Four Scarpetta Novels (54 page)

“Did you talk to him?” This is what I really want to know.

“It wasn't my show,” he oddly replies, staring off across the bay, clenching his jaw muscles. “They're saying they might have to do cornea transplants. Fuck. Here we got all these people in the world who can't even afford glasses, and this piece of furry shit's gonna get new corneas. And I guess the taxpayers will bankroll his corrective surgery, just like we're paying all these doctors and nurses and God knows who to take care of his ass.” He crushes out the cigarette in the ash can. “Guess I'd better get cracking.” He reluctantly gets up. He wants to talk to me but for some reason won't. “The Luce and I are grabbing a beer later on. Says she's got some big news for me.”

“I'll let her tell you herself,” I reply.

He gives me a sidelong glance. “So you're gonna just leave me hanging, huh?”

I start to say that he is one to talk.

“Not even a hint? I mean, is it good news or bad? Don't tell me she's
pregnant,” he adds ironically as he holds the door for me and we leave the bay.

Inside the autopsy suite, Turk is hosing off my workstation, water slapping and steel grates clanking loudly as she sponges off the table. When she spots me, she shouts above the clamor that Rose is trying to reach me. I go to the phone. “Courts are closed,” Rose tells me. “But Righter's office says he plans to stipulate your testimony anyway. So not to worry.”

“What a shock.” What was it Anna called him?
Ein Mann
something. No backbone.

“And your bank called. A man named Greenwood wants you to call.” My secretary gives me a number.

Whenever my bank tries to reach me, I am paranoid. Either investments have taken a dive or I am overdrawn because the computer is screwed up or there is a problem of one sort or another. I get hold of Mr. Greenwood in the private banking division. “I'm very sorry,” he says coolly. “The message was a mistake. A misunderstanding, Dr. Scarpetta. I'm very sorry you were bothered.”

“So no one needs to talk to me. No problems?” I am perplexed. I have dealt with Greenwood for years and he is acting as if he has never met me.

“It was a mistake,” he repeats in the same distant tone. “Again, I apologize. Have a good day.”

I
SPEND THE
next few hours at my desk, dictating the autopsy report of John Doe and returning phone calls and initialing paperwork, and leave the office late afternoon, heading west.

Sunlight filters through broken clouds and gusts of wind send brown leaves fluttering to the earth like lazy birds. It has stopped snowing and the temperature is rising, the world dripping and sizzling with the wet sounds of traffic.

I drive Anna's silver Lincoln Navigator toward Three Chopt Road while news on the radio endlessly goes on about Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's transport out of the city. There is much made over his bandaged eyes and chemical burns. The story of my maiming him to save my life has taken on an energy. Reporters have found their angle. Justice is blind. Dr. Scarpetta has rendered the classic corporeal punishment. “Blinding somebody, hey take that,” a host says on the air. “Who was the guy in Shakespeare? Remember, they gouged his eyes out? King Lear? You see that movie? The old king had to put raw eggs in his eye sockets or something so it wouldn't hurt so much. Really gross.”

The sidewalk leading to St. Bridget's brown double front doors is slushy with salt and melted snow, and there are at most twenty cars in the parking lot. It is as Marino predicted: The police are not out in force, nor is the press. The weather may be what has kept the crowds away from the old Gothic brick church, or more likely it is the deceased herself. I, for one, am not here out of respect or affection or even a sense of loss. I unbutton my coat and step inside the narthex as I try to evade
the uncomfortable truth: I could not stand Diane Bray and have come here only out of duty. She was a police official. I was acquainted with her. She was my patient.

There is a large photograph of her on a table, just inside the narthex, and I am startled to see her haughty self-absorbed beauty, the icy cruel glint in her eyes that no camera could disguise, no matter the angle, the lighting or skills of the photographer. Diane Bray hated me for reasons I still fail to completely grasp. By all accounts, she was obsessed with me and my power and focused on my every dimension in ways I never have. I suppose I do not see myself the way she did, and I was slow to catch on when she began her aggressions, her unbelievably intense war against me which culminated in her aspiring to be appointed to a cabinet position in the commonwealth.

Bray had it all figured out. She would help mastermind transferring the medical examiner's division from the health department to public safety so she could then, if all went according to plan, somehow maneuver the governor into appointing her secretary of public safety. That done, I would politically answer to her, and she could even have the pleasure of firing me. Why? I continue to search for reasonable motivations and fail to find any that completely satisfy me. I had never even heard of her before she signed on with the Richmond P.D. last year. But she certainly knew about me and moved to my fair city with plots and schemes in the works to undo me sadistically, slowly, through a series of shocking disruptions, slanders and professional obstructions and humiliations before she ultimately ruined my career, my life. I suppose in her fantasies, the climax to her cold-blooded machinations would have been for me to give up my position in disgrace, commit suicide and leave a note saying it was her fault. Instead, I am still here. She is not. That I should have been the one who tended to her brutalized remains is an irony beyond description.

