Four Scarpetta Novels (22 page)

“She moved the couch. I was supposed to do it,” he says, his dark glasses staring at the couch.

Rose stirs as a siren sounds in the distance. Scarpetta takes a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope from her medical bag.

“I promised to come over and move it,” Marino says. “She moved it by herself. It was over there.” His dark glasses look at an empty space near a window.

Scarpetta pushes up Rose's sleeve, slides the stethoscope on her arm, wraps the cuff just above the bend in the arm, tight enough to stop blood flow.

The siren is very loud.

She squeezes the bulb, inflates the cuff, then opens the valve to release the air slowly as she listens to the blood beating its way along the artery. Air hisses quietly as the cuff deflates.

The siren stops. The ambulance is here.

Systolic pressure eighty-six. Diastolic pressure fifty-eight. She moves the diaphragm over Rose's chest and back. Respiration is depressed, and she's hypotensive.

Rose stirs, moves her head.

“Rose?” Scarpetta says loudly. “Can you hear me?”

Her eye lids flutter open.

“I'm going to take your temperature.” She places a digital thermometer under Rose's tongue and in seconds it beeps. Temperature ninety-nine-point-one. She holds up the bottle of pills. “How many did you take?” she asks. “How much wine did you drink?”

“It's just the flu.”

“You move the couch yourself?” Marino asks her, as if it matters.

She nods. “Overdid it. That's all.”

Rapid footsteps and the clatter of paramedics and a stretcher in the hallway.

“No,” she protests. “Send them away.”

Two EMTs in blue jumpsuits fill the doorway and push the stretcher inside. On top of it is a defibrillator and other equipment.

Rose shakes her head. “No. I'm all right. I'm not going to the hospital.”

Ed appears in the doorway, worried, looking in.

“What's the problem, ma'am?” One of the EMTs, blond with pale blue eyes, comes over to the couch and looks closely at Rose. He looks closely at Scarpetta.

“No.” Rose is adamant, waving them off. “I mean it! Please go away. I fainted. That's all.”

“That's not all,” Marino says to her, but his dark glasses are staring at the blond EMT. “I had to bust the damn door down.”

“And you better fix it before you leave,” Rose mutters.

Scarpetta introduces herself. She explains that it seems Rose mixed alcohol with oxycodone, was unconscious when they got here.

“Ma'am?” The blond EMT leans closer to Rose. “How much alcohol and oxycodone did you have, and when did you take it?”

“One more than usual. Three tablets. And just a little bit of wine. Half a glass.”

“Ma'am, it's very important you're honest with me about this.”

Scarpetta hands him the prescription bottle and says to Rose, “One tablet every four to six hours. You took two more than that. And you're on a high dose already. I want you to go to the hospital just to make sure everything's all right.”

“No.”

“Did you crush them or chew them or swallow them whole?” Scarpetta asks, because when the tablets are crushed, they dissolve more quickly and the oxycodone is more rapidly released and absorbed.

“I swallowed them whole, just like I always do. My knees were aching something awful.” She looks at Marino. “I shouldn't have moved the couch.”

“If you won't go with these nice EMTs, I'll take you,” Scarpetta says, aware of the blond EMT's stare.

“No.” Rose adamantly shakes her head.

Marino watches the blond EMT watch Scarpetta. Marino doesn't protectively move close to her as he would have done in the past. She doesn't address the most disturbing question—why Rose is on Roxicodone.

“I'm not going to the hospital,” Rose says. “I'm not. I mean it.”

“It looks like we're not going to need you,” Scarpetta says to the EMTs. “But thanks.”

“I heard you lecture a few months back,” the blond EMT says to her. “The child fatality session at the National Forensic Academy. You lectured.”

His name tag reads
T. Turkington.
She has no recollection of him.

“What the hell were you doing there?” Marino asks him. “The NFA's for cops.”

“I'm an investigator for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Department. They sent me to the NFA. I'm a graduate.”

“Now, ain't that strange,” Marino says. “Then what the hell are you doing here in Charleston, riding around in an ambulance?”

