Four Scarpetta Novels (125 page)

A
S OFTEN HAPPENS WHEN
a situation is urgent, the best efforts are foiled by mundaneness.

Senator Lord has never been the sort to hesitate in making phone calls himself. He has no egotistical insecurities and finds it is quicker to handle a matter than to explain it to someone else. The instant he hangs up at the pay phone, he returns to his car and drives north, talking on his hands-free to his chief counsel.

“Jeff, I need the number of the warden at Polunsky. Now.”

Writing notes while driving in rush hour on I-95 is a special feat the senator was forced to learn years ago.

He enters a bad cell and can't hear his chief counsel.

Repeatedly calling him back, the senator gets no signal. When he does get through, he is greeted by voicemail, because Jeff is trying to call him back, too.

“Get off the phone!” the senator exclaims to no one who can hear him.

Twenty minutes later, a secretary is still trying to track down the warden.

Senator Lord senses—and this has happened before—that she isn't sure she believes the person on the other line is really Senator Frank Lord,
one of the most powerful and visible politicians in the country. Usually, important people let less important people schedule appointments and make telephone calls.

Senator Lord concentrates on creeping traffic and angry drivers, and has been on hold for minutes. No one with intelligence or, better yet, a certainty of who she is talking to would dare to put him on hold. This is his reward for humility and taking care of himself efficiently, including picking up his own dry cleaning, stopping at the grocery store and even making his own restaurant reservations, despite recurring problems with maître d's writing nothing down, certain the call is a prank or someone trying to trick him into giving him the best table.

“I'm sorry.” The secretary finally returns. “I can't seem to locate him. He's very busy this morning because there's an execution tonight. Can I take a message?”

“What is your name?”

“Jodi.”

“No, Jodi, you can't take a message. This is an emergency.”

“Well,” she hesitates, “caller ID doesn't show you're calling from Washington. I can't just yank him out of an important meeting or whatever and then find out it's not really you.”

“I don't have time for this. Find him. Or, for God's sake, does the man have an assistant?”

Again, he enters a bad cell and it takes fifteen minutes before he can get through to the secretary again. She has left her desk. Another young woman answers the phone and he loses her, too.

I
'M SICK OF THIS,”
Nic tells her father.

She drove to the Baton Rouge Police Department's old brick building and never got above the first-floor lobby. When she said she had possible evidence about the cases, a plainclothes detective eventually appeared and just stared at the quarters in the envelope. He looked at Polaroid photographs of them on the Wal-Mart parking lot and indifferently listened to Nic's rendition and theory while he continued to glance at his watch. She receipted the coins to him, and was certain when he returned to the so-called War Room, she became the joke of the day.

“We're all working the same cases, and those assholes won't talk to me. I'm sorry.” Sometimes Nic forgets how much her father abhors swearing. “Maybe they know something that could help us with our cases in Zachary. But oh, no. I am welcome to hand over anything I know, but it doesn't work the same way.”

“You look mighty tired, Nic,” he says as they eat eggs scrambled with cheese and spicy sausage patties.

Buddy is off in make-believe land with his toys and the television.

“How 'bout some more grits?” her father asks.

“I can't. But you do make the best grits I've ever had.”

“You always say that.”

“It's always true.”

“Be careful. Those boys in Baton Rouge don't like people like you. Especially women like you.”

“They don't even know me.”

“They don't need to know you to hate your guts. They want credit. Now, when I was coming along, credit meant you could buy your groceries at the nearby general store and pay later when you were able. No one went hungry. These days, credit means plain selfishness. Those good ol' boys in Baton Rouge want credit, credit, credit.”

“Tell me about it.” Nic butters another biscuit. “Every time you cook, I eat too much.”

“People who want credit will lie, cheat and steal,” her father reminds her.

“While women keep dying.” Nic loses her appetite and sets the biscuit back on her plate. “Who's worse? The man doing it or these men who want credit and don't care about the victims or anything else?”

“Two wrongs never make a right, Nic,” he says. “I'm glad you don't work down there. I'd be worried about your safety a lot more than I am now. And not because of this madman on the loose, but because of who your colleagues would be.”