A cluster of police officers in dress uniform are talking to each other, and near the sanctuary door, Chief Rodney Harris is with Father O'Connor. There are civilians, too, people in fine clothes who don't look familiar, and I sense from the lost, vacant way they are casting about that
they aren't local. I pick up a service bulletin and wait to speak to Chief Harris and my priest. “Yes, yes, I understand,” Father O'Connor is saying. He is serene in a long, creamy robe, his fingers laced at his waist. I realize with a twinge of guilt that I have not seen him since Easter.

“Well, Father, I just can't. That's the part I can't accept,” Harris replies, his thinning red hair plastered back from his flabby, unattractive face. He is a short man with a soft body that is genetically coded to be fat, a Pillsbury Dough Boy in dress blues. Harris is not a nice man and he resents powerful women. I have never understood why he hired Diane Bray and can only assume it wasn't for the right reasons.

“God's will is not always for us to understand,” says Father O'Connor, and then he sees me. “Dr. Scarpetta.” He smiles and takes my hand in both of his. “So good of you to come. You've been in my thoughts and prayers.” The pressure of his fingers and the light in his eyes convey that he understands what has happened to me and cares. “How's your arm? I wish you would come by to see me sometime.”

“Thank you, Father.” I offer my hand to Chief Harris. “I know this is a difficult time for your department,” I tell him. “And for you personally.”

“Very, very sad,” he says, staring off at other people as he gives me a perfunctory, brusque handshake.

The last time I saw Harris was at Bray's house when he walked in and was confronted by the appalling sight of her body. That moment will forever lodge between him and me. He should never have come to the scene. There was no good reason for him to see his deputy chief so completely degraded, and I will always resent him for it. I have a special distaste for people who treat crime scenes callously and with disrespect, and Harris's showing up at Bray's scene was a power play and an indulgence in voyeurism, and he knows I know it. I move on into the sanctuary and feel his eyes on my back. “Amazing Grace” swells from the organ, and people are finding pews midway up the aisle. Saints and crucifixion scenes glow in rich stained glass, and marble and brass crosses gleam. I sit on the aisle, and moments later the processional begins, and the smartly dressed strangers I noticed earlier walk in with the priest. A
young crucifer carries the cross, while a man in a black suit bears the gold-and-red enamel urn containing Diane Bray's cremated remains. An elderly couple holds hands, dabbing tears.

Father O'Connor greets all of us and I learn that Bray's parents and two brothers are here. They have come from upstate New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., and loved Diane very much. The service is simple. It isn't long. Father O'Connor sprinkles the waters of baptism on the urn. No one but Chief Harris offers any reflections or eulogies, and what he has to say is stilted and generic. “She gladly enlisted in a profession that is all about rendering help to others.” He stands stiffly behind the pulpit and reads from his notes. “Knowing every day that she was placing herself at risk, for that is the life of the police. We learn to stare death in the face and fear not. We know what it is to be alone and even to be hated, and yet we fear not. We know what it is to be a lightning rod for evil, for those who are on this planet to take from others.”

Wood creaks as people shift in their pews. Father O'Connor smiles kindly, his head tilted at an angle as he listens. I tune out Harris. I have never attended such a sterile, hollow service and I shrink inside with dismay. The liturgy, the gospel acclamations, the singing and prayers carry no music or passion, because Diane Bray did not love anyone, including herself. Her rapacious, overreaching life has scarcely left a ripple. All of us leave silently, venturing out into the raw, dark night to find our cars and escape. I walk briskly with head bent, the way I do when I wish to avoid others. I am aware of sounds, of a presence, and I turn around as I unlock my car door. Someone has stepped up behind me.

“Dr. Scarpetta?” The woman's refined features are accentuated by the uneven glare of streetlights, her eyes deeply set in shadows, and she wears a full-length shorn mink coat. A hint of recognition sparks somewhere in the deep. “I didn't know you were going to be here, but sure am glad,” she adds. I am aware of her New York accent, and shock rocks me before I comprehend. “I'm Jaime Berger,” she says, offering a kid-gloved hand. “We need to talk.”

. . .

“
YOU WERE AT
the service?” These are the first words out of my mouth. I didn't see her there. I am paranoid enough to consider that Jaime Berger never stepped inside the church at all but has been waiting in the parking lot for me. “Did you know Diane Bray?” I ask her.

“I'm getting to know her now.” Berger turns up her coat collar, her breath smoking out. She glances at her watch and pushes the winding stem. The luminescent dial glows pale green. “I don't suppose you're going back to your office.”

