Four Scarpetta Novels (28 page)

“There must be calendars for cruises, for cargo ships. Is there an overlapping of those dates and when he sent e-mails to Dr. Self?”

“Yes and no. Some dates of a particular cruise ship—and I'm talking schedules for embarking and debarking—do correspond with date stamps on the e-mails he sent. But some don't. Which makes me fairly certain he has some reason to be in Charleston, possibly even lives there, and gets access to the port's network by perhaps parking very close to it and hijacking it.”

“Now you're leaving me,” Dr. Maroni says. “I live in a very old world.” He lights his pipe again, and one reason he enjoys a pipe is the pleasure of lighting it.

“Analogous to driving around with a scanner and monitoring people on cell phones,” Benton explains.

“I suppose this isn't Dr. Self's fault, either,” Dr. Maroni ruefully says. “This killer has been sending e-mails from Charleston since last fall, and she could have known it and told someone.”

“She could have told you, Paulo, when she referred the Sandman to you.”

“And she knows about this Charleston connection?”

“I told her. I hoped it might prompt her to recall something or divulge other information that might help us.”

“And what did she say when you told her that the Sandman has been e-mailing her from Charleston all this time?”

“She said it wasn't her fault,” Benton replies. “Then took her limousine to the airport and got on her private plane.”

A
pplause and music and Dr. Self's voice. Her website.

Scarpetta can't hide her extreme distress as she reads Lucy's bogus confessional article about her brain scans at McLean and why she has them and what it's like to live with it. Scarpetta reads the blogs until it's too much, and Lucy can't help but think her aunt's upset is easier than what she ought to be feeling.

“There's nothing I can do. What's done is done,” Lucy says as she scans partial fingerprints into a digital imaging system. “Even I can't un-send things, un-post things, un-anything. One way to look at it is once it's out there, I don't have to dread being outed because of it anymore.”

“Outed? That's a telling way to describe it.”

“By my definition, having a physical liability is worse than anything else I've been outed for. So maybe it's better to have people finally know and get it over with. Truth is a relief. Better not to hide something, don't you think? Funny thing about people knowing is it opens up the possibility of unexpected gifts. People reaching out when you didn't know they cared. Voices from the past talking to you again. Other voices finally shutting up. Some people finally getting out of your life.”

“Who are you referring to?”

“Let's just say I've not been surprised.”

“Gift or not. Dr. Self had no right,” Scarpetta says.

“You should listen to what you're saying.”

Scarpetta doesn't answer her.

“You want to consider how it might be your fault. You know, if I weren't the niece of the infamous Dr. Scarpetta, there wouldn't be the interest. You have this unrelenting need to make everything your fault and try to fix it,” Lucy says.

“I can't look at this anymore.” Scarpetta logs out.

“That's your flaw,” Lucy says. “One I have a hard time with, if you must know.”

“We need to find a lawyer who specializes in things like this. Internet libel. Defamation of character on the Internet, which is so unregulated, it's like a society with no laws.”

“Try proving I didn't write it. Try making a case for any of it. Don't focus on me because you don't want to focus on something about yourself. I've left you alone about it all morning, and now it's enough. I can't anymore.”

Scarpetta starts clearing off a countertop, putting things away.

“I sit here listening to you talk so calmly on the phone to Benton. To Dr. Maroni. How can you do it and not choke on denial and avoidance?”

Scarpetta runs water in a steel sink near an eyewash station. She scrubs her hands as if she's just done an autopsy instead of working inside a pristinely clean lab where nothing much goes on except photography. Lucy sees the bruises on her aunt's wrists. She can try all she likes, but she can't hide them.

“Are you going to protect that bastard for the rest of your life?” Lucy means Marino. “All right. Don't answer me. Maybe the biggest difference between him and me isn't what's obvious. I won't let Dr. Self drive me to doing anything fatal to myself.”

“Fatal? I hope not. I don't like it when you use that word.” Scarpetta busies herself with repackaging the gold coin and its chain. “What are you talking about? Something fatal.”

Lucy takes off her lab coat, hangs it on the back of the shut door. “I'm not going to give her the pleasure of goading me into something that can't be repaired. I'm not Marino.”

“We need to get these to DNA immediately.” Scarpetta tears off evidence tape to seal envelopes. “I'll hand them over directly to keep the chain of evidence intact, and maybe in thirty-six hours? Maybe less? If there are no unforeseen complications. I don't want the analysis to wait. I'm sure you understand why. If someone came to visit me with a gun.”

