Five Scarpetta Novels (52 page)

“And?”

“And?” He raised an eyebrow. “Organized crime.”

“I wasn't thinking about Georgia.”

“Tell me what you are thinking. I seem to be losing the art of mind reading. And you look particularly lovely today, let me add,” he said to my mask.

“I'm going to go crazy if I don't get out of here soon,” I said. “I've got to get to CDC.”

“Lucy tells me you've been communicating with deadoc.” The playful light vanished from his eyes.

“To no great extent and with not much luck,” I angrily said.

To communicate with this killer was infuriating for it was exactly what he wanted. I had made it my mission in life not to reward people like him.

“Don't give up,” Wesley said.

“He makes allusions to medical matters, such as
diseases and germs,” I said. “Doesn't this concern you in light of what is going on?”

“He no doubt follows the news.” He made the same point Janet had.

“But what if it's more than that?” I asked. “The woman he dismembered seems to have the same disease that the victim from Tangier does.”

“And you can't verify that yet.”

“You know, I didn't get where I am by making assumptions and leaping to conclusions.” I was getting very out of sorts. “I will verify this disease as soon as I can, but I think we should be guided by common sense in the meantime.”

“I'm not certain I understand what you're saying.” His eyes never left mine.

“I'm saying that we might be dealing with biological warfare. A Unabomber who uses a disease.”

“I hope to God we're not.”

“But the thought has crossed your mind, too. Don't tell me you think that a fatal disease somehow linked with a dismemberment is coincidental.”

I studied his face, and I knew he had a headache. The same vein on his forehead always stood out like a bluish rope.

“And you're sure you're feeling all right,” he said.

“Yes. I'm more worried about you.”

“What about this disease? What about the risk to you?” He was getting irritated with me, the way he always did when he thought I was in danger.

“I've been revaccinated.”

“You've been vaccinated for smallpox,” he said. “What if that's not what it is?”

“Then we're in a world of trouble. Janet came by.”

“I know,” he said into his phone. “I'm sorry. The last thing you needed right now . . .”

“No, Benton,” I interrupted him. “I had to be told. There's never a good time for news like that. What do you think will happen?”

But he did not want to say.

“Then you think it will ruin her, too,” I said in despair.

“I doubt she'll be terminated. What usually happens is you stop getting promoted, get lousy assignments, field offices out in the middle of nowhere. She and Janet will end up three thousand miles apart. One or both will quit.”

“How's that better than being fired?” I said in pained outrage.

“We'll take it as it comes, Kay.” He looked at me. “I'm dismissing Ring from CASKU.”

“Be careful what you do because of me.”

“It's done,” he said.

 

Fujitsubo did not stop by my room again until early the next morning, and then he was smiling and opening blinds to let in sunlight so dazzling it hurt my eyes.

“Good morning, and so far, so good,” he said. “I'm very pleased that you do not seem to be getting sick on us, Kay.”

“Then I can go,” I said, ready to leap out of bed right then.

“Not so fast.” He was reviewing my chart. “I know
how hard this is for you, but I'm not comfortable letting you go quite so soon. Stick it out a little longer, and you can leave the day after tomorrow, if all goes well.”

I felt like crying when he left because I did not see how I could endure one more hour of quarantine. Miserable, I sat up under the covers and looked out at the day. The sky was bright blue with wisps of clouds beneath the pale shadow of a morning moon. Trees beyond my window were bare and rocking in a gentle wind. I thought of my home in Richmond, of plants to be potted and work piling up on my desk. I wanted to take a walk in the cold, to cook broccoli and homemade barley soup. I wanted spaghetti with ricotta or stuffed frittata, and music and wine.

For half the day, I simply felt sorry for myself and did not do a thing except stare at television and doze. Then the nurse for the next shift came in with the phone and said there was a call for me. I waited until it was transferred and snatched up the receiver as if this were the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life.

“It's me,” Lucy said.

“Thank God.” I was thrilled to hear her voice.

“Grans says hi. Rumor has it that you win the bad patient award.”

“The rumor is accurate. All the work in my office. If only I had it here.”

“You need to rest,” she said. “To keep your defenses up.”

This made me worry about Wingo again.

“How come you haven't been on the laptop?” She then got to the point.

I was quiet.

“Aunt Kay, he's not going to talk to us. He's only going to talk to you.”

“Then one of you sign on as me,” I replied.

“No way. If he senses that's what's going on, we lose him for good. This guy is scary, he's so clever.”

My silence was my comment, and Lucy rushed to fill it.

“What?” she said with feeling. “I'm supposed to pretend I'm a forensic pathologist with a law degree who's already worked at least one of this guy's cases? I don't think so.”

“I don't want to connect with him, Lucy,” I said. “People like him get off on that, they want it, want the attention. The more I play his game, the more it might encourage him. Have you thought about that?”

“Yes. But think about this. Whether he's dismembered one person or twenty, he's going to do something else bad. People like him don't just stop. And we have no idea, not one clue, as to where the hell he is.”

“It's not that I'm scared for myself,” I started to say.

“It's all right if you are.”

