a problem. So I think you ought to let this paperwork air out. I'm going to rig up a clothesline here with paper clips.” She talked as she worked, gray hair straying from her French twist.

“I don't think we're going to need anything like that,” I started the same old speech again. “Halon disappears when it dries.”

“I noticed you never got your hard hat off the shelf.”

“I didn't have time,” I said.

“Too bad we don't have windows.” Rose said this at least once a week.

“Really, all we need to do is pick things up,” I said. “You're paranoid, every last one of you.”

“You ever been gassed by this stuff before?”

“No,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said as she set a stack of towels nearby. “Then we can't be too careful.”

I sat at my desk and opened the top drawer, where I pulled out several boxes of paper clips. Despair fluttered in my breast and I feared I would dissolve right there. My secretary knew me better than my mother, and she caught my every expression, but she did not stop working.

After a long silence, she said, “Dr. Scarpetta, why don't you go home? I'll take care of this.”

“Rose, we will take care of this together,” I stubbornly replied.

“I can't believe that stupid security guard.”

“What security guard?” I stopped what I was doing and looked at her.

“The one who set off the system because he thought we were going to have some sort of radioactive meltdown upstairs.”

I stared at her as she lifted a death certificate from the carpet. With paper clips, she hung it from the twine while I continued to rearrange the top of my desk.

“What in the world are you talking about?” I asked.

“That's all I know. They were discussing it on the parking deck.” She pressed the small of her back and looked around. “I can't get over how fast this stuff dries. It's like something out of a science fiction movie.” She hung another death certificate. “I think this is going to work out just fine.”

I did not comment as I thought again of my car. I was honestly terrified of seeing it, and I covered my face with
my hands. Rose did not quite know what to do because she had never seen me cry.

“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“This is like a big windstorm blew through. Tomorrow it will be like it never happened.” She tried to make me feel better.

I was grateful when I heard her leave. She quietly shut both of my doors, and I leaned back in my chair and was spent. I picked up the phone and tried Marino's number, but he was not in, so I looked up McGeorge Mercedes and hoped that Walter wasn't off somewhere.

He wasn't.

“Walter? It's Dr. Scarpetta,” I said with no preamble. “Can you please come get my car?” I faltered, “I guess I need to explain.”

“No explanation necessary. How much was it damaged?” he asked, and he clearly had been following the news.

“For me it's totaled,” I said. “For someone else, it's as good as new.”

“I understand and I don't blame you,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

“Can you trade it for something right now?”

“I got almost the identical car. But it's used.”

“How used?”

“Barely. It belonged to my wife. An S-500, black with saddle interior.”

“Can you have someone drive it to my parking space in back and we'll swap?”

“My dear, I'm on the way.”

He arrived at half past five, when it was already dark out, which was a good time for a salesman to show a used car to someone as desperate as me. But, in truth, I had dealt
with Walter for years and really would have bought the car sight unseen because I trusted him that much. He was a very distinguished-looking man with an immaculate mustache and close-cropped hair. He dressed better than most lawyers I knew, and wore a gold Medic Alert bracelet because he was allergic to bees.

“I'm really sorry about all this,” he said as I cleaned out my trunk.

“I'm sorry about it, too.” I made no attempt at being friendly or hiding my mood. “Here is one key. Consider the other one lost. And what I'd like to do, if you don't mind, is to drive off this minute. I don't want to see you get into my car. I just want to leave. We'll worry about the radio equipment later.”

“I understand. We'll get into the details another time.”

I did not care about them at all. At the moment I was not interested in the cost-effectiveness of what I had just done, or if it was true that the condition of this car was as good as the one I had traded away. I could have been driving a cement truck and that would have been fine. Pushing a button on the console, I locked the doors and tucked my pistol between the seats.

I drove south on Fourteenth Street and turned off on Canal toward the interstate I usually took home, and several exits later I got off and turned around. I wanted to follow the route I suspected Danny had taken last night, and if he were coming from Norfolk he would have taken 64 West. The easiest exit for him would have been the one for the Medical College of Virginia, for this would have brought him almost to the OCME. But I did not think this was what he had done.

By the time he reached Richmond, he would have been thinking about food, and there was nothing much to interest him close to my office. Danny obviously would have
known that since he had spent time with us before. I suspected he had exited at Fifth Street, as I was doing now, and had followed it to Broad. It was very dark as I passed construction and empty lots that would soon be Virginia's Biomedical Research Park, where my division would be moved one day.

Several police cruisers quietly floated past, and I stopped behind one of them at a traffic light next to the Marriott. I watched the officer ahead as he turned on an interior light and wrote something on a metal clipboard. He was very young with light blond hair, and he unhooked the microphone of his radio and began to speak. I could see his lips move as he gazed out at the dark shape of the mini-precinct on the corner. He got off the air and sipped from a 7-Eleven cup, and I knew he had not been a cop long, because he had not read his surroundings. He did not seem aware that he was being watched.

I moved on and turned left on Broad, past a Rite Aid and the old Miller & Rhoads department store that had permanently closed its doors as fewer people shopped downtown. The old city hall was a granite Gothic fortress on one side of the street, and on the other was the campus of MCV, which may have been familiar to me, but not to Danny. I doubted he would have known about The Skull & Bones, where medical staff and students ate. I doubted he would have known where to park my car around here.

