Black notice (18 page)

"How can you be so sure, Kay, if you've been distracted, as you put it? Most people wouldn't even have returned to work for a while-if ever--after what you've suffered. When did you go back to work?"

"Sinclair, we all have our ways of coping."

"Let me answer my own question for you;" he went on. "Ten days. And not a very happy environment to return to, I might add. Tragedy, death."

I didn't say anything as I fought for composure. I had been in a dark cave and scarcely remembered scattering Benton's ashes out to sea in Hilton Head, the place he loved most. I scarcely remembered clearing out his condo there, then attacking his drawers and closets at my house. At a maniacal speed, I removed everything right then that would have had to go eventually.

Had it not been for Dr. Anna Zenner, I couldn't have survived. She was an older woman, a psychiatrist who had been my friend for years. I had no idea what she did with Benton's fine suits and ties and polished leather shoes and colognes. I didn't want to know what happened to his BMW Most of all, I couldn't bear to know what had been done with the linens that had been in our bathroom and on our bed.

Anna had been wise enough to keep all belongings that mattered. She didn't touch his books or jewelry. She left his certificates and commendations hanging on the walls of his study, where nobody would see them, because he was so modest. She wouldn't let me remove the photographs arranged everywhere because she said it was important for me to live with them.

"You must live with the memory," she told me repeatedly in her heavy German accent. "It is still present, Kay. You cannot run away from it. Don't try."

"On a scale of ten, how depressed are you, Kay?" Dr. Wagner's voice sounded somewhere in the background.

I was still hurt and unable to accept that Lucy had never shown up once during all of this. Benton left me his condo in his will, and Lucy was furious with me for selling it, although she knew as well as I did that neither of us could ever pass through its rooms again. When I tried to give her his much-loved, scarred, scuffed bomber jacket he had worn in college, she said she didn't want it, that she would give it to someone else. I knew she never did. I knew she hid it somewhere.

"There's no shame in admitting it. I think it's hard for you to admit you're human," Dr. Wagner's voice surfaced.

My eyes cleared.

"Have you thought of going on an antidepressant?" Dr. Wagner asked me. "Something mild like Wellbutrin."

I paused before I said anything.

"In the first place, Sinclair," I said, "situational depression is normal. I don't need a pill to magically take away -my grief. I may be stoical. I may find it difficult to show my emotions around others, to show my deepest feelings, and yes, it's easier .for me to fight and get angry and overachieve than to feel pain. But I'm not wrapped tight in denial. I've got sense enough to know that grief has to run its course. And this isn't easy when those you trust begin to chip away at what little you have left in your life."

"You just switched from first person to second person," he pointed out. "I'm just wondering if you're aware . . :'

"Don't dissect me, Sinclair."

"Kay, let me paint for you the portrait of tragedy, of violence, that those untouched by it never see," he said. "It has a life of its own. It continues its rampage, although with more stealth and with less visible wounds as time moves on."

"I see the portrait of tragedy every day," I said.

"What about when you look in the mirror?" he asked.

"Sinclair, it's terrible enough to suffer loss, but to compound that with everyone looking askance at you and doubting your abilities to function anymore is to be kicked and degraded while you're supposedly down."

He held my gaze. I had just switched to second person again, to that safer place, and I saw it in his eyes.

"Cruelty thrives on what it perceives as weakness," I went on.

I knew what evil was. I could smell it and recognize its features when it was in my midst.

"Someone seized what happened to me as the longawaited-for opportunity to destroy me," I concluded.

"And you don't think this is perhaps a little paranoid?" he finally spoke.

"No:'

"Why would someone do that, besides being petty and jealous?" he inquired.

"Power. To steal my fire."

"An interesting analogy," he said. "Tell me what you mean by that."

"I use my power for good," I explained. "And whoever is trying to hurt me wants to appropriate my power for his own selfish use, and you don't want power in the hands of people like that."

"I agree;" he thoughtfully said.

His phone buzzed. He got up and answered it.

"Not now," he said over the line. "I know. He's just going to have to wait"

He returned to his chair and blew out a long breath, took his glasses off and set them on the coffee table.

"I think the best thing to do is send out a press release informing people that someone is impersonating you on the Internet, to do what we can to clear this up as much as possible," he said. "We'll put an end to it, even if it requires a court order."

"That would make me very happy," I said.

He got up and I did, too.

' "Thank you, Sinclair. Thank God I have a shield like you:'

"We'll just hope the new secretary will be the same," he remarked as if I knew what he was talking about.

"What new secretary?" I asked as anxiety hummed again, this time more loudly.

A strange expression passed over his face. Then he looked angry.

"I've sent you several memos marked private and confidential. Goddamn it! Now this is going too far."

"I've gotten nothing from you," I said.

He pressed his lips together, his cheeks turning red. It was one thing to tamper with e-mail; it was another to intercept the secretary's scaled, classified memorandums. Not even Rose opened anything like that.

"Apparently the Governor's Crime Commission's gotten stuck on the notion that we should transfer your office out of Health and into Public Safety," he told me.

"For God's sake, Sinclair," I exclaimed.

"I know, I know." He raised his hand to quiet me.

This same ignorant proposal had come up shortly after I'd been hired. The police and forensic labs were under Public Safety, meaning, among other things, that if my office fell under Public Safety, too, there would be no checks and balances anymore. The police department, in essence, would have a say-so in how I worked my cases.