“I just don't want to do anything to make it worse,” I repeated.

That, of course, was always the risk when one was creative or aggressive in an investigation. The perpetrator was never completely predictable. Maybe it was simply something I sensed, an intuitive vibration I was picking up deep inside. But I felt that this killer was different and motivated by something beyond our ken. I feared he knew
exactly what we were doing and was enjoying himself.

“Now, tell me about you,” I said. “Janet was here.”

“I don't want to get into it.” Cold fury crept into her tone. “I have better ways to spend my time.”

“I'm with you, Lucy, whatever you want to do.”

“That much I've always been sure of. And this much everybody else can be sure of. No matter what it takes, Carrie's going to rot in jail and hell after that.”

The nurse had returned to my room to whisk the telephone away again.

“I don't understand this,” I complained as I hung up. “I have a calling card, if that's what you're worried about.”

She smiled. “Colonel's orders. He wants you to rest and knows you won't if you can be on the phone all day.”

“I am resting,” I said, but she was gone.

I wondered why he allowed me to keep the laptop and was suspicious Lucy or someone had spoken to him. As I logged onto AOL, I felt conspired against. I had barely entered the M.E. chat room when deadoc appeared, this time not as an invisible instant message, but as a member who could be heard and seen by anybody else who decided to walk in.

 

DEADOC
: where have you been

SCARPETTA
: Who are you?

DEADOC
: I ve already told you that

SCARPETTA
: You are not me.

DEADOC
: he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all
manner of sickness and all manner of disease pathophysiological manifestations viruses like h i v our darwinian struggle against them they are evil or are we

SCARPETTA
: Explain what you mean.

DEADOC
: there are twelve

 

But he had no intention of explaining, at least not now. The system alerted me that he had left the room. I waited inside it a while longer to see if he might return, as I wondered what he meant by
twelve
. Pushing a button on my headboard, I summoned the nurse, who was beginning to cause me guilt. I didn't know where she waited outside the room, or if she climbed in and out of her blue suit every time she appeared and left. But none of this could have been pleasant, including my disposition.

“Listen,” I said when she got to me. “Might there be a Bible around here somewhere.”

She hesitated, as if she'd never heard of such a thing. “Gee, now that I don't know.”

“Could you check?”

“Are you feeling all right?” She looked suspiciously at me.

“Absolutely.”

“They've got a library. Maybe there's one in there somewhere. I'm sorry. I'm not very religious.” She continued talking as she went out again.

She returned maybe half an hour later with a black leather-bound Bible, Cambridge Red Letter edition, that
she claimed to have borrowed from someone's office. I opened it and found a name in front written in calligraphy, and a date that showed the Bible had been given to its owner on a special occasion almost ten years before. As I began to turn its pages, I realized I had not been to Mass in months. I envied people with a faith so strong that they kept their Bibles at work.

“Now you're sure you're feeling okay?” said the nurse as she hovered near the door.

“You've never told me your name,” I said.

“Sally.”

“You've been very helpful and I certainly appreciate it. I know it's no fun working on Thanksgiving.”

This seemed to please her a great deal and gave her enough confidence to say, “I haven't wanted to poke my nose into anything, but I can't help but hear what people are talking about. That island in Virginia where your case came from. All they do is crabbing there?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Blue crab.”

“And soft-shell crab.”

“Anybody bothering to worry about that?”

I knew what she was getting at, and yes, I was worried. I had a personal reason to be worried about Wesley and me.

“They ship those things all over the country, right?” she went on.

I nodded.

“What if whatever that lady had is transmitted through water or food?” Her eyes were bright behind her hood.
“I didn't see her body, but I heard. That's really scary.”

“I know,” I said. “I hope we can get an answer to that soon.”

“By the way, lunch is turkey. Don't expect much.”

She unplugged her air line and stopped talking. Opening the door, she gave me a little wave and went out. I turned back to the Concordance and had to search for a while under various words before I found the passage deadoc had quoted to me. It was Matthew 10, verse one, and in its entirety it read:
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

The next verse went on to identify the disciples by name, and then Jesus invoked them to go out and find lost sheep, and to preach to them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. He directed his disciples to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. As I read, I did not know if this killer who called himself deadoc had a message he believed, if
twelve
referred to the disciples, or if he was simply playing games.

I got up and paced, looking out the window as light waned. Night came early now, and it had become a habit for me to watch people walk out to their cars. Their breath was frosted, and the lot was almost empty because of the furlough. Two women chatted while one held open the door to a Honda, and they shrugged and gestured with intensity, as if trying to resolve life's big problems. I stood looking through blinds until they drove away.

I tried to go to sleep early to escape. But I was fitful
again, rearranging myself and the covers every few hours. Images floated past the inside of my eyelids, projected like old movies, unedited and illogically arranged. I saw two women talking by a mailbox. One had a mole on her cheek that became eruptions all over her face as she shielded her eyes with a hand. Then palm trees were writhing in fierce winds as a hurricane roared in from the sea, fronds ripped off and flying. A trunk stripped bare, a bloody table lined with severed hands and feet.