“My days off, I work as an EMT.”

“This ain't Beaufort County.”

“Can use the extra pay. Emergency medicine's good supplemental training for my real job. I have a girlfriend here. Or did.” Turkington is easygoing about it. To Scarpetta, he says, “If you're sure everything's all right in here, we'll be on our way.”

“Thanks. I'll keep my eye on her,” Scarpetta replies.

“Nice to see you again, by the way.” His blue eyes fix on her, and then he and his partner are gone.

Scarpetta says to Rose, “I'm taking you to the hospital to make sure nothing else is wrong.”

“You're not taking me anywhere,” she says. “Would you please go find me a new door?” she says to Marino. “Or a new lock or whatever it takes to fix the mess you made.”

“You can use my car,” Scarpetta says, tossing him the keys. “I'll walk home.”

“I need to get into your house.”

“It will have to wait until later,” she says.

 

The sun slips in and out of smoky clouds, and the sea heaves against the shore.

Ashley Dooley, a South Carolinian born and bred, has taken off his Windbreaker and tied the sleeves around his big belly. He points his brand-new camcorder at his wife, Madelisa, then stops filming when a black-and-white basset hound appears from the sea oats on the dune. The dog trots to Madelisa, his droopy ears dragging in the sand. He presses against her legs, panting.

“Oh, look, Ashley!” She squats and pets him. “Poor baby, he's shaking. What's the matter, honey? Don't be scared. He's still a puppy.”

Dogs love her. They seek her out. She's never had a single dog growl at her or do anything but love her. Last year, they had to put Frisbee to sleep when he got cancer. Madelisa hasn't gotten over it, won't forgive Ashley for refusing treatment because of the expense.

“Move over there,” Ashley says. “You can have the dog in the film if you want. I'll get all these fancy houses in the background. Holy shit, look at that one. Like something you'd see in Europe. Who the hell needs something that big?”

“I wish we could go to Europe.”

“I tell you, this camcorder's something.”

Madelisa can't stand to hear about it. Somehow he could afford thirteen hundred dollars for a camcorder but couldn't spare a dime for Frisbee.

“Look at it. All those balconies and a red roof,” he's saying. “Imagine living in something like that.”

If we lived in something like that,
she thinks,
I wouldn't mind you buying fancy camcorders and a plasma-screen TV, and we could have afforded Frisbee's vet bills.
“I can't imagine,” she says, posing in front of the dune. The basset hound sits on her foot, panting.

“I hear there's a thirty-million-dollar one down that way.” He points. “Smile. That's not a smile. A big smile. Think it's owned by someone famous, maybe the man who started Wal-Mart. Why's that dog panting so much? It's not that hot out here. And he's shivering, too. Maybe he's sick, could have rabies.”

“No, pumpkin, he's shaking like he's scared. Maybe he's thirsty. I told you to bring a bottle of water. The man who started Wal-Mart's dead,” she adds, as she pets the basset hound and scans the beach, doesn't notice anybody nearby, just a few people in the distance, fishing. “I think he's lost,” she says. “I don't see anybody around who might be his owner.”

“We'll look for it, get some footage.”

“Look for what?” she asks, the dog pressed against her legs, panting, shaking. She checks him, noting he needs a bath and his claws need clipping. Then something else. “Oh, my goodness. I think he's hurt.” She touches the top of the dog's neck, looks at blood on her finger, begins parting his fur, looking for a wound, not finding one. “Now, that's strange. How'd he get blood on him? There's some more of it, too. But it doesn't look like he's hurt. Now that's just yucky.”

She wipes her fingers on her shorts.

“Maybe there's a carcass of a chewed-up cat somewhere.” Ashley hates cats. “Let's keep walking. We've got our tennis clinic at two and I'm gonna need some lunch first. We got any of that honey-baked ham left?”

She looks back. The basset hound sits in the sand, panting, staring at them.

 

“I know you have a spare key in that little box you bury in your garden under that pile of bricks behind the bushes,” Rose says.

“He's hung over as hell, and I don't want him riding his motorcycle with a damn forty-caliber pistol jammed in the back of his jeans,” Scarpetta says.

