Four Scarpetta Novels (10 page)

“Get a fucking ad in the Yellow Pages.”

Lucious heads to the small morgue office, walking fast, hardly bending his knees, reminding Benton of a pair of scissors.

One quadrant of the screen shows Lucious inside the morgue office, fussing with paperwork, opening drawers, rummaging, finding a pen.

Another quadrant of the screen shows Marino saying to Shandy, “Didn't anyone know the Hinelick maneuver?”

“I'll learn anything, baby,” she says. “Any maneuver you want to show me.”

“Seriously. When your father was choking on—” Marino starts to explain.

“We thought he was having a heart attack or a stroke or a seizure,” she interrupts him. “It was so awful, grabbing himself, falling to the floor and cracking his head, his face turning blue. No one knew what to do, had no idea he was choking. Even if we had, we couldn't have done anything except what we did, call nine-one-one.” She suddenly looks as if she might start crying.

“Sorry to tell you, but you could have done something,” Marino says. “I'm gonna show you. Here, turn around.”

Done with his paperwork, Lucious hurries out of the morgue office, walks right past Marino and Shandy. They pay him no mind as he enters the autopsy suite unattended. Marino wraps his huge arms around her waist, makes a fist, his thumb against her upper abdomen, just above her navel. He grasps his fist with his other hand and gives a gentle upward thrust, just enough to show her. He slides his hands up and fondles her.

“Good God,” Lucy says in Benton's ear. “He's got a hard-on in the fucking morgue.”

In the autopsy suite, the camera picks up Lucious walking to the large black log on a countertop, the Book of the Dead, as Rose politely calls it. He starts signing in the body with the pen he took from the morgue office desk.

“He's not supposed to do that.” Lucy's voice in Benton's ear. “Only Aunt Kay is supposed to touch that log. It's a legal document.”

Shandy says to Marino, “See, it's not hard being in here. Well, maybe it is.” Reaching back, grabbing him. “You sure know how to cheer a girl up. And I do mean up. Whoa!”

Benton says to Lucy, “This is unbelievable.”

Shandy turns around in Marino's arms and kisses him—kissing him on the mouth right there in the morgue—and for an instant, Benton thinks they might have sex in the hallway.

Then, “Here, you try it on me,” Marino says.

In another quadrant of his screen, Benton watches Lucious thumbing through the morgue log.

When Marino turns around, his arousal is apparent. Shandy can barely get her arms all the way around him, starts to laugh. He puts his huge hands over hers, helps her push, says, “No kidding. You ever see me choking, you push just like this. Hard!” He shows her. “Point is to force the air out so whatever's caught in there flies out, too.” She slides her hands down and grabs him again, and he pushes her away and turns his back to Lucious as he emerges from the autopsy suite.

“She figured out anything about that dead little boy?” Lucious snaps the rubber band around his wrist. “Well, I guess not, since he's entered in the Dead Log as ‘undetermined.'”

“He was undetermined when he was brought in. What you been doing, snooping through the book?” Marino looks ridiculous, his back to Lucious.

“Obviously, she can't handle such a complicated case. Too bad I didn't bring him in here. I could have been of assistance. I know more about the human body than any doctor.” Lucious moves to one side and stares down in the direction of Marino's crotch. “Well, hello,” he says.

“You don't know shit and can shut up about that dead boy,” Marino says nastily. “And you can shut up about the Doc. And you can get the hell out of here.”

“You mean that little boy from the other day?” Shandy says.

Lucious rattles off with his stretcher, leaving the body he just delivered on the gurney in the middle of the hall, in front of the stainless-steel cooler door. Marino opens it and pushes the uncooperative gurney inside, his arousal still obvious.

“Christ,” Benton says to Lucy.

“He on Viagra or something?” Her voice in his ear.

“Why the hell don't you get a new cart or whatever you call that thing?” Shandy says.

“The Doc don't waste money.”

“So she's cheap, too. Bet she doesn't pay you shit.”

“If we need something, she gets it, but she don't waste money. Not like Lucy, who could buy China.”

“You always stick up for the Big Chief, don't you? But not like you stick up for me, baby.” Shandy fondles him.

