Five Scarpetta Novels (81 page)

“I can get you a chair if you want,” she said.

“No, this is fine.”

The floor was hard and unkind to my lower lumbar spine. But I was a good sport. A prompt asked her to enter a word or words or phrases that she wished the system to search for throughout the database.

“Don't worry about the format,” Lucy said. “The text search engines can handle complete stream of consciousness. We can try everything from the size of the fire hose used to the materials the house was made of—all that fire safety info and stuff that's in your set forms fire departments fill out. Or you can go with your own key queries.”

“Let's try
death, homicide, suspected arson,”
I said.

“Female,”
Marino added. “And
wealth.”

“Cut, incision, hemorrhage, fast, hot,”
I continued thinking.

“What about
unidentified,”
Lucy said as she typed.

“Good,” I said. “And
bathroom,
I suppose.”

“Hell, put
horses
in there,” Marino said.

“Let's go ahead and give it a shot,” Lucy proposed. “We can always try more words as we think of them.”

She executed a search and then stretched her legs out and rolled her neck. I could hear Janet in the kitchen washing dishes, and in less than a minute, the computer came back with 11,873 records searched and 453 keywords found.

“That's since 1988,” Lucy let us know. “And it also includes any cases from overseas in which ATF was called in to assist.”

“Can we print out the four hundred and fifty-three records?” I asked.

“You know, the printer's packed, Aunt Kay.” Lucy looked up apologetically at me.

“Then how about downloading the records to my computer,” I said.

She looked uncertain.

“I guess that's all right,” she said, “as long as you make sure . . . Oh, never mind.”

“Don't worry, I'm used to confidential information. I'll make sure no one else gets hold of them.”

I knew it was stupid when I said it. Lucy stared longingly into the computer screen.

“This whole thing's UNIX-based SQL.” She seemed to be talking to no one. “Makes me crazy.”

“Well, if they had a brain in their head, they'd have you here doing their computer shit,” Marino said.

“I haven't made an issue of it,” Lucy replied. “I'm
trying to pay my dues. I'll ship those files to you, Aunt Kay.”

She walked out of the room. We followed her into the kitchen, where Janet was rolling glasses in newspaper and carefully packing them into a Stor-All box.

“Before I head out,” I said to my niece, “could we maybe go for a walk around the block or something? And just catch up?”

She gave me a look that was something less than trustful.

“What?” she said.

“I may not see you again for a while,” I said.

“We can sit out on the porch.”

“That would be fine.”

We chose white plastic chairs in the open air above the street, and I shut the sliders behind us and watched crowds come alive at night. Taxis were not stopping, and the fireplace in the window of The Flame danced behind glass while men drank in the dark with each other.

“I just want to know how you are,” I said to her. “I don't feel like you talk to me much.”

“Ditto.”

She stared out with a wry smile, her profile striking and strong.

“I'm all right, Lucy. As all right as I ever am, I guess. Too much work. What else has changed?”

“You always worry about me.”

“I have since you were born.”

“Why?”

“Because somebody should.”

“Did I tell you Mother's getting a facelift?”

Just the thought of my only sibling made my heart turn hard.

“She had half her teeth crowned last year, now this,” Lucy went on. “Her current boyfriend, Bo, has hung in there for almost a year and a half.
How 'bout that?
How many times can you screw before you need something else nipped and tucked?”

“Lucy.”

“Oh, don't be self-righteous, Aunt Kay. You feel the same way about her that I do. How did I end up with such a piece of shit for a mother?”

“This isn't helping you in the least,” I quietly said. “Don't hate her, Lucy.”

“She hasn't said one fucking word about my moving to Philadelphia. She never asks about Janet, or you, for that matter. I'm getting a beer. Do you want one?”

“Help yourself.”

I waited for her in the growing dark, watching the shapes of people flow by, some loud and holding on to each other, while others moved with purpose alone. I wanted to ask Lucy about what Janet had told me, but I was afraid to bring it up. Lucy should tell me on her own, I reminded myself, as my physician's voice ordered that I should take control. Lucy popped open a bottle of Miller Lite as she returned to the balcony.

