Four Scarpetta Novels (104 page)

S
CARPETTA STARES AT THE
unopened letter, the warm, damp air moving freely through her open door.

Clouds are black flowers floating low on the horizon, and she senses that rain will come before dawn and she will wake up with all the windows fogged up, which is intolerable. No doubt the neighbors think she's obsessive and mad when they see her on her balcony with bath towels at seven a.m., vigorously wiping condensation off the outside of the glass. Then, because of her forced and despicable bond with
him,
she imagines him inside his death-row cell with no view, and her mission of scrubbing clean her dewy, opaque windows becomes all the more urgent.

The unopened letter addressed to
Madame Scarpetta, LLB
is centered on a square of clean white freezer paper. Female physicians in France are addressed as
Madame.
In America, referring to a female physician as anything but
Doctor
is an insult. She is unpleasantly reminded of crafty defense attorneys addressing her in court as Mrs. Scarpetta instead of Dr. Scarpetta, thereby stripping her of her credentials and expertise, in hopes that the jurors and perhaps even the judge would not take her as seriously as they would a
Medicinae Doctor
whose specialty of pathology and
subspecialty of forensic pathology required six additional years of training after medical school.

While it is true that Scarpetta also has a law degree, virtually no one adds the abbreviation for
legum baccalaureus
after her surname, and for her to do so would be arrogant and misleading because she does not practice law. The three years she spent in law school at Georgetown were for the purpose of facilitating her eventual career in legal medicine, and that was all. To add the abbreviation LLB after her name is mocking in its pretentiousness and condescension.

Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.

She knows the letter is from him.

For an instant, she smells his horrible stench. An olfactory hallucination. The last time she had one was when she visited the Holocaust Museum and smelled death.

“I've been out in the yard with Billy. He's done his business and is very busy chasing lizards,” Rose is saying. “Anything else I can do for you before I leave?”

“No thank you, Rose.”

A pause, then, “Well, did you like my tuna salad?”

“You could open your own restaurant,” Scarpetta says.

She puts on a fresh pair of white cotton examination gloves and picks up the letter and the scalpel, working the tip of the triangular blade into a top corner of the envelope. Stainless steel hisses through the cheap paper.

T
HE CHAIR ROCCO SITS ON
is a padded one.

Two—no, maybe it was three or four—surreal hours ago, he was in this same chair, eating dinner, when room service knocked on his door to bring him a bottle of champagne, a very nice Moët & Chandon, compliments of the management. Rocco, who is streetwise and chronically paranoid, was not the least bit suspicious. He is an important man who stays in the Radisson whenever he is in Szczecin. It is the only decent hotel in the city, and management routinely sends him gifts, including fine cognac and Cuban cigars, because he pays his bills in American cash instead of worthless zloty.

His habit of feeling secure in this hotel is how the intruder with the Colt pistol got inside Rocco's deluxe room. It happened so fast, he didn't have time to react to the tall waiter who wasn't wearing a uniform and shoved his way inside with an empty bottle of champagne on a service tray he obviously had picked up outside another guest's room. This asshole—whoever he is—grabbed Rocco that easily.

Rocco pushes his plate as far away from him as possible. He worries that next he will vomit. He has soiled himself. The room smells so foul he cannot understand how his captor endures it, but the young,
muscular man sitting on the bed doesn't seem to notice. He stares at Rocco, the stare of a man high on adrenaline and ready to kill. He will not allow Rocco to clean up. He won't allow Rocco to get out of the chair. He drops his cell phone on the bed after another brief conversation with someone, and goes over to the tray with its empty champagne bottle. Rocco watches the man carefully wipe off the bottle with a napkin. Rocco tries to place him. Maybe he has seen him before, or maybe the explanation is that he has that look—the look of a federal agent.

“Listen,” Rocco says over the noise of the TV, “just tell me who and why, come on. You tell me who and why, maybe we can work something out you'll like better. You're an agent, aren't you? Some kinda agent. That don't mean we can't work something out.”

He has said this at least six times since the agent walked in with the empty bottle on its tray, then slammed the door shut with a back kick and pulled his gun. Several times now, he has opened the door and slammed it shut. This makes Rocco increasingly nervous. Although he doesn't understand the agent's purpose, it has crossed his mind, even during previous stays, that the doors shut so loudly in this hotel that they sound like gunshots.

“Keep your voice down,” the agent tells him.

He places the champagne bottle on Rocco's table.

“Pick it up.” The agent nods at it.

Rocco stares at the bottle and swallows hard.

“Pick it up, Rocco.”

“So I'll ask you again. How come you know my name?” Rocco persists. “Come on. You know me, right? We can work things out . . . .”

“Pick up the bottle.”

He does. The agent wants Rocco's fingerprints on the bottle. This is not good. The agent wants it to appear as though Rocco ordered or somehow acquired the champagne and drank it. This is very bad. His fears gather in strength as the agent returns to the bed, picks up a jacket and
pulls out a leather flask. He unscrews the cap and returns to Rocco's table, pouring a large amount of vodka in what is left of one of Rocco's cocktails.

“Drink up,” the agent says.

Rocco swallows the vodka in several gulps, grateful as it burns its way down, warming him and sending its seductive, dulling agents along his blood and to his head. His confused thoughts float toward the hope that the agent is showing mercy, treating him decently, trying to make him relax. Maybe the agent's rethinking things, wants to make a deal.

Rocco speculates, but it is a fact that someone sent the man, someone who knows Rocco's business intimately and is aware that once a month he travels to Szczecin to handle Chandonne affairs at the port. Rocco's primary responsibility is to deal with police and other officials. This is business as usual. He can do it drunk, nothing more than routine legal finagling and the usual fees and, if necessary, reminders of what a dangerous world it is.