“I remember that time in Richmond. Christmas, and I was spending it with you, home from UVA, had brought a friend with me. He hit on her right in front of me.”

“Which time? He's done that more than once.” Scarpetta has an expression on her face that Lucy's never seen before.

Her aunt fills out paperwork, busies herself with one thing after another, anything so she doesn't have to look at her, because she can't. Lucy doesn't recall a time when her aunt seemed angry and shamed. Maybe angry but never shamed, and Lucy's bad feeling gets worse.

“Because he couldn't handle being around women he wanted desperately to impress, and worse than not being impressed, at least in the way he's always wanted, we had no interest in him except in a way he's never been able to handle,” Lucy says. “We wanted to relate to him as one person to another, and so what does he do? He tries to grope my girlfriend right in front of me. Of course, he was drunk.”

She gets up from the work station and walks over to the counter where her aunt is now preoccupied with removing color markers from a drawer and taking off their caps, testing each one to make sure the ink hasn't been used up or dried out.

“I didn't put up with it,” Lucy says. “I fought back. I was only eighteen and I called him on it, and he's lucky I didn't do something worse. Are you going to keep distracting yourself as if somehow that will make it go away?”

Lucy takes her aunt's hands and gently pushes up the sleeves. Her wrists are a bright red. Deep tissue damage, as if she's been clamped hard by iron manacles.

“Let's don't get into this,” Scarpetta says. “I know you care.” She pulls her wrists away, pulls down her sleeves. “But please leave me alone about it, Lucy.”

“What did he do to you?”

Scarpetta sits.

“You'd better tell me everything,” Lucy says. “I don't care what Dr. Self did to provoke him, and we both know it doesn't take much. He's gone too far, and there's no going back and there's no exception to the rule. I'll punish him.”

“Please. Let me deal with it.”

“You aren't, and you won't. You always make excuses for him.”

“I'm not. But punishing him isn't the answer. What good will it do?”

“What exactly happened?” Lucy is quiet and calm. But inside she goes numb, the way she gets when she's capable of anything. “He was at your house all night. What did he do? Nothing you wanted, that's for sure, or you wouldn't be bruised. You wouldn't want anything from him anyway, so he forced you, didn't he? He grabbed your wrists. What did he do? Your neck is raw. Where else? What did the son of a bitch do? All the trash he sleeps with, no telling what diseases…”

“It didn't go that far.”

“How far is
that
far? What did he do.” Lucy says it not as a question but as a point of fact that demands further explanation.

“He was drunk,” Scarpetta says. “Now we find out he's probably on a testosterone supplement that could make him very aggressive, depending on how much he's using, and he doesn't know the meaning of moderation. His excesses. Too much. Too much. You're right, his drinking this past week, and his smoking. He's never good with boundaries, but now there are none. Well, I suppose it's all been leading up to this.”

“All been leading up to this? After all these years, your relationship has been leading up to his sexually assaulting you?”

“I've never seen him like that. He was someone I didn't know. So aggressive and angry, completely out of control. Maybe we should be more worried about him than me.”

“Don't start.”

“Please try to understand.”

“I'll understand better when you tell me what he did.” Lucy's voice is flat, the way she sounds when she's capable of anything. “What did he do? The more you dodge it, the more I want to punish him, and the worse it will be when I do. And you know enough to take me seriously, Aunt Kay.”

“He went only so far then stopped and started crying,” Scarpetta says.

“How far is ‘only so far'?”

“I can't talk about this.”

“Really? And if you'd called the police? They'd demand details. You know how it goes. Violated once. Then violated again when you tell all and some cop starts imagining it happening, and secretly gets off on it. These perverts who go from courtroom to courtroom looking for rape cases so they can sit in the back and listen to all the details.”

“Why are you going off on this tangent? It has nothing to do with me.”

“What do you think would have happened had you called the police and Marino were charged with sexual battery? At the very least? You'd end up in court, and God knows what a spectator sport that would be. People listening to all the details, imagining all of it, as if, in a sense, you were undressed in public, viewed as a sexual object, degraded. The great Dr. Kay Scarpetta naked and manhandled for all the world to see.”

“It didn't go that far.”

“Really? Open your shirt. What are you hiding? I can see abrasions on your neck.” Lucy reaches for Scarpetta's shirt, starts on the top button.

Scarpetta pushes her hands away. “You're not a forensic nurse, and I've heard enough. Don't make me angry with you.”

