Four Scarpetta Novels (20 page)

“Had you continued to see Dr. Self, she would have decimated your life. And I can't believe you don't realize that her communicating with you is nothing but manipulation. You know what she's like. You saw what she was like in court. You heard her.”

He takes another swallow of bourbon. “For once there's a woman more powerful than you, and you can't stand it. Maybe can't stand my relationship with her. So you got to bad-mouth her because what else can you do. You're stuck down here in no-man's-land and about to become a housewife.”

“Don't insult me. I don't want to fight with you.”

He drinks, and his meanness is wide awake now. “My relationship with her is maybe why you wanted us to move from Florida. I'm seeing it now.”

“I believe Hurricane Wilma is why we moved from Florida,” she says, as the feeling in her stomach gets worse. “That and my need to have a real office, a real practice, again.”

He drains his glass, pours more.

“You've had enough,” she says.

“You got that right.” He lifts his glass, takes another swallow.

“I think it's time I call a cab to take you home.”

“Maybe you should start a real practice somewhere else and get the hell out of here. You'd be better off.”

“You're not the judge of where I'd be better off,” she says, watching him carefully, firelight moving on his big face. “Please don't drink anymore. You've had enough.”

“I've had enough, all right.”

“Marino, please don't let Dr. Self drive a wedge between you and me.”

“I don't need her to do that. You done it on your own.”

“Let's don't do this.”

“Let's do.” Slurring, swaying a bit in his chair, a gleam in his eyes that's unnerving. “I don't know how many days I got left. Who the hell knows what's going to happen. So I don't intend to waste my time in a place I hate, working for someone who don't treat me with the respect I deserve. Like you're better than me. Well, you're not.”

“What do you mean by how many days you've got left? Are you telling me you're sick?” she says.

“Sick and tired. That's what I'm telling you.”

She's never seen him this drunk. He's swaying on his feet, pouring more bourbon, spilling it. Her impulse is to take the bottle away from him, but the look in his eyes stops her.

“You live alone and it ain't safe,” he says. “It's not safe, you're living here in this little old house alone.”

“I've always lived alone, more or less.”

“Yeah. What the fuck's that say about Benton? Hope you two have a nice life.”

She's never seen Marino this drunk and hateful, and she doesn't know what to do.

“I'm in a situation where I got to make choices. So now I'm gonna tell you the truth.” He spits as he talks, the glass of bourbon perilously tilted in his hand. “I'm bored as hell working for you.”

“If that's how you feel, I'm glad you're telling me.” But the more she tries to soothe him, the more inflamed he gets.

“Benton the rich snob.
Doctor
Wesley. So because I ain't a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief, I'm not good enough for you. Tell you one goddamn thing, I'm good enough for Shandy, and she's sure as hell not what you think. From a better family than yours. She didn't grow up poor in Miami with some blue-collar grocery store worker just off the boat.”

“You're very drunk. You can sleep in the guest room.”

“Your family's no better than mine. Just-off-the-boat Italians with nothing but cheap macaroni and tomato sauce to eat five nights a week,” he says.

“Let me get you a cab.”

He slams his glass down on the coffee table. “I think it's a real good idea for me to get on my horse and ride.” He grabs a chair to steady himself.

“You're not going anywhere near that motorcycle,” she says.

He starts walking, knocks against the door frame as she holds on to his arm. He almost drags her toward the front door as she tries to stop him, implores him not to go. He digs in a pocket for his motorcycle key and she snatches it out of his hand.

“Give me my key. I'm saying it real polite.”

She clenches it in her fist behind her back, in the small foyer at the front door. “You're not getting on your bike. You can hardly walk. You're taking a cab or staying here tonight. I'm not going to let you kill yourself or somebody else. Please listen to me.”

“Give it to me.” He stares at her with flat eyes, and he's a huge man she no longer knows, a stranger who might physically hurt her. “Give it to me.” He reaches behind her and grabs her wrist and she is shocked by fear.