“I wasn't planning on it, but I can,” I say without enthusiasm. She wants to talk about the murders of Kim Luong and Diane Bray. Of course, she's interested in the unidentified body from the port, too—the one we all assume is Chandonne's brother, Thomas. But if his case ever sees a courtroom at all, she adds, it isn't going to be in this country. This is her way of telling me Thomas Chandonne is another free lunch. Jean-Baptiste murdered his brother and got away with it. I climb up into the driver's seat of the Navigator.

“How do you like your car?” she asks what seems an inane, inappropriate question at a time like this. Already I am feeling probed. I sense instantly that Berger does nothing, asks nothing, without a reason. She surveys the luxurious sport utility vehicle that Anna is letting me use while my sedan remains strangely off limits.

“It's borrowed. Maybe you'd better follow me, Ms. Berger,” I say. “There are some parts of town you wouldn't want to get lost in after dark.”

“I'm wondering if you could track down Pete Marino.” She points a remote key at her own sport utility vehicle, a white Mercedes ML430 with New York plates, and headlights flash as the doors unlock. “Maybe it would be a good thing for all of us to talk.”

I start the engine and shiver in the dark. The night is soggy and icy water drips from trees. The cold seeps inside my cast and finds its way into the cracks of my fractured elbow, seizing exquisitely tender spaces
where nerve endings and marrow live, and they begin to complain in deep rolling throbs. I page Marino and realize I don't know the number of Anna's car phone. I fumble to dig my cell phone out of my satchel while steering with the fingertips of my broken arm and keeping an eye on Berger's headlights in my rearview mirror. Marino calls me back long minutes later. I tell him what has happened and he reacts with typical cynicism, but beneath it is an excited current, maybe anger, maybe something else. “Yeah, well, I don't believe in coincidences,” he says sharply. “You just happen to go to Bray's memorial service and Berger just happens to be there? Why the hell did she go, in the first place?”

“I don't know why,” I reply. “But if I were new to the town and to the characters involved, I'd want to see who cared enough about Bray to show up. I'd also want to see who didn't.” I try to be logical. “She didn't tell you she was going? What about when you met with her last night?” I am out with it. I want to know what went on in that meeting.

“Didn't say nothing about it,” he replies. “She had other things on her mind.”

“Such as? Or are we keeping secrets?” I add pointedly.

He is silent for a long moment. “Look, Doc,” he finally says, “this ain't my case. It's New York's case and I'm just doing what I'm told. You want to know stuff, ask her, 'cause that's the way she fucking wants it.” Resentment hardens his tone. “And I'm in the middle of lovely Mosby Court and have other things to do besides jump every time she snaps her fancy big-city fingers.”

Mosby Court is not the princely residential neighborhood the name suggests, but one of seven low-rent housing projects in the city. All are called courts, and four are named for outstanding Virginians: an actor, an educator, a prosperous tobacconist, a Civil War hero. I hope Marino isn't in Mosby Court because there has been another shooting. “You're not bringing me more business, are you?” I ask him.

“Another misdemeanor murder.”

I don't laugh at this bigoted code—this cynical label for a young, black male shot multiple times, probably on the street, probably over
drugs, probably dressed in expensive athletic clothes and basketball shoes, and nobody saw a thing.

“Meet you in the bay,” Marino sullenly says. “Five, ten minutes.”

The snow has completely stopped and the temperature remains warm enough to keep the city from locking up with freezing slush again. Downtown is dressed for the holidays, the skyline bordered in white lights, some of them burned out. In front of the James Center, people have pulled over to explore a blaze of reindeer sculpted of light, and on 9th Street, the capitol glows like an egg through the bare branches of ancient trees, the pale yellow mansion next to it elegant with candles in every window. I catch a glimpse of couples in evening clothes getting out of cars in the parking lot and remember with panic that tonight is the governor's Christmas party for top state officials. I sent in my RSVP more than a month ago, confirming I would attend. Oh God. It will not be lost on Governor Mike Mitchell and his wife, Edith, that I am a no-show, and the impulse to swerve onto the capitol grounds is so strong that I flip on my turn signal. I just as quickly flip it off. I can't possibly go, not even for fifteen minutes. What would I do with Jaime Berger? Take her along? Introduce her to everyone? I smile ruefully and shake my head inside my dark cockpit as I imagine the looks I would get, as I fantasize about what would happen if the press found out.

Having worked for government my entire career, I never underestimate the potential for the mundane. The telephone number for the governor's mansion is listed, and directory assistance can automatically dial it for an additional fifty cents. Momentarily, I have an executive protection unit officer on the line, and before I can explain that I simply want to pass on a message, the trooper puts me on hold. A tone sounds at measured intervals, as if my call is being timed, and I wonder if calls to the mansion are taped. Across Broad Street, an older, drearier part of town gives way to the new brick and glass empire of Biotech, where my office is the anchor. I check the rearview mirror for Berger's SUV. She doggedly follows, her lips moving in my rearview mirror. She is on the phone, and it gives me an uneasy feeling as I watch her say words I can't hear.