She looks around at the simple kitchen of her childhood. Nothing in the house has been upgraded or remodeled since her mother died. The stove is electric, white with four burners. The refrigerator is white; so are the countertops. Her mother had a French country theme in mind, was going to find old furniture and blue-and-white curtains, maybe some interesting tiles for the walls. But she never got a chance. So the kitchen is white, just plain white. If any of the appliances quit for good, she's confident her father would refuse to get rid of them. He'd eat takeout food every night, if necessary. It tortures Nic that her father can't disengage from the past. Silent grieving and anger hold him hostage.

Nic pushes back her chair. She kisses the top of her father's head, and her eyes fill with tears.

“I love you, Papa. Take good care of Buddy. I promise one of these days I'll be a good mother.”

“You're a good enough mother.” He looks at her from his seat at the table as he idly picks at eggs. “It's not how much time but what that time's like.”

Nic thinks of her mother. Her time was short, but every minute of it was good. That's the way it seems now.

“Now you're crying,” her father says. “You going to tell me what on Earth is going on with you, Nic?”

“I don't know, I don't know. I'll be minding my own business and suddenly burst into tears. I think it's about Mama, like I told you. All that's going on down here has reminded me, or just opened some trapdoor in my mind. A door I didn't even know was there that's leading into a dark place I'm scared to death of, Papa. Please turn on the light for me. Please.”

He slowly gets up from the table, knowing what she means. He sighs.

“Don't do this to yourself, Nic,” he grimly says. “I already know what it did to me. I stopped my life. You know I did. When I came home that early evening and saw . . .” He clears his throat, fighting back tears. “I felt something move inside me, as if I pulled a muscle in my heart. Why would you want those images?”

“Because they're the truth. And maybe the images I have are worse because I can't see the real ones.”

He nods and sighs again. “Go up in the attic. Under all those rugs piled in a corner, there's a small blue suitcase. Belonged to her. She got it with Green Stamps.”

“I remember,” Nic whispers, envisioning her mother carrying the blue suitcase out the door one day when she was headed to Nashville to visit her aunt after she'd had eye surgery.

“The lock code was never set because she said she'd never remember
it. Zero-zero-zero, just like brand new.” He clears his throat again, staring off. “What you want's in there. Some things I'm not supposed to have, but I was like you. Just had to know. And I taught the daughter of the police chief, so I got a few favors, I'm ashamed to admit it. Because I promised the chief I'd give her a better grade than she deserved and a recommendation for college that was just one big fat lie.

“My punishment is I got what I asked for,” he continues. “Just don't bring that stuff down here. I don't ever want to see it again.”

A
SSISTANT PIO JAYNE GITTLEMAN
apologizes profusely for making Scarpetta wait.

For fifteen minutes, Scarpetta has stood outside the front door, right below the sign that reads
Allan B. Polunsky Unit,
the bright sun making her perspire. She feels dirty and disheveled from travel. Her patience is thin, despite her resolve to contain her emotions completely. More than anything right now, she wants to get this over with at last, at long last.

“The media's calling nonstop because we've got an execution tonight,” Miss Gittleman explains.

She hands Scarpetta a visitor's tag, which she clamps to the lapel of the same suit she's worn on different planes since she left Florida. The pantsuit is black, and at least she ironed it inside her room at New York's Melrose Hotel last night after leaving her niece. Lucy does not know where Scarpetta is right now. If Scarpetta had mentioned it, Lucy would have tried to stop her or insisted on going with her. Taking a chance, Scarpetta headed west without an appointment, having no choice but to call the Polunsky Unit when she landed in Houston. Her confidence that Chandonne would see her was rewarded by the additional unpleasantry of learning she is on his visitors list. At least his sick joke proved useful.
She is here. And perhaps the less time he has to think about her seeing him, the better.

Officers check Scarpetta's identification, and Miss Gittleman leads her through a series of loud steel doors, then through a garden with picnic tables under umbrellas, obviously meant for staff. She is cleared through five electronically locking doors, the walk far too short to suit her as she reaches the unnerving conclusion that she should not have come here. Chandonne is manipulating her, and she is going to regret this visit because it gives him what he wants and makes a fool of her.

Inside the visitors lobby, her shoes seem loud, and she is acutely aware of her appearance as she crosses the shiny tile floor. A strong believer in the psychology of dress and demeanor, her entrance is out of character and embarrassing. She would have preferred to be perfectly groomed in a power suit, probably pinstripe, and perhaps a white shirt with cufflinks. Possibly, she considers, power dressing wouldn't have sent the best message to this bastard who tried to kill her, but it would have made her feel less vulnerable to him.