“Marino, let go of me.” She struggles to free her arm, but it may as well be in a vise. “You're hurting me.”

He reaches around and grabs her other wrist, and fear turns to terror as he leans into her, his massive body pressing her against the wall. Her mind races with desperate thoughts of how to stop him before he goes any further.

“Marino, let go of me. You're hurting me. Let's go sit back down in the living room.” She tries to sound unafraid, her arms painfully pinned behind her. He presses hard against her. “Marino. Stop it. You don't mean this. You're very drunk.”

He kisses her and grabs her, and she turns her head away, tries to push his hands away, struggles and tells him no. The motorcycle key clatters to the floor as he kisses her and she resists him and tries to make him listen. He rips open her blouse. She tells him to stop, tries to stop him as he tears at her clothes. She tries to push away his hands, and tells him he's hurting her, and then she doesn't struggle with him anymore because he's somebody else. He isn't Marino. He's a stranger attacking her inside her house. She sees the pistol in the back of his jeans as he drops to his knees, hurting her with his hands and mouth.

“Marino? This is what you want? To rape me? Marino?” She sounds so calm and unafraid, her voice seems to come from outside her body. “Marino? Is this what you want? To rape me? I know you don't want that. I know you don't.”

He suddenly stops. He releases her, and the air moves and is cool on her skin, wet from his saliva and chafed and raw from his violence and his beard. He covers his face with his hands and hunches forward on his knees and hugs her around her legs and begins to sob like a child. She slides the pistol out of his waistband as he cries.

“Let go.” She tries to move away from him. “Let me go.”

On his knees, he covers his face with his hands. She drops out the pistol's magazine and pulls back the slide to make sure there isn't a round in the chamber. She tucks the gun in the drawer of a table by the door and picks up the motorcycle key. She hides it and the magazine inside the umbrella stand. She helps Marino up, helps him back to the guest bedroom off the kitchen. The bed is small, and he seems to fill every inch of it as she makes him lie down. She pulls off his boots and covers him with a quilt.

“I'll be right back,” she says, leaving the light on.

In the guest bath, she fills a glass with water and shakes four Advil tablets from the bottle. She covers herself with a robe, her wrists aching, her flesh raw and burning, the memory of his hands and mouth and tongue sickening. She bends over the toilet and gags. She leans against the edge of the sink and takes deep breaths and looks at her red face in the mirror and seems as much a stranger to herself as he is. She splashes herself with cold water, washes out her mouth, washes him away from every place he touched. She washes away tears, and it takes a few minutes to get control of herself. She returns to the guest room where he's snoring.

“Marino. Wake up. Sit up.” She helps him, plumps pillows behind him. “Here, take these and drink the entire glass of water. You need to drink a lot of water. You're going to feel like hell in the morning, but this will help.”

He drinks the water and takes the Advil, then turns his face to the wall as she brings him another glass. “Turn off the light,” he says to the wall.

“I need you to stay awake.”

He doesn't answer her.

“You don't have to look at me. But you must stay awake.”

He doesn't look at her. He stinks like whisky and cigarettes and sweat, and the smell of him reminds her and she feels her soreness, feels where he has been and is nauseated again.

“Don't worry,” he says thickly. “I'll leave and you won't ever have to see me. I'll vanish for good.”

“You're very, very drunk and don't know what you're doing,” she says. “But I want you to remember it. You need to stay awake long enough so you'll remember this tomorrow. So we can get past it.”

“I don't know what's wrong with me. I almost shot him. I wanted to so bad. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“Who did you almost shoot?” she says.

“At the bar,” he says in his drunken gabble. “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“Tell me what happened at the bar.”

Silence as he stares at the wall, his breathing heavy again.

“Who did you almost shoot?” she asks loudly.

“He said he'd been sent.”

“Sent?”

“Made threats about you. I almost shot him. Then I come over here and acted just like him. I should kill myself.”

“You're not going to kill yourself.”

“I should.”

“That will be worse than what you just did. Do you understand me?”