“So let's talk about Carrie just long enough for you to put your mind at ease,” Lucy matter-of-factly stated, taking a swallow. “I have a Browning High-Power, and my Sig from ATF, and a shotgun—twelve gauge, seven rounds. You name it, I can get it. But you know? I think my bare hands would be enough if she dared to come around. I've had enough, you know?”

She lifted the bottle again. “Eventually you just make a decision and move on.”

“What sort of decision?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“You decide you can't give someone any more power than you already have. You can't spend your days in fear of them or hating them,” she explained her mindset. “So you give it up, in a sense. You go about your business, knowing that if the monster ever steps into your path, she'd better be ready for life or death.”

“I think that's a pretty good attitude,” I said. “Maybe the only attitude. I'm just not sure you really feel that way, but I hope so.”

She stared up at an irregular moon, and I thought she was blinking back tears, but I couldn't be sure.

“The truth is, Aunt Kay, I could do all their computer stuff with one arm. You know?”

“You could probably do all the Pentagon's computer stuff with one arm,” I gently said as my heart hurt more.

“I just don't want to push it.”

I did not know how to answer her.

“I pissed off enough people because I can fly a helicopter and . . . Well, you know.”

“I know all the things you can do, and that the list will probably only grow longer, Lucy. It's very lonely being you.”

“Have you ever felt like that?” she whispered.

“Only all my life,” I whispered back. “And now you know why I've always loved you the way I do. Maybe I get it.”

She looked over at me. She reached out and sweetly touched my wrist.

“You'd better go,” she said. “I don't want you driving when you're tired.”

I
T WAS ALMOST
midnight when I slowed at the guard booth in my neighborhood, and the security officer on duty stepped out to stop me. This was highly unusual, and I feared he would tell me that my burglar alarm had been going half the night or yet one more oddball had tried to drive through to see if I was at home. Marino had been dozing for the past hour and a half, and he came to as I rolled down my window.

“Good evening,” I said to the guard. “How are you doing, Tom?”

“I'm fine, Dr. Scarpetta,” he said, leaning close to my car. “But you've had a few unusual events within the past hour or so, and I figured something wasn't right when I kept trying to reach you and you weren't home.”

“What sort of events?” I asked as I began to imagine any number of threatening things.

“Two pizza delivery guys showed up at almost the same time. Then three taxis came to take you to the airport, one right after the other. And someone tried to deliver a construction Dumpster to your yard. When I couldn't get hold of you, I turned every one of them
around. They all said you had called them.”

“Well, I certainly did not,” I said with feeling as my bewilderment grew. “All this since when?”

“Well, I guess the truck with the Dumpster was here maybe around five this afternoon. Everything else since then.”

Tom was an old man who probably wouldn't have had a clue as to how to defend the neighborhood should true danger ever come around the bend. But he was courteous and considered himself a true officer of the law and in his mind was probably armed and experienced in combat. He was especially protective of me.

“Did you get the names of any of these guys who showed up?” Marino loudly asked from the passenger seat.

“Domino's and Pizza Hut.”

Tom's animated face was shadowed beneath the brim of his baseball cap.

“And the cabs were Colonial, Metro, and Yellow Cab. The construction company was Frick. Now I took the liberty to make a few calls. Every one of 'em had orders in your name, Dr. Scarpetta, including the times you called. I got it written down.”

Tom could not hide how pleased he was when he slipped a square of notepaper from a back pocket and handed it to me. His role had been more than the usual this night, and he was almost intoxicated by it. I turned on the interior light and Marino and I scanned the list. The taxi and pizza orders had been placed between ten-ten and eleven, while the Dumpster order had been placed earlier in the afternoon with instructions for a late afternoon delivery.

“I know at least Domino's said it was a woman who
called. I talked to the dispatcher myself. A young kid. According to him, you called and said to just bring a large thick crust pizza supreme to the gate and you'd get it from there. I got his name written down, too,” Tom reported with great pride. “So none of this came from you, Dr. Scarpetta?” He wanted to make sure.

“No sir,” I answered. “And if anything else shows up tonight, I want you to call me right away.”