"I've written position papers on this before," I told Dr. Wagner. "Years ago, I fought it off by preaching to prosecutors and police chiefs. I even went to the defense attorneys' bar. We can't let this happen."

Dr. Wagner said nothing.

"Why now?" I persisted. "Why has this just come up now? The issue's been dormant for more than ten years."

"I think Representative Connors is pushing it because some of the higher-ups in law enforcement are pushing him," he said. "Who the hell knows."

I did, and as I drove toward my office, I got energized. I thrived on unanswered questions, on excavating for what wasn't plain to see, on getting to the truth. What detractors like Chuck Ruffin and Diane Bray had not factored into their machinations was that they'd served to wake me up.

A scenario was materializing in my mind. It was very simple. Someone wanted me shot out of the air so my office would be vulnerable to a takeover by Public Safety. I had heard rumblings that the current secretary, whom I liked very much, was reti 'fit . Wouldn't it be a coincidence if Bray just happened to take his place.

When I reached my office, I smiled at Rose and bid her a cheery good morning.

"Aren't we in a good mood today!" she said, enormously pleased.

"It's your vegetable soup," I commented. "I have it to look forward to. Where's Chuck?"

lust his name gave Rose a sour look.

"Off delivering several brains to MCV," she replied.

Now and then when cases were neurologically suspicious and complicated, I would fix the brain in formalin and have it delivered to the neuropathology lab for special studies.

"Let me know when he comes back;" I told her. "We need to set up the Luma-Lite in the decomposed room."

She placed her elbow on her desk, chin in her hand and shook her head, eyes on me.

"I hate to be the one who tells you this;" she said.

"Oh God, now what? Just when I thought it might be a good day."

"The Institute's doing a mock crime scene and it appears their Luma-Lite is in for repairs."

"Don't tell me."

"Well, all I know is someone called here and Chuck took our Luma-Lite to them before he left for MCV"

"Then I'll just go get it back."

"It's at an outdoor mock scene some ten miles away."

"Who gave Chuck the authority to lend it to anyone?" I asked.

"Just be glad it isn't stolen like half of everything else around here," she said.

"I guess I'll just have to go upstairs and do the examination in Vander's lab," I said.

I walked into my office and sat down at my desk. I took my glasses off and massaged the bridge of my nose. I decided the time had come to set up a rendezvous between Bray and Chuck. I signed on to Ruffin's address and e-mailed a note to Bray.

Chief Bray Have some information you must know. Please meet me at Beverly Hills Shopping Center at 5:30. Park on back row near Buckhead's. We can talk in your car so nobody sees us. If you can't meet me, page me. Otherwise I'll see you then.

Chuck Then I sent him a text message page, purportedly from Bray, inviting him to the meeting.

"Done," I said, yielding to self-congratulation just as the phone rang.

"Yo," Marino said. "Your personal investigator here. What'cha doing after work?"

"More work. Remember I said two can play this game? You're taking me to Buckhead's. We wouldn't want to miss a little rendezvous between two people near and dear to our hearts, would we? So I thought it might be nice if you took me out to dinner and we just happened to run into them," I said.

Marino met me in the parking lot as planned and we got in his monster Dodge Ram Quad Cab pickup truck because I didn't want to take the chance that Bray might recognize my Mercedes. It was dark and frigid out but the rain had stopped. I was riding so high I could almost look transfer truckers in the eye.

We followed Patterson Avenue toward Parham Road, a major thoroughfare in the city where people ate out and shopped and swarmed inside Regency Mall.

"I gotta warn you there ain't always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," he said, throwing a cigarette butt out the window. "One or both of them might decide not to show. Hell, they may be on to us for all I know. But, gotta give it a shot, right?"

The Beverly Hills Shopping Center was a small strip of salons and a Ben Franklin Crafts & Frames store. The location was not at all where one might expect to find the city's finest chophouse.

"Don't see no sign of them," Marino said as we scanned. "But we're a few minutes early."

He parked some distance away from the restaurant, between two cars in front of Ben Franklin, and cut the engine. I opened my door.

"Just where do you think you're going?" he protested.

"Inside the restaurant."

"What if they roll up any minute and see you?"

"I have every right to be here."

"What if she's in there at the bar?" he worried. "What are you going to say to her?"

"I'11 offer to buy her a drink and then come out and get you."

"Christ, Doc." Marino was getting increasingly adamant. "I thought the whole point of this is to burn her."

"Relax and let me do the talking."

"Relax? I want to break the bitch's neck," he said.

"We have to be smart. We walk out from behind a bunker and start firing, we might just get hit first."

"You telling me you ain't going to tell her to her face you know what she's done? The e-mail to Chuck and everything?"

He was incredulous and furious and kept repeating himself.

"Then what the hell are we doing here?" he went on.

"Marino," I tried to calm him down. "You know better than this. You're an experienced detective, and that's what you have to be with her. She's formidable. I'm going to tell you right now you'll never muscle this woman into a corner."

He was silent.

"Keep a lookout from your truck while I check the inside of the restaurant.. If you spot her before I do, send me a tenfour on my pager and call the restaurant asking for me, just in case I don't get the page for some reason," I said.

He angrily lit a cigarette as I opened my door.

"It ain't fucking fair," he said. "We know fucking well what she's doing. I still say we confront her and show her she ain't as smart as she thinks."

"You, of all people, know about building cases;" I reiterated. I was getting worried that he wouldn't be able to control himself.