Her knees weaken at the sight of Jean-Baptiste Chandonne sitting inside Booth 2. Clean-shaven, including his hands and head, he relaxes behind glass, drinking a Pepsi and eating a chocolate cupcake, pretending not to notice her.

She openly stares at him, refusing to play the game he has already begun, and it amazes her to see him shaven and dressed in white. He is ugly but almost looks normal without his long swirls of baby-fine hair that hung from him in a long, filthy fringe last time she saw him. He sips his Pepsi and licks his fingers as Scarpetta sits across from him and picks up the black phone.

His asymmetrical eyes drift, and he gives her his barracuda smile, his skin as pale as parchment. She notices his highly defined, muscular arms and that he has torn the sleeves off his white shirt, and then she sees that long, horrible hair. It peeks out from the armholes and the opening at his neck. Apparently, he has shaven only those areas of his body that are uncovered.

“How nice,” she says coldly into the phone. “You cleaned up for me.”

“But of course. It is lovely for you to come. I knew you would.” His filmy eyes don't seem to focus when they briefly turn her way.

“Did you shave yourself?”

“Yes. Today. Just for you.”

“Rather hard to do if you can't see,” she remarks in a steady, strong voice.

“I don't need my eyes to see.” He touches his tongue to a small, sharp tooth and reaches for his Pepsi. “What did you think about my letter?”

“What did you want me to think about it?”

“That I am an artist, of course.”

“Did you learn your penmanship here in prison?”

“I have always been able to write in a beautiful hand. When my parents kept me locked in the basement as an innocent
petit
boy, I had endless hours to develop many talents.”

“Who mailed the letter for you?” Scarpetta dominates with her questions.

“My dear dead lawyer.” He clucks his tongue. “I honestly do not know why he committed suicide. But perhaps it is a good thing. He was worthless, you know. It runs in his bloodline.”

Scarpetta bends down and takes a notepad and pen out of her pocketbook. “You told me you have information for me. That's why I'm here. If you simply want to chat, I'm leaving right now. I have no interest in
visiting
with you.”

“The other part of the bargain, Madame Scarpetta,” he says as his crooked eyes float, “is my execution. Will you?”

“I have no problem with that.”

He smiles and seems delighted.

“Tell me.” He rests his chin on his hand. “What is it like?”

“Painless. An IV of sodium thiopental, which is the sedative. And pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant. Potassium chloride stops the heart.” She clinically describes as he listens, enraptured. “Fairly
inexpensive drugs, ironically and appropriately, considering their purpose. Death occurs in several minutes.”

“And I will not suffer when you do this to me?”

“You will never suffer the way you've made others suffer. You'll instantly go to sleep.”

“Then you promise you will be my doctor in the end?” He begins stroking the can of Pepsi, the hideous long nail on his right thumb caked with what looks like chocolate, probably from his cupcakes.

“I will do as you wish if you are willing to help the police. What is the information?”

He gives her names and locations, none of which mean anything to her. She fills twenty pages in her notepad, becoming increasingly suspicious that he is toying with her. The information is meaningless. Maybe.

At a pause, when he decides to take his time eating a cupcake, she says, “Where are your brother and Bev Kiffin?”

He wipes his hands and mouth on his shirt, sinewy muscles jumping with his every motion. Chandonne is strong and frighteningly fast. Repressing images is becoming increasingly difficult. She tries to shut off memories of that night in her house, when this very man who is separated from her only by glass tried to beat her to death. Then Jay Talley's face is there, when he fooled her, and later he came after her, too. That the fraternal twin brothers share a murderous obsession for her is incomprehensible. She doesn't quite believe it, and it surprises her that as she stares at Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, all she feels is a determination to forget past horrors. He is harmless in this place. In days, he will be dead.

She will not come back to administer the lethal injection. Lying to him doesn't bother her in the least.

He says nothing about Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin.

Instead, he tells her, “Rocco has a small château in Baton Rouge. It is quaint, in a restored neighborhood where many homosexuals live. Near downtown. I have stayed there many times.”

“Have you ever heard of a Baton Rouge woman named Charlotte Dard?”

“Of course. Not beautiful enough for my brother.”

“Did Rocco Caggiano murder her?”

“No.” Chandonne sighs as if he is getting bored. “As I said, and you must listen to me more closely. She was not beautiful enough for my brother. The Red Stick.” He subjects her to his hideous open-mouthed grin as his eyes continue to drift. “Did you know that everything you are is visible in your hands?”