“How did it end up at your house to begin with? How did he end up there, for that matter?”

“I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about you.”

“Why don't you get off the couch and pull up a chair. It's hard for me to talk when you're practically sitting on top of me,” Rose says.

Scarpetta carries over a dining room chair, sets it down, and says, “Your medication.”

“I haven't been stealing pills from the morgue, if that's what you're implying. All those pitiful people who come in with dozens of prescription bottles, because why? Because they don't take them. Pills don't fix a damn thing. If they did, those people wouldn't end up in the morgue.”

“Your bottle has your name on it and the name of your physician. Now, I can look him up or you can tell me what kind of doctor he is and why you're seeing him.”

“An oncologist.”

Scarpetta feels as if she's been kicked in the chest.

“Please. Don't make this harder for me,” Rose says. “I was hoping you wouldn't find out until it was time to pick out an acceptable urn for my ashes. I know I did something I shouldn't.” She catches her breath. “Was in such a state, got so upset, and was aching all over.”

Scarpetta takes her hand. “Funny how we get ambushed by our feelings. You've been stoical. Or dare I use the word
stubborn
? Now today you have to reckon with it.”

“I'm going to die,” Rose says. “I hate doing this to everyone.”

“What kind of cancer?” Holding Rose's hand.

“Lung. Before you start thinking it's from all that secondary smoke I was exposed to in the early days when you puffed away in your office…” Rose starts to say.

“I wish I hadn't. I can't tell you how much I wish that.”

“What's killing me has nothing to do with you,” Rose says. “I promise. I come by it honestly.”

“Non–small cell or small cell?”

“Non–small.”

“Adenocarcinoma, squamous?”

“Adenocarcinoma. Same thing my aunt died from. Like me, she never smoked. Her grandfather died of squamous. He did smoke. I never in a million years imagined I'd get lung cancer. But then it's never occurred to me I'd die. Isn't it ridiculous.” She sighs, the color slowly returning to her face, the light to her eyes. “We look at death every day and it doesn't change our denial about it. You're right, Dr. Scarpetta. I guess today it hit me from behind. I never saw it coming.”

“Maybe it's about time you call me Kay.”

She shakes her head.

“Why not? Aren't we friends?”

Rose says, “We've always believed in boundaries, and they've served us well. I work for someone I'm honored to know. Her name is Dr. Scarpetta. Or Chief.” She smiles. “I could never call her Kay.”

“So now you're depersonalizing me. Unless you're talking about someone else.”

“She's someone else. Someone you really don't know. I think you have a much lower opinion of her than I do. Especially these days.”

“Sorry, I'm not this heroic woman you just described, but let me help what little I can—get you to the best cancer center in the country. Stanford Cancer Center. Where Lucy goes. I'll take you. We'll get you any treatment you…”

“No, no, no.” Rose shakes her head again slowly, side to side. “Now be quiet and listen to me. I've consulted all sorts of specialists. Do you remember last summer I went on a three-week cruise? A lie. The only cruise I went on was from one specialist to another, and then Lucy took me to Stanford, which is where I got my doctor. The prognosis is the same. My only choice was chemo and radiation, and I refused.”

“We should try anything we possibly can.”

“I'm already in stage three-B.”

“It's spread to the lymph nodes?”

“Lymph nodes. And bone. Well on its way to being stage four. Surgery's impossible.”

“Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or even just radiation therapy by itself. We've got to try. We can't just give up like this.”

“In the first place, there's no
we
. It's
me
. And no. I won't put myself through it. I'll be damned if I'm going to have all my hair fall out and be sick and miserable when I know this disease is going to kill me. Sooner rather than later. Lucy even said she would get me marijuana so the chemo wouldn't make me as sick. Imagine me smoking pot.”

“Obviously, she's known about this for as long as you have,” Scarpetta says.

Rose nods.

“You should have told me.”

“I told Lucy, and she's a master of secrets, has so many I'm not sure any of us know what's really true. What I didn't want is this very thing. To make you feel bad.”