“I think I'm going to throw up.” Lucy's voice.

And Shandy walks inside the cooler to get a good look at what's inside. The cold air blowing is audible through Benton's speakers.

And a camera in the bay picks up Lucious sliding behind the wheel of his hearse.

“She a murder?” Shandy asks about the latest delivery, then looks at another pouched body in a corner. “I want to know about the kid.”

Lucious rumbles away in his hearse, the bay door loudly clanking shut behind him, sounding like a car wreck.

“Natural causes,” Marino says. “Old Oriental woman. Eighty-five or something.”

“How come she got sent here if she died of natural causes?”

“Because the coroner wanted to send her in. Why? Hell if I know. The Doc just said for me to be here. Hell if I know. Sounds like a cut-and-dried heart attack to me. I'm getting a whiff of something.” He makes a face.

“Let's look,” Shandy says. “Come on. Just a quick peek.”

Benton watches them on-screen, watches Marino unzip the pouch and Shandy recoil in disgust, jump back, cover her nose and mouth.

“What you deserve.” Lucy's voice as she zooms in on the body: decomposing, bloated by gases, the abdomen turning green. Benton knows that odor all too well, a putrid stench unlike any other that clings to the air and the roof of your mouth.

“Shit,” Marino complains, zipping up the pouch. “She's probably been lying around for days and the damn Beaufort County coroner didn't want to fool with her. Got a noseful, did you?” He laughs at Shandy. “And you thought my job was a piece of cake.”

Shandy moves closer to the small black pouched body parked in a corner all by itself. She stands very still, staring down at it.

“Don't do it.” Lucy sounds in Benton's ear, but she's talking to Marino's image on the screen.

“Bet I knows what's in this little bag,” Shandy says, and it's hard to hear her.

Marino steps outside the cooler. “Out, Shandy. Now.”

“Whatcha gonna do? Lock me in here? Come on, Pete. Open up this little bag. I know it's that dead boy you and that funeral creep were just talking about. I heard all about that boy on the news. So he's still here. How come? Poor little thing all alone and cold in a refrigerator.”

“He's lost it,” Benton says. “Completely lost it.”

“You don't want to see that,” Marino says to her, walking back inside the cooler.

“Why not? That little boy found at Hilton Head. The one all over the news,” she repeats herself. “I knew it. Why's he still here? They know who did it?” She holds her position by the little black pouch on its gurney.

“We don't know a damn thing. That's why he's still here. Come on.” He motions to her, and it's difficult to hear both of them.

“Let me see him.”

“Don't do it.” Lucy's voice, talking to Marino's image on the screen. “Don't fuck yourself, Marino.”

“You don't want to,” he says to Shandy.

“I can handle it. I got a right to see him, because you're not supposed to have secrets. That's our rule. So prove right now you don't keep secrets from me.” She can't take her eyes off the pouch.

“Nope. With stuff like this, the secret rule don't count.”

“Oh, yes it does. Better hurry, I'm turning as cold as a dead body in here.”

“Because if the Doc ever found out…”

“There you go again. Scared of her like she fucking owns you. What's so bad you don't think I can handle it?” Shandy says furiously, almost screaming as she holds herself because of the cold. “I bet he doesn't stink as bad as that old lady.”

“He's been skinned and his eyeballs are gone,” Marino tells her.

“Oh, no,” Benton says, rubbing his face.

Shandy exclaims, “Don't mess with me! Don't you dare joke with me! You let me see him right now! I'm sick and tired of you always turning into a damn wimp when
she
tells you something!”

“Nothing funny about it, you got that right. What goes on in this place ain't no joke. I keep trying to tell you that. You got no idea what I deal with.”

“Well, isn't that something. To think your Big Chief would do something like that. Skinning a little kid and cutting out his eyes. You always said she treats the dead real nice.” Hatefully. “Sounds like a Nazi to me. They used to skin people and make lampshades.”

“Sometimes the only way you can tell if darkish or reddish areas are really bruises is to look at the underside of the skin so you can make sure what you're looking at is broken blood vessels—in other words, bruises or what we call contusions—instead of it being from livor mortis,” Marino pontificates.

