Four Scarpetta Novels (19 page)

“Maybe we should move,” Marino says. “Go to a big city.”

“Me move with you?” She blows out more smoke.

“What about New York?”

“We can't ride our bikes in New Damn York. No way I'm moving to a place swarming like a beehive with all those stuck-up damn Yankees.”

He gives her his sexiest look and reaches under the table. He rubs her thigh because he's terrified of losing her. Every man in this bar wants her, and he's the one she's picked. He rubs her thigh and thinks about Scarpetta and what she'll say. She's read Dr. Self's e-mails. Maybe she's realizing who he is and what other women think of him.

“Let's go to your place,” Shandy says.

“How come we never go to your place? You afraid to be seen with me or something? Like maybe you live around rich people and I'm not good enough?”

“I have to decide whether I'm going to keep you. See, I don't like slavery,” she says. “She's gonna work you to death like a slave, and I know all about slaves. My great-grandfather was a slave, but not my daddy. Nobody told him what the hell to do.”

Marino holds up his empty plastic cup, smiles at Jess, who's looking mighty fine this evening in tight jeans and a tube top. She appears with another Maker's Mark and ginger, sets it in front of him. She says, “You riding home?”

“Not a problem.” He winks at her.

“Maybe you should stay in the campground. I got an empty camper back there.” She has several in the woods behind the bar, in case patrons aren't safe to ride.

“I couldn't be better.”

“Bring me another.” Shandy has a bad habit of barking orders at people who don't have her status in life.

“I'm still waiting on you to win the bike build-off, Pete.” Jess ignores Shandy, talks mechanically, slowly, her eyes on Marino's lips.

It took a while for him to get used to it. He's learned to look at Jess when he talks, is never too loud, never exaggerates his speech. He's hardly aware of her deafness anymore and feels a special closeness to her, maybe because they can't communicate without looking at each other.

“One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars cash for first place.” Jess draws out the staggering amount.

“I'm betting River Rats is going to get it this year,” Marino says to Jess, knowing she's just messing with him, maybe flirting a little. He's never built a bike or entered any contest, and never will.

“And I'm betting on Thunder Cycle.” Shandy inserts herself in that snotty way Marino hates. “Eddie Trotta's so damn hot. He can
trotta
into my bed anytime he wants.”

“Tell you what,” Marino says to Jess, putting his arm around her waist, looking up at her so she can see him talking. “One of these days, I'll have big bucks. I won't need to win a bike build-off or work a shit job.”

“He ought to quit his shit job, doesn't earn enough to make it worth his while—or worth my while,” Shandy says. “He's nothing but a squaw to the Big Chief. Besides, he doesn't need to work. He's got me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Marino knows he shouldn't say it, but he's drunk and hateful. “What if I told you I got an offer to go on TV in New York?”

“As what? A commercial for Rogaine?” Shandy laughs as Jess tries to read what's being said.

“As a consultant for Dr. Self. She's been asking me.” He can't stop himself, should change the subject.

Shandy looks genuinely startled, blurts, “You're lying. Why would she care a shit about you?”

“We got a history. She wants me to go to work for her. I've been thinking about it, maybe would have accepted right away, but that would mean moving to New York and leaving you, babe.” He puts his arm around her.

She pulls away. “Well, looks like her show's on its way to being a comedy.”

“Put our guest over there on my tab,” Marino says with loud largesse, nodding and pointing at the man in the flame do-rag sitting next to his dog at the bar. “He's having a rough night. Got five lousy bucks to his name.”

The man turns around and Marino gets a good look at a face pitted with acne scars. He has the snake eyes that Marino associates with people who have done time.

“I can pay for my own damn beer,” the man in the flame do-rag says.

Shandy continues complaining to Jess, not bothering to look at her face, so she may as well be talking to herself.

“Don't appear to me like you can pay for much of anything, and I apologize for my southern hospitality,” Marino says, loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear.

“I don't think you should go anywhere.” Jess looks at Marino, at his drink.