I believed he had done what anyone would do if he were relatively unfamiliar with a city and driving his boss's expensive car. He would have driven straight and stopped at the first decent place he found. That, quite literally, was the Hill Cafe. I circled the block, as he had to have done to park southbound, where we had found his bag of leftovers. Pulling over beneath that magnificent magnolia tree, I got out as I slid the pistol into a pocket of my coat. Instantly,
the barking behind the chain-link fence began again. The dog sounded big and as if we had a history that had filled him with hate. Lights went on in the upstairs of his owner's small home.

Crossing the street, I entered the cafe, which was typically busy and loud. Daigo was mixing whiskey sours and did not notice me until I was pulling out a chair at the bar.

“You look like you need something strong tonight, honey,” she said, dropping an orange slice and a cherry into each glass.

“I do but I'm working,” I said, and the dog's barking had stopped.

“That's the problem with you and the Captain, both. You're always working.” She caught a waiter's eye.

He came over and got the drinks, and Daigo started on the next order.

“Are you aware of the dog directly across the street from you? Across Twenty-eighth Street?” I asked in a quiet voice.

“You must mean Outlaw. Least that's what I call that son of a bitch dog. You have any idea how many customers that mangy thing's scared off from here?” She glanced at me as she angrily sliced a lime. “You know he's half shepherd and half wolf,” she went on before I could reply. “He bother you or something?”

“It's just that his barking is very fierce and loud, and I'm wondering if he might have barked after Danny Webster left here last night. Especially since we are suspicious he was parked under the magnolia tree, which is in the dog's yard.”

“Well, that damn dog barks all the time.”

“Then you don't remember, not that I would expect you—”

She cut me off as she read an order and popped open a
beer, “ 'Course I remember. Like I said, he barks all the time. Wasn't no different with that poor boy. Outlaw barked up a storm when he went out. That damn dog barks at the wind.”

“What about before Danny went out?” I asked.

She paused to think, then her eyes lit up. “Well, now that you mention it, it seems like the barking was pretty constant early in the evening. In fact, I made a comment about it, said it was driving me crazy and I had half a mind to call the damn thing's owner.”

“What about other customers?” I asked. “Did many other people come in while Danny was in here?”

“No.” Of that she was sure. “First of all, he came in early. Other than the usual barflies, there was no one here when he arrived. Fact is, I don't remember anybody coming in to eat until at least seven. And by then he'd already left.”

“And how long did the dog bark after he left?”

“On and off the rest of the night, like he always does.”

“On and off but not solidly.”

“No one would take that all night. Not solidly.” She eyed me shrewdly. “Now if you're wondering if that dog was barking because somebody was out there waiting for that boy”—she pointed her knife at me—“I don't think so. The kind of riffraff that would show up here is going to run like hell when that dog starts in. That's why they have him. Those people over there.” She pointed with the knife again.

I thought again of the stolen Sig used to shoot Danny, and of where the officer had lost it, and I knew exactly what Daigo meant. The average street criminal would be afraid of a big, loud dog and the attention its barking might bring. I thanked her and walked back outside. For a moment I stood on the sidewalk and surveyed smudges of gas lamps set far apart along narrow, dark streets. Spaces
between buildings and homes were thick with shadows, and anyone could wait in them and not be seen.

I looked across at my new car, and the small yard beyond it where the dog lay in wait. He was silent just now, and I walked north on the sidewalk for several yards to see what he might do. But he did not seem interested until I neared his yard. Then I heard the low, evil growling that raised the hair on the back of my neck. By the time I was unlocking my car door, he was on his hind legs, barking and shaking the fence.

“You're just guarding your turf, aren't you, boy?” I said. “I wish you could tell me what you saw last night.”

I looked at the small house as an upstairs window suddenly slid up.

“Bozo, shut up!” yelled a fat man with tousled hair. “Shut up, you stupid mutt!” The window slammed shut.

“All right, Bozo,” I said to the dog who was not really called Outlaw, unfortunately for him. “I'm leaving you alone now.” I looked around one last time and got into my car.

The drive from Daigo's restaurant to the restored area on Franklin where police had found my former car took less than three minutes if one were driving the posted speed. I turned around at the hill leading to Sugar Bottom, for to drive down there, especially in a Mercedes, was out of the question. That thought led to another.

I wondered why the assailant would have chosen to remain on foot in a restored area with a Neighborhood Watch program as widely publicized as the one here. Church Hill published its own newsletter, and residents looked out their windows and did not hesitate to call the cops, especially after shots had been fired. It seemed it might have been safer to have casually returned to my car and driven a safe distance away.

Yet the killer did not do this, and I wondered if he knew this area's landmarks but not the culture because he really was not from here. I wondered if he had not taken my car because his own was parked nearby and mine was of no interest. He didn't need it for money or to get away. That theory made sense if Danny had been followed instead of happened upon. While he was eating dinner, his assailant could have parked, then returned to the cafe on foot and waited in the dark near the Mercedes while the dog barked.