Only an insider would know Rocco's schedule and where he stays. The hotel staff doesn't know what he does, only that he is from New York, or so he says. No one cares what he does. He is generous. He is rich. Instead of passing off the usual zloty, he pays and lavishly tips in American cash, which is very hard to come by and very useful on the black market. Everyone likes him. The bartenders double the Chopin vodka in his drinks at the upstairs bar, where he frequently sits in the dark, smoking cigars.

His captor looks about twenty-eight, maybe early thirties. His black hair is short and styled with gel in that spiked look that a lot of young men like these days. Rocco notices the square jaw, straight nose, dark blue eyes, stubble and the veins standing out in the man's biceps and hands. He probably doesn't need a weapon to crush someone. Women like him. They probably stare at him, hit on him. Rocco has never been attractive. As a teenager, he was already suffering from pattern baldness, and he
couldn't stay away from pizza and beer, and looked it. Envy possesses him. It always has. Women sleep with him only because he has power and money. Hatred toward his captor flares.

“You don't know what you're messing with here,” Rocco says.

The agent doesn't bother answering him, his eyes darting around the room. Rocco wipes his face with his greasy napkin, his attention wandering to the steak knife on his plate.

“Try it,” the agent says, looking at the steak knife. “Go ahead. Please try it. Make my life a hell of a lot easier.”

“I wasn't gonna do nothing. Just let me go and we'll forget this ever happened.”

“I can't let you go. Truth is, this isn't my idea of fun. So I'm in a bad mood already. Don't piss me off. You want to help yourself? Well, you know what they say about coming clean at the end.”

“No. What the hell do they say?”

“Where's Jay Talley, and don't tell me another fucking lie, asshole.”

“I don't know,” Rocco whines. “I swear to God I don't. I'm scared of him, too. He's crazy. He don't play the game, and every one of us stay clear of him. He marches to his own beat, swear to God. Can't I please change my pants? You can watch me. I won't try nothing.”

Rudy gets off the bed and opens the closet door, the Colt casually by his side, indicating to an increasingly defeated and terrified Rocco that this man is not afraid of anything. There are maybe half a dozen flashy suits hanging on the rod, and he pulls off a pair of pants and tosses them to Rocco.

“Go on.” The agent opens the bathroom door and sits back down on the bed.

Rocco trembles as he walks inside the bathroom and peels off his pants and briefs. He tosses them into the tub, douses a towel with tap water and wipes himself.

“Jay Talley,” the agent says again. “Real name, Jean-Paul Chandonne.”

“Ask me something else.” Rocco means it as he sits in a different chair.

“Okay. We'll get back to Talley later. You got plans to take out your father?” The agent's stare is cold. “It's no secret you hate him.”

“I don't claim him.”

“Doesn't matter, Rocco. You ran away from home. You changed your name from Marino to Caggiano. What's the plan and who's involved?”

Rocco hesitates for the longest time, thoughts jumping behind his bloodshot eyes. The agent gets up, breathing through his mouth as if to avoid the stench. He presses the barrel of the Colt against Rocco's right temple.

“Who, what, when and where?” he says, tapping the barrel of the pistol against Rocco's head with each word. “Don't fuck with me!”

“I was gonna do it. In a couple months when he goes fishing. He always goes fishing at Buggs Lake the first week of August. Nail him in his cabin, make it look like a burglary gone bad.”

“So you would kill your own father when he's on a fishing trip. You know what you are, Rocco? You're the worst shit I ever met.”

W
HENEVER NIC ROBILLARD
drives past the Sno Depot in downtown Zachary, she feels like crying.

Tonight, the stand, with its handpainted signs advertising snow cones, is dark and deserted. If Buddy were with her, he'd be staring out the window and begging, not caring that the Sno Depot is closed and it isn't possible for his mother to buy him a treat. That boy loves snow cones more than anybody Nic's ever heard of, and despite her efforts to steer him away from sweets, he demands a snow cone—cherry or grape—every time she takes him anywhere in the car.

Buddy is with his grandfather in Baton Rouge right now, where he always is when Nic has to work late, and ever since she returned from Knoxville, she works constantly. Scarpetta inspired her. The need to impress Scarpetta dominates Nic's life. She is determined to bring about the arrest of the serial killer. She is frantic about the abducted women, knowing it absolutely will happen again if the maniac isn't caught. She is tormented by grief and guilt because she is neglecting her son after she was away from him for two and a half months.

If Buddy ever stopped loving her or turned out wrong, Nic would want to die. Some nights when she finally returns to her tiny Victorian house
around the corner from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on Lee Street, she lies in bed, staring at dark shapes inside her small room, and listens to the silence as she imagines Buddy sound asleep at her father's house in Baton Rouge. Thoughts about her son and ex-husband, Ricky, flit about like moths. She contemplates whether she would shoot herself in the heart or the head if she were to lose everything that matters.

Not one person has any idea that Nic gets depressed. Not one person would ever imagine that there are times when she entertains thoughts of suicide. What keeps her from the unthinkable is her belief that self-murder is one of the most selfish sins a person can commit, and she envisions the dire consequences of such an act, pushing the fatal fantasy far out of reach until the next time she dives into a dead man's spin of powerlessness, loneliness and despair.

“Shit,” she whispers as she drives south on Main Street, leaving the Sno Depot behind in her emotional wake. “I'm so sorry, Buddy-Boy, my Buddy-Boy.” What a decision she faces: choosing between doing nothing about women being murdered and doing nothing about her son.