“There's room for only one woman in his life, and one of these days he's gonna figure that out,” Shandy says to Jess and anybody else listening. “Without me, what's he got, anyway? Who do you think gave him that fancy necklace he's wearing?”

“Fuck you,” the man in the do-rag says to Marino. “Fuck your mother.”

Jess walks over to the bar, crosses her arms. She says to the man in the do-rag, “We talk polite in here. I think you better leave.”

“What?” he says loudly, cupping a hand behind his ear, mocking her.

Marino's chair scrapes back and in three long strides he is between them. “You say you're sorry, asshole,” Marino says to him.

The man's eyes touch his like needles. He crumples the five-dollar bill he got out of the ATM, drops it on the floor, crushes it beneath his boot as if he's putting out a cigarette. He smacks the dog's butt, heads to the door as he says to Marino, “Why don't you come out here like a man? I got something to say to you.”

Marino follows him and his dog across the dirt parking lot to an old chopper, probably put together in the seventies, a four-speed with a kick start, flame paint job, something funny-looking about the license tag.

“Cardboard,” Marino realizes out loud. “Homemade. Now, ain't that sweet. Tell me what you got to say.”

“Reason I'm here tonight? Got a message for you,” the man in the dorag says. “Sit!” he yells at the dog, and it cowers, flattens on its belly.

“Next time send a letter.” Marino grabs him by the front of his dirty denim jacket. “It's cheaper than a funeral.”

“You don't let go of me, I'll get you later in a way you won't like. There's a reason I'm here and you better listen.”

Marino takes his hands off him, aware that everyone in the saloon has moved out on the porch, watching. The dog remains flat on his belly, cowering.

“That bitch you work for ain't welcome in these parts and would be smart to go back where she come from,” the man in the do-rag says. “Just passing along a word of advice from someone who can do something about it.”

“What'd you call her?”

“Say this much, that bitch's got some set of tits.” He cups his hands and licks the air. “If she don't leave town, I'll find out just how nice.”

Marino kicks the chopper hard and it thuds to the dirt. He grabs his forty-caliber Glock out of the back of his jeans and points it between the man's eyes.

“Don't be stupid,” the man says, as bikers start yelling from the porch. “You shoot me, your worthless life's over and you know it.”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!”

“Whoa, now!”

“Pete!”

Marino feels as if the top of his head is floating off as he stares at the spot between the man's eyes. He racks back the slide, chambering a round.

“You kill me, you may as well be dead, too,” the man in the do-rag says, but he's scared.

Bikers are on their feet, shouting. Marino is vaguely aware of people venturing into the parking lot.

“Pick up your piece-of-shit bike,” Marino says, lowering the gun. “Leave the dog.”

“I ain't leaving my damn dog!”

“You're leaving him. You treat him like shit. Now get out of here before I give you a third eye.”

As the chopper roars away, Marino clears the chamber, tucks the pistol back into his waistband, unsure what just came over him and terrified by it. He pets the dog and it stays flat on its belly and licks his hand.

“We'll find someone nice to take care of you,” Marino says to him as fingers dig into his arm. He looks up at Jess.

“I think it's time you deal with this,” she says.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what. That woman. I warned you. She's beating you down, making you feel like a nothing, and look what's happening. In one short week you've turned into a wild man.”

His hands are shaking badly. He looks at her so she can read his lips. “That was stupid, wasn't it, Jess. Now what?” He pets the dog.

“He'll be the saloon dog, and if that man comes back, it won't be good for him. But you better be careful now. You've started something.”

“You ever seen him before?”

She shakes her head.

Marino notices Shandy on the porch, by the railing. He wonders why she hasn't left the porch. He almost killed someone and she's still on the porch.

S
omewhere a dog barks in the near dark, and the barking becomes more insistent.