He doesn't answer. He doesn't look at her.

“If you kill yourself, I won't feel sorry for you and I won't forgive you,” she says. “Killing yourself is selfish, and none of us will forgive you.”

“I'm not good enough for you. I never will be. Go on and say it and get it over with once and for all.” He talks as if he has rags in his mouth.

The phone on the bedside table rings, and she picks it up.

“It's me,” Benton says. “You saw what I sent? How are you?”

“Yes, and you?”

“Kay? Are you all right?”

“Yes, and you?”

“Christ. Is someone there?” he says, alarmed.

“Everything's fine.”

“Kay? Is someone there?”

“We'll talk tomorrow. I've decided to stay home, work in the garden, ask Bull to come over and help.”

“You're sure? You sure you're okay with him?”

“I am now,” she says.

 

Four o'clock in the morning, Hilton Head. Crashing waves spread white foam on the beach as if the heaving sea is frothing at the mouth.

Will Rambo is quiet on the wooden steps, and he walks the length of the boardwalk and climbs over the locked gate. The faux-Italianate villa is stucco with multiple chimneys and archways, and a sharply pitched red barrel-tile roof. In the back are copper lights, and a stone table with a clutter of filthy ashtrays and empty glasses, and not so long ago, her car key. Since then, she has used the spare, although she drives infrequently. Mostly, she goes nowhere, and he is silent as he moves about, and palmetto trees and pines sway in the wind.

Trees waving like wands, casting their spell over Rome, and flower petals blowing like snow along Via D'Monte Tarpeo. Poppies were blood-red, and wisteria draped over ancient brick walls was purple like bruises. Pigeons bobbed along steps, and women fed feral cats Whiskas and eggs from plastic plates among the ruins.

It was a fine day for walking, and the tourist traffic wasn't heavy, and she was a little drunk but at ease with him, happy with him. He knew she would be.

“I would like you to meet my father,” he said to her as they sat on a wall and looked at feral cats, and she remarked repeatedly that they were pitiful stray cats, inbred and deformed, and someone should save them.

“Not stray but feral. There's a difference. These feral cats want to be here and would rip you apart if you tried to rescue them. They aren't something discarded or hurt with nothing to look forward to but darting from garbage can to garbage can and hiding under houses until someone catches them and puts them to sleep.”

“Why would someone put them to sleep?” she asked.

“Because they would. That's what would happen once they're removed from their haven and end up in unsafe places where they are hit by cars and chased by dogs and constantly endangered and wounded beyond repair. Unlike these cats. Look at them, all alone, and no one dares go near them unless they allow it. They want to be exactly where they are, down there in the ruins.”

“You're weird,” she said, nudging him. “I thought so when we met, but you're cute.”

“Come on,” he said, and he helped her up.

“I'm too warm,” she complained, because he had draped his long, black coat around her and made her wear a cap and his dark glasses, even though the day wasn't cold or sunny.

“You're very famous, and people will stare,” he reminded her. “You know they will, and we can't have people staring.”

“I need to find my friends before they think I've been kidnapped.”

“Come on. You must see the apartment. It's quite spectacular. I'll drive you there because I can tell you're tired, and you can call your friends and invite them to join us, if you like. We'll have some very fine wine and cheeses.”

Then darkness, as if a light went out in his head, and he woke up to scenes in brilliant broken pieces, like brilliant broken pieces of a shattered stained-glass window that once told a story or a truth.

The stairs on the north side of the house haven't been swept, and the door leading into the laundry room hasn't been opened since the housekeeper was here last, almost two months ago. On either side of the stairs are hibiscus bushes, and behind them through a pane of glass he can see the alarm panel and its red light. He opens his tackle box and withdraws a saddle-grip glass cutter with a carbide tip. He cuts out a pane of glass and sets it on the sandy dirt behind the bushes as the puppy inside his crate begins to bay, and Will hesitates, quite calm. He reaches inside and unlocks the deadbolt, then opens the door and the alarm begins to beep, and he enters the code to silence it.