Lucy's own anger begins to work its way to the surface. She feels it in her heart, in her feet, in her hands. “I'll take care of this,” she says.

“I don't want you to take care of it. Clearly, you've already broken into his house and searched it. I know how you take care of things, and I know how to take care of myself. What I don't need is some confrontation between the two of you.”

“What did he do? What exactly did that drunk, stupid son of a bitch do to you?”

Scarpetta is silent.

“He takes that garbage girlfriend on a tour of your building. Benton and I watch every second of it, can see as plain as day he has a hard-on in the morgue. No wonder. He's a walking hard-on doped up on some hormone gel so he can please that fucking bitch who's less than half his age. And then he does this to you.”

“Stop it.”

“I won't stop it. What did he do? He rip your clothes off? Where are they? They're evidence. Where are your clothes?”

“Stop it, Lucy.”

“Where are they? I want them. I want the clothes you had on. What did you do with them?”

“You're making it worse.”

“You threw them out, didn't you?”

“Leave it alone.”

“Sexual battery. A felony. And you aren't going to tell Benton or you would have already. And you weren't going to tell me. Rose had to tell me, at least tell me she suspected it. What's wrong with you? I thought you were a strong woman. I thought you were powerful. All my life I've thought it. There. The flaw. Someone who lets him do this and doesn't tell. Why did you let him?”

“And that's what this is about.”

“Why did you?”

“That's what this is about,” Scarpetta says. “Let's talk about your flaw.”

“Don't turn this on me.”

“I could have called the police. I was within reach of his gun and could have killed him and it would have been justified. There are a lot of things I could have done,” Scarpetta says.

“Then why didn't you?”

“I chose the lesser of evils. It will be all right. All other choices wouldn't have been,” Scarpetta says. “You know why you're doing this.”

“It's not what I'm doing. It's what you did.”

“Because of your mother—my pathetic sister. Bringing one man after another into the house. Worse than male-dependent. She's male-addicted,” Scarpetta says. “Do you remember what you asked me once? You asked why men were always more important than you.”

Lucy clenches her hands.

“You said any man in your mother's life was more important than you. And you were right. Remember my telling you why? Because Dorothy's an empty vessel. It's not about you. It's about her. You always felt violated because of what went on in your home…” Her voice trails off and a shadow turns her eyes a deeper blue. “Did something happen? Something else? Did one of her boyfriends ever act inappropriately with you?”

“I probably wanted attention.”

“What happened?”

“Forget it.”

“What happened, Lucy?” Scarpetta says.

“Forget it. This isn't about me right now. And I was a little kid. You aren't a little kid.”

“I may as well have been. How could I have fought him off?”

They get quiet for a while. The tension between them suddenly goes slack. Lucy doesn't want to fight with her anymore, and she resents Marino as much as she's resented anyone in her life because, for an instant, he made her unkind toward her aunt. She showed no mercy toward her aunt, who did nothing but suffer. He inflicted an injury that can't ever heal, not really, and Lucy just made it worse.

“That wasn't fair,” Lucy says. “I just wish I'd been there.”

“You can't always fix things, either,” Scarpetta says. “You and I are more alike than we're different.”

“Drew Martin's coach has been to Henry Hollings's funeral home,” Lucy says, because they shouldn't talk about Marino anymore. “The address is stored in his Porsche's GPS. I can check it out if you'd prefer to stay away from the coroner.”

“No,” she says. “I think it's time we meet.”

 

An office tastefully furnished with fine antiques and damask draperies pulled back to let the outdoors in. On mahogany-paneled walls are oil portraits of Henry Hollings's ancestors, an array of somber men watching over their past.

His desk chair is swiveled around as he faces the window. Beyond it is yet another perfectly splendid Charleston garden. He doesn't seem aware that Scarpetta is standing in the doorway.

“I have a recommendation I think you just might like.” He talks on the phone in a soothing voice with a thick southern cadence. “We have urns made just for that, an excellent innovation most people don't know about. Biodegradable, dissolve in water, nothing ornate or expensive…Yes, if you plan on a water committal…That's right…Scatter his ashes at sea…Indeed. You prevent them from blowing everywhere by simply immersing the urn. I understand it might not seem the same. Of course, you can choose whatever's meaningful to you, and I'll assist in any way I can…Yes, yes, it's what I recommend…No, you don't want them blowing everywhere. How do I put this delicately? Blowing in the boat. That would be unfortunate.”