Scarpetta detects the distant carbureted
potato-potato-potato
rhythm of Marino's Roadmaster. She can hear the damn thing blocks away on Meeting Street, heading south. Moments later it roars through the narrow alleyway behind her house. He's been drinking. She could hear it in his voice when she talked to him on the phone. He's being obnoxious.

She needs him sober if they're going to have a productive conversation—perhaps the most important one they've ever had. She begins making a pot of coffee as he turns left on King Street, then another left into the narrow driveway she shares with her unpleasant neighbor, Mrs. Grimball. Marino rolls the throttle a few times to announce himself and kills the engine.

“You got something to drink in there?” he says as Scarpetta opens the front door. “A little bourbon would be nice. Wouldn't it, Mrs. Grimball!” he shouts up at the yellow frame house, and a curtain moves. He locks the bike's front fork, slips the key in his pocket.

“Inside, now,” Scarpetta says, realizing he's far more intoxicated than she thought. “For God's sake, why did you find it necessary to ride down the alley and yell at my neighbor?” she says as he follows her to the kitchen, his booted footsteps loud, his head almost touching the top of each door frame they pass through.

“Security check. I like to make sure nothing's going on back there, no lost hearses, no homeless people hanging out.”

He pulls out a chair, sits, slumped back. The odor of booze is powerful, his face bright red, his eyes bloodshot. He says, “I can't stay long. Got to get back to my woman. She thinks I'm at the morgue.”

Scarpetta hands him a coffee, black. “You're going to stay long enough to sober up, otherwise you're not going anywhere near your motorcycle. I can't believe you got on it in your condition. That's not like you. What's wrong with you?”

“So I had a few. Big deal. I'm fine.”

“It
is
a big deal, and you're
not
fine. I don't care how well you supposedly handle alcohol. Every drunk driver thinks he's fine right before he ends up dead or maimed or in jail.”

“I didn't come here to be lectured to.”

“I didn't invite you over to have you show up drunk.”

“Why did you invite me? To rag on me? To find something else wrong with me? Something else not up to your high-horse standards?”

“It's not like you to talk this way.”

“Maybe you've just never listened,” he says.

“I asked you to come over in hopes we could have an open and honest conversation, but it doesn't appear this is a good time. I have a guest room. Maybe you should go to sleep and we'll talk in the morning.”

“Seems as good a time as any.” He yawns and stretches, doesn't touch his coffee. “Talk away. Either that or I'm out of here.”

“Let's go into the living room and sit in front of the fire.” She gets up from the kitchen table.

“It's seventy-five friggin' degrees outside.” He gets up, too.

“Then I'll make it nice and chilly in here.” She goes to a thermostat and turns on the air-conditioning. “I've always found it easier to talk in front of a fire.”

He follows her into her favorite room, a small sitting area with a brick fireplace, heart-of-pine floors, exposed beams, and plaster walls. She places a chemical log on the grate and lights it, and pulls two chairs close and switches off the lamps.

He watches flames burn the paper wrapping off the log and says, “I can't believe you use those things. Original this, original that, and then you use fake logs.”

 

Lucious Meddick drives around the block and his resentment festers.

He saw them go inside after that asshole investigator thundered up on his motorcycle drunk and disturbed the neighbors.
Daily double
, Lucious thinks. He's blessed because he's been wronged and God is making it up to him. Setting out to teach her a lesson, Lucious has caught both of them, and he slowly noses his hearse into the unlighted alleyway, worrying about another flat tire, and getting angrier. He snaps the rubber band hard as his frustration spikes. Voices of dispatchers on his police scanner are a distant static he can decipher in his sleep.

They didn't call him. He drifted past a fatal car crash on William Hilton Highway, saw the body being loaded into a competitor's hearse—an old one—and again Lucious was ignored. Beaufort County is her turf now, and nobody calls him. She's blackballed him because he made a mistake about her address. If she thought that was a violation of her privacy, she doesn't know the meaning.