“This is unreal.” Lucy sounds in Benton's ear. “So now he's the chief medical examiner.”

“Not unreal,” Benton says. “Massively insecure. Threatened. Resentful. Overcompensating and decompensating. I don't know what's going on with him.”

“You and Aunt Kay are what's going on with him.”

“From what?” Shandy stares at the little black pouch.

“From when your circulation stops, and the blood settles and can make your skin look red in places. Can look a whole lot like fresh bruises. And there can be other reasons for things that look like injuries, what we call postmortem artifacts. It's complicated,” Marino says with self-importance. “So to make sure, you peel back the skin, you know, with a scalpel”—he makes swift cutting motions in the air—“to see the underside of it, and in this case, they were bruises, all right. The little guy's covered with them from head to toe.”

“But why would you take out his eyeballs?”

“Further study, looking for more hemorrhages like you find in shaking baby syndrome, things like that. Same with his brain. It's fixed in formalin in a bucket, not here but at a medical school where they do special studies.”

“Oh my God. His brain's in a bucket?”

“It's just what we do. Fixing it in this chemical so it don't decompose and can be looked at better. Sort of like embalming.”

“You sure know a lot. You should be the doctor around here, not
her
. Let me look.”

All this inside the cooler, the door wide open.

“I've been doing this practically longer than you're old,” Marino says. “Sure, I could've been a doctor, but who the hell wants to go to school that long? Who'd want to be her, either? She's got no life. Nobody but dead people.”

“I want to see him,” Shandy demands.

“Damn, don't know what it is,” Marino says. “Can't be inside a damn cooler without dying for a cigarette.”

She digs in a pocket of the leather vest under her gown, pulls out a pack, a lighter. “I can't believe someone would do that to a little kid. I have to see him. I'm here, so show me.” She lights up two cigarettes and they smoke.

“Manipulative, borderline,” Benton says. “He's picked real trouble this time.”

Marino rolls out the tray, rolls it out of the cooler.

Unzipping the pouch. Plastic rustling. Lucy zooms in tight on Shandy blowing out smoke, staring wide-eyed at the dead little boy.

An emaciated little body sliced in neat straight lines from chin to genitals, from shoulders to hands, from hips to toes, his chest open like a hollowed-out watermelon. His organs are gone. His skin is reflected back from his body and spread out in flaps that reveal scores of dark purple hemorrhages of varying ages and severity, and tears and fractures to cartilage and bone. His eyes are empty holes, and through them is the inside of his skull.

Shandy screams, “I hate that woman! I hate her! How could she do this to him! Gutted and skinned like a shot deer! How can you work for that psycho bitch!”

“Calm down. Quit yelling.” Marino zips up the pouch and rolls it back inside the cooler. He shuts the door. “I warned you. There's some things people don't need to see. They can get a post-trauma stress condition from stuff like this.”

“Now I'll see him forever in my head, looking just like that. Sicko bitch. Damn Nazi.”

“You keep your mouth shut about this, you hear me?” Marino says.

“How can you work for someone like that?”

“Shut up. I mean it,” Marino says. “I helped with the autopsy, and I'm sure as hell no Nazi. That's what happens. People get fucked over twice when they get murdered.” He takes Shandy's surgical gown, hastily folds it. “That little kid was probably murdered the day he was born. No one giving a rat's ass about him, and this is the result.”

“What do you know about life? You people think you know everything about everyone when all you see is what's left when you cut them up like a butcher.”

“You're the one who wanted to come in here.” Marino is getting angry. “So shut up about it, and don't call me a butcher.”

He leaves Shandy in the hallway, returns the gown to Scarpetta's locker. He sets the alarm. The camera in the bay captures them, the huge bay door screeching and clanking up.

Lucy's voice. Benton will have to be the one to inform Scarpetta about Marino's tour, about a betrayal that could destroy her if the media ever found out. Lucy's headed to the airport, won't be back until late tomorrow. Benton doesn't ask. He's pretty sure she already knows, even if she hasn't told him. Then she tells him about Dr. Self, about her e-mails to Marino.