Her hands are in her lap, holding the notepad and the pen. He talks about her hands as if he can see them, yet his eyes float as if he is blind.

Malingerer.

“In the hands of all the sons of men God places marks, that all the sons of men may know their own works. Every working of the mind leaves marks on the hand, forms the hand, which is the measure of intelligence and creativity.”

She listens, wondering if he is on his way to an important point.

“In France, you find mostly artistic hands. Like mine.” He holds up a shaved hand, his long, tapered fingers splayed. “And like yours, Madame Scarpetta. You have the elegant hands of an artist. And now you know why I do not touch the hands.
The Psychonomy of the Hand,
or
The Hand an Index of Mental Development.
Monsieur Richard Beamish. A very good book with many tracings of living hands, if you can find it, but alas, it was written in 1865 and not in your local library. There are two tracings that are you. The square hand, elegant but strong. And the artist's hand, elastic and flexible, again elegant. But more associated with an impulsive personality.”

She does not comment.

“Impulsive. Here you are without notice. Suddenly here. A rather nervous sort. But sanguine.”

He savors the word
sanguine,
which in medieval medicine meant the blood was the most dominant of the bodily humors. Sanguine people are supposed to be optimistic and cheerful. She is neither at the moment.

“You say you don't touch the hands. An explanation for why you didn't bite the hands of the women you slaughtered,” she says blandly.

“The hands are the mind and the soul. I would not harm a manifestation of what I am releasing with my chosen ones. I only lick the hands.”

Now he is moving in to disgust and degrade her, but she isn't finished with him yet.

“You didn't bite the bottoms of their feet, either,” she reminds him.

He shrugs, fiddling with the can of Pepsi, which sounded empty the last time he set it down. “Feet are of no interest to me.”

“Where are Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin?” she asks again.

“I am getting tired.”

“Why would you protect your brother after the way he has treated you all of your life?”

“I am my brother,” he weirdly says. “So your finding me makes it unnecessary for you to find him. Now, I am very tired.”

Jean-Baptiste Chandonne begins rubbing his stomach and wincing as his eyes wander. “I think I am getting sick.”

“You have nothing more to tell me? If not, I'm leaving.”

“I am blind.”

“You are a malingerer,” Scarpetta replies.

“You took my physical eyesight, but not before I
saw
you.” He touches his tongue to his pointed teeth. “Remember your lovely home with the shower in the garage? When you returned from a crime scene at the Richmond port, you went into that garage to change and disinfect, and you showered in there.”

Anger and humiliation tighten her body. She had been examining a putrid, decomposing body inside a cargo container, and, yes, she went through her routine: taking off her protective coveralls and boots and tying them inside a heavy plastic bag that went in the trunk; then she drove home. Once inside her garage, which certainly was not a typical garage, she threw her scene clothes into an industrial-size stainless-steel
sink. She stripped and stepped into the shower, because she will not track death into her house.

“The small windows in your garage door. Very much like the small window in my cell,” he goes on. “I saw you.”

Those unfocused eyes and that fishlike smile again.

His tongue is bleeding.

Scarpetta's hands are cold, her feet getting numb. The hair rises on her arms and the back of her neck.

“Naked.”
He savors the word, sucking his tongue.
“I watched you undress. I saw you naked.
Such a joy, like a fine wine. You were Burgundy then, round and firm, complicated and to be drunk, not sipped. Now you are a Bordeaux, because when you speak, you are heavier, you see. Not physically, I don't think. I would have to see you naked to make that determination.” He presses a hand against the glass, a hand that has battered human beings to splinters and mush. “A red wine, of course. You are always . . .”

“That's enough!” Scarpetta yells as her rage crashes out of its camouflage like a wild boar. “Shut up, you worthless piece of shit.” She leans closer to the glass. “I'm not going to listen to your masturbatory talk. It doesn't
bother
me.
I don't care if you saw me naked.
Do you think it intimidates me to hear you babble on about your voyeurism and what you think of my body? Do you think I care if I blinded you when you were swinging that fucking hammer at me?

“You know what the best part is, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne? You're in here
because of me.
So who won? And, no, I won't be back here to put you to death. A stranger will do that. Just as you were a stranger to those you killed.”

Jean-Baptiste suddenly turns back to the wire-mesh screen behind him.

“Who's there?” he whispers.

Scarpetta hangs up the black phone. She walks away.

“Who's there!”
he screams.