“Yo, call me, too,” said Marino, and he jotted his home number on a business card. “I don't give a shit what time it is.”

I handed Marino's card out my window and Tom looked carefully at it, even though Marino had passed through these gates more times than I could guess.

“You got it, Captain,” Tom said with a deep nod. “Yes sir, anybody else shows up, I'm on the horn, and I can hold 'em till you get here, if you want me to.”

“Don't do that,” Marino said. “Some kid with a pizza's not going to know a damn thing. And if it's real trouble, I don't want you tangling with whoever it is.”

I knew right then that he was thinking about Carrie.

“I'm pretty spry. But you got it, Captain.”

“You did a great job, Tom,” I complimented him. “I can't thank you enough.”

“That's what I'm here for.”

He pointed his remote control and raised the arm to let us through.

“I'm listening,” I said to Marino.

“Some asshole harassing you,” he said, his face grim in the intermittent bath of street lamps. “Trying to upset you, scare you, piss you off. And doing a pretty damn good job, I might add.”

“You don't think Carrie . . .” I went ahead and started to say.

“I don't know,” Marino cut me off. “But it wouldn't surprise me. Your neighborhood's been in the news enough times.”

“I guess what would be good to know is if the orders were placed locally,” I said.

“Christ,” he said as I turned into my driveway and parked behind his car. “I sure as hell hope not. Unless it's someone else who's jerking you around.”

“Take a number and stand in line.”

I cut the engine.

“I can sleep on your couch if you want me to,” Marino said as he opened his door.

“Of course not,” I said. “I'll be fine. As long as no construction Dumpsters show up. That would be the last straw with my neighbors.”

“I don't know why you live here, anyway.”

“Yes, you do.”

He got out a cigarette and clearly did not want to go anywhere.

“Right. The guard booth. Shit, talk about a placebo.”

“If you don't feel okay to drive, I'd be pleased to have you stay on my couch,” I said.

“Who, me?”

He fired his lighter and puffed smoke out the open car door.

“It ain't me I'm worried about, Doc.”

I got out of my car and stood on the driveway, waiting for him. His shape was big and tired in the dark, and I suddenly was overwhelmed by sad affection for him. Marino was alone and probably felt like hell. He couldn't have memories worth much, between violence on the job
and bad relationships the rest of the time. I supposed I was the only constant in his life, and although I was usually polite, I wasn't always warm. It simply wasn't possible.

“Come on,” I said. “I'll fix you a toddy and you can crash here. You're right. Maybe I don't want to be alone and have five more pizza deliveries and cabs show up.”

“That's what I'm thinking,” he said with feigned cool professionalism.

I unlocked my front door and turned off the alarm, and very shortly Marino was on the wrap-around couch in my great room, with a Booker's bourbon on the rocks. I made his nest with sweet-smelling sheets and a baby-soft cotton blanket, and for a while we sat in the dark talking.

“You ever think we might lose in the end?” he sleepily muttered.

“Lose?” I asked.

“You know,
good guys always win.
How realistic is that? Not so for other people, like that lady that burned up in Sparkes's house. Good guys don't always win. Uh uh, Doc. No fucking way.”

He halfway sat up like a sick man, and took a swallow of bourbon and struggled for breath.

“Carrie thinks she's gonna win, too, in case that thought's never entered your mind,” he added. “She's had five fucking years at Kirby to think that.”

Whenever Marino was tired or half drunk, he said
fuck
a lot. In truth, it was a grand word that expressed what one felt by the very act of saying it. But I had explained to him many times before that not everyone could deal with its vulgarity, and for that matter, some perhaps took it all too literally. I personally never thought of
fuck
as sexual intercourse, but rather as wishing to make a point.

“I can't entertain the thought that people like her will win,” I quietly said as I sipped red burgundy. “I will never think that.”

“Pie in the sky.”

“No, Marino. Faith.”