Filming women through a window at night is nothing new. Surprising how easy it is and how many of them don't bother with curtains or blinds, or leave them open just a tiny inch or two, thinking
Who's going to look? Who's going to get down behind the shrubbery or climb up in a tree to see?
Lucious, that's who. See how the snotty lady doctor likes watching herself in a home movie that people can gawk at for nothing and never know who took it. Better still, he'll get both of them in the act. Lucious thinks of the hearse—nowhere near as nice as his—and the car wreck, and the unfairness of it is unendurable.

Who was called? Not him. Not Lucious, even after he radioed the dispatcher and said he was in the area, and she came back and told him in her snippy, terse tone that she hadn't called him and what unit was he? He said he wasn't a unit and she told him in so many words to stay off the cop channels and, for that matter, off the air. He snaps the rubber band until it stings like a whip. He bumps over pavers, past the iron gate behind the lady doctor's carriage garden, and spots a white Cadillac blocking his way. It's dark back here. He snaps the rubber band and swears. He recognizes the oval bumper sticker on the Cadillac's rear bumper.

HH for Hilton Head.

He'll just leave his damn hearse right here. Nobody drives through this damn alley anyway, and he has a mind to call in the Cadillac and laugh while the police give the driver a ticket. He gleefully thinks about You Tube and the trouble he's about to cause. That damn investigator is in that damn bitch's pants. He saw them walk into the house, sneaking and cheating. He has a girl, that sexy thing he was with in the morgue, and Lucious saw them carrying on when they weren't paying attention. From what he hears, Dr. Scarpetta has a man up north. Isn't that something. Lucious makes a fool of himself, promoting his business, telling the rude investigator that he—Lucious Meddick—would appreciate referrals from him and his boss, and their response? To disrespect him. To discriminate. Now they have to pay.

He turns off the engine and the lights and gets out as he glares at the Cadillac. He opens the back of the hearse and an empty stretcher is clamped to the floor, a stack of neatly folded white sheets and white body pouches on top of it. He finds the camcorder, and extra batteries in a utility box he keeps in back, and shuts the tailgate and stares at the Cadillac, walks past it, considering the best way to get close to her house.

Someone moves behind the glass of the driver's door, just the faintest hint of something dark inside the dark car, shifting. Lucious is happy as he turns on the camcorder to see how much memory is left, and the darkness inside the Cadillac shifts again, and Lucious walks around the back of it and films the license plate.

Probably some couple making out, and he gets excited thinking about it. Then he's offended. They saw his headlights and didn't get out of the way. Disrespect. They saw him park his hearse in the dark because he couldn't get past, and they couldn't have been more inconsiderate. They'll be sorry. He raps his knuckles against the glass, about to scare them but good.

“I got your plate number.” He raises his voice. “And I'm calling the damn police.”

 

The burning log crackles. An English bracket clock on the mantle
tick-tocks
.

“What's really going on with you?” Scarpetta says, watching him. “What's wrong?”

“You're the one who asked me here. So I assume something's wrong with you.”

“Something's wrong with us. How about that? You seem miserable. You're making me miserable. This past week has been out of control. Do you want to tell me what you've done and why?” she says. “Or do you want me to tell you?”

The fire crackles.

“Please, Marino. Talk to me.”

He stares at the fire. For a while, neither of them talk.

“I know about the e-mails,” she says. “But then, you probably already know that, since you asked Lucy to check out the alleged false alarm the other night.”

“So you have her snoop around my computer. So much for trust.”

“Oh, I don't think it's a good idea for you to say anything about trust.”

“I'll say what I want.”

“The tour you gave your girlfriend. All of it was caught on camera. I've seen it. Every minute of it.”

Marino's face twitches. Of course he knew the cameras and microphones were there, but she can tell it didn't occur to him that he and Shandy were being watched. Certainly, he would have known their every action and word was being captured, but most likely he assumed that Lucy would have no reason to review the recordings. He was right about that. She wouldn't have had a reason. He was confident he would get away with it, and that makes what he did even worse.

“There are cameras everywhere,” she says. “Did you really think no one would find out what you did?”