“Yo.” He swallowed more bourbon. “Fucking faith. You know how many guys I've known to drop dead of heart attacks or get killed on the job? How many of them do you think had faith? Probably every goddamn one of them. Nobody thinks they're gonna die, Doc. You and me don't think it, no matter how much we know. My health sucks, okay? You think I don't know I'm taking a bite of a poison cookie everyday? Can I help it? Naw. I'm just an old slob who has to have his steak biscuits and whiskey and beer. I've given up giving a shit about what the doctors say. So soon enough, I'm gonna stoop over in the saddle and be outta here, you know?”

His voice was getting husky and he was beginning to get maudlin.

“So a bunch of cops will come to my funeral, and you'll tell the next detective to come along how it wasn't all that bad to work with me,” he went on.

“Marino, go to sleep,” I said. “And you know that's not how I feel at all. I can't even think of something happening to you, you big idiot.”

“You really mean that?” He brightened a bit.

“You know damn well I do,” I said, and I was exhausted, too.

He finished his bourbon and softly rattled the ice in the glass, but I didn't respond, because he'd had enough.

“Know what, Doc?” he thickly said. “I like you a lot, even if you are a pain in the fucking ass.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I'll see you in the morning.”

“It is morning.”

He rattled ice some more.

“Go to sleep,” I said.

 

I did not turn off my bedside lamp until two
A
.
M
., and thank God it was Fielding's turn to spend Saturday in the morgue. It was almost nine when I got motivated to put my feet on the floor, and birds were raucous in my garden, and the sun was bouncing light off the world like a manic child with a ball. My kitchen was so bright it was almost white, and stainless steel appliances were like mirrors. I made coffee and did what I could to clear my head as I thought of the files downloaded into my computer. I thought of opening sliders and windows to enjoy spring air, and then Carrie's face was before me again.

I went into the great room to check on Marino. He slept the way he lived, struggling against his physical existence as if it were the enemy, the blanket kicked practically to the middle of the floor, pillows beaten into shape, and sheets twisted around his legs.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Not yet,” he mumbled.

He turned over and punched the pillow to submission under his head. He wore blue boxer shorts and an undershirt that stopped six inches short of covering his swollen belly, and I always marveled that men were not shy about fat the way women were. In my own way I very much cared about staying in shape, and when my clothes starting feeling tight around the waist, both my general disposition and libido turned much less agreeable.

“You can sleep a few more minutes,” I said to him.

I gathered up the blanket and spread it across him. He resumed snoring like a wounded wild boar, and I moved
to the kitchen table and called Benton at his New York hotel.

“I hope I didn't wake you,” I said.

“Actually, I was almost out the door. How are you?”

He was warm but distracted.

“I'd be better if you were here and she were back behind bars.”

“The problem is, I know her patterns and she knows I know them. So I may as well not know them, if you see what I mean,” he said in that controlled tone that meant he was angry. “Last night, several of us disguised ourselves as homeless people and went down into the tunnels in the Bowery. A lovely way to spend the evening, I might add. We revisited the spot where Gault was killed.”

Benton was always very careful to say
where Gault was killed
instead of
where you killed Gault.

“I am convinced she's gone back there and will again,” he went on. “And not because she misses him, but that any reminder of the violent crimes they committed together excites her. The thought of his blood excites her. For her it's a sexual high, a power rush that she's addicted to, and you and I both know what that means, Kay. She'll need a fix soon, if she hasn't already gotten one that we just haven't found out about yet. I'm sorry to be a doomsayer, but I have a gut feeling that whatever she does is going to be far worse than what she did before.”

“It's hard to imagine anything could be worse than that,” I said, though I really did not mean it.

Whenever I had thought that human beings could get no worse, they did. Or perhaps it was simply that primitive evil seemed more shocking in a civilization of highly
evolved humans who traveled to Mars and communicated through cyberspace.

“And so far no sign of her,” I said. “Not even a hint.”

“We've gotten hundreds of leads going nowhere. NYPD's set up a special task force, as you know, and there's a command center with guys taking calls twenty-four hours a day.”

“How much longer will you stay up there?”

“Don't know.”

“Well, I'm sure if she's still in the area, she knows damn well where you are. The New York Athletic Club, where you always stay. Just two buildings from where she and Gault had a room back then.” I was upset again. “I guess that's the Bureau's idea of sticking you in a shark cage and waiting for her to come and get it.”