He doesn't answer.

“I thought you cared. I thought you cared about that murdered little boy. Yet you unzipped his pouch and played show-and-tell with your girlfriend. How could you do such a thing?”

He won't look at her or respond.

“Marino. How could you do such a thing?” she asks him again.

“It was her idea. The tape should have showed you that,” he says.

“A tour without my permission is bad enough. But how could you let her look at bodies? Especially his.”

“You saw the tape from when Lucy was spying on me.” He glowers at her. “Shandy wouldn't take no for an answer. She wouldn't get out of the cooler. I tried.”

“There's no excuse.”

“Spying. I'm sick of it.”

“Betrayal and disrespect. I'm sick of it,” Scarpetta says.

“I've been thinking of quitting anyway,” he goes on in a nasty tone. “If you stuck your nose in my e-mails from Dr. Self, you ought to know I got better opportunities than hanging out here with you for the rest of my life.”

“Quit? Or are you hoping I'll fire you? Because that's what you deserve after what you did. We don't give tours of the morgue and make a spectacle of the poor people who end up there.”

“Jesus, I hate the way women overreact to everything. Get so damn emotional and irrational. Go ahead. Fire me,” he says thickly, over-enunciating, the way people do when they try too hard to sound sober.

“This is exactly what Dr. Self wants to happen.”

“You're just jealous because she's a hell of a lot more important than you.”

“This isn't the Pete Marino I know.”

“You ain't the Dr. Scarpetta I know. Did you read what else she said about you?”

“She said quite a lot about me.”

“The lie you live. Why don't you finally admit to it? Maybe that's where Lucy got it. From you.”

“My sexual preference? Is that what you're so desperate to know?”

“You're afraid to admit it.”

“If what Dr. Self implied were true, I certainly wouldn't be afraid of it. It's people like her, people like you, who seem to be afraid of it.”

He leans back in his chair, and for an instant, he seems near tears. Then his face turns hard again as he stares at the fire.

“What you did yesterday,” she says, “isn't the Marino I've known all these years.”

“Maybe it is and you just never wanted to see it.”

“I know it isn't. What's happened to you?”

“I don't know how I got here,” he says. “I look back on it and see this guy who did good as a boxer for a while, but I didn't want to have mush for a brain. Got sick of being a uniform cop in New York. Married Doris, who got sick of me, had a sicko son who's dead, and I'm still chasing sicko assholes. I'm not sure why. Never have been able to figure out why you do what you do, either. You probably won't tell me.” Sullenly.

“Maybe because I grew up in a house where nobody talked to me in a way that conveyed anything I needed to hear or made me feel understood or important. Maybe because I watched my father die. Every day, that's all any of us watched. Maybe I've spent the rest of my life trying to understand the thing that defeated me as a child. Death. I don't think there are simple or even logical reasons for why we're who we are and do what we do.” She looks over at him, but he doesn't look at her. “Maybe there's no simple or even logical answer that explains your behavior. But I wish there were.”

“In the old days, I didn't work for you. That's what's changed.” He gets up. “I'm having a bourbon.”

“More bourbon isn't what you need,” she says, dismayed.

He isn't listening, and he knows his way to the bar. She hears him open a cabinet and get out a glass, then another cabinet and a bottle. He walks back into the room with a tumbler of liquor in one hand, the bottle in the other. An uneasiness starts in the pit of her stomach, and she wants him to leave but can't send him out in the middle of the night drunk.

He sets the bottle on the coffee table and says, “We got along pretty good all those years in Richmond when I was the top detective and you was the chief.” He lifts his glass. Marino doesn't sip. He takes big swallows. “Then you got fired and I quit. Since then, nothing's turned out the way I thought. I liked the hell out of Florida. We had a kick-ass training facility. Me in charge of investigations, good pay, even had my own celebrity shrink. Not that I need a shrink, but I lost weight, was in great shape. Was doing really good until I stopped seeing her.”