“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.”
He adds several sympathetic comments and hangs up. When he turns around, he doesn’t seem surprised to see Scarpetta. He’s expecting her. She called first. If it occurs to him she was listening to his conversation, he doesn’t seem concerned or the least bit offended. It disconcerts her that he seems sincerely thoughtful and kind. There’s a certain comfort in assumptions, and hers has always been that he is greedy, unctuous, and full of self-importance.
“Dr. Scarpetta.” He smiles as he gets up and walks around his perfectly organized desk to shake her hand.
“I appreciate your seeing me, especially on such short notice,” she says, choosing the wing chair while he settles on the couch, his choice of where he sits significant. If he wanted to overpower or belittle her, he would remain enthroned behind his massive burlwood partner’s desk.
Henry Hollings is a distinguished man in a beautiful hand-tailored dark suit with creased trousers, and a black silk-lined single-button jacket, and a pale blue shirt. His hair is the same silver as his silver silk tie, his face lined but not in a harsh way, the wrinkles indicating that he smiles more than he frowns. His eyes are kind. It continues to disturb her that he doesn’t fit the image of the cunning politician she expected, and she reminds herself that that’s the problem with cunning politicians. They fool people right before they take advantage of them.
“Let me be forthright,” Scarpetta says. “You’ve had ample opportunity to acknowledge I’m here. It’s been almost two years. Let me just say that and we’ll move on.”
“Seeking you out would have been forward of me,” he says.
“It would have been gracious. I’m the new person in town. We have the same agendas. Or should.”
“Thank you for your candor. It affords me an opportunity to explain. We tend to be ethnocentric in Charleston, quite skilled at taking our time, waiting to see what’s what. I suspect you may have noticed by now that things don’t tend to happen speedily. Why, people don’t even walk fast.” He smiles. “So I’ve been waiting for you to take the initiative, if you ever made that choice. I didn’t think you would. If you’ll allow me to explain further? You’re a forensic pathologist. Of considerable reputation, I might add, and people such as yourself generally have a low opinion of elected coroners. We’re not doctors or forensic experts, as a rule. I expected you would experience some defensive feelings about me when you set up your practice here.”
“Then it would seem both of us have made assumptions.” She’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least pretend.
“Charleston can be gossipy.” He reminds her of a Matthew Brady photograph—sitting straight, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. “A lot of it spiteful and small-minded,” he says.
“I’m sure you and I can get along as professionals.” She’s not sure of any such thing.
“Are you familiar with your neighbor Mrs. Grimball?”
“I mainly see her when she’s looking out her window at me.”
“Apparently, she complained about a hearse being in the alley behind your house. Twice.”
“I’m aware of once.” She can’t think of a second time. “Lucious Meddick. And a mysterious and erroneous listing of my address, which I’m hoping has been cleared up.”
“She made a complaint to people who could have caused you quite a lot of trouble. I got a call about it and interceded. I said I knew for a fact you didn’t have body deliveries at your house, and there must be a misunderstanding.”
“I’m wondering if you would have told me this if I hadn’t happened to call you.”
“If I were out to get you, why would I have protected you in this instance?” he says.
“I don’t know.”
“I happen to think there’s plenty of death and tragedy to go around. But not everybody feels the same way,” he says. “There’s not a funeral home in South Carolina that doesn’t want my business. Including Lucious Meddick’s. I don’t believe for one minute he truly thought your carriage house was the morgue. Even if he read the wrong address somewhere.”
“Why would he want to hurt me? I don’t even know him.”
“That’s your answer. He doesn’t view you as a source of revenue because, and this is just my guess, you aren’t doing anything to help him,” Hollings says.
“I don’t do marketing.”
“If you’ll allow me, I’ll send an e-mail to every coroner, funeral home, and removal service you might deal with and make sure they have your correct address.”
“That’s not necessary. I can do it myself.” The nicer he is, the less she trusts him.
“Frankly, it’s better if it comes from me. It sends the message that you and I are working together. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Gianni Lupano,” she says.
His expression is blank.
“Drew Martin’s tennis coach.”
“I’m sure you know I have absolutely no jurisdiction in her case. No information beyond what’s been in the news,” Hollings says.
“He’s visited your funeral home in the past. At least once.”
“If he came here to ask questions about her, I most assuredly would be aware of it.”
“He’s been here for some reason,” she says.
“Might I ask how you can know that for a fact? Perhaps you’ve heard more Charleston gossip than I have.”
“At the very least, he’s been in your parking lot, let me put it that way,” she says.
“I see.” He nods. “I suppose the police or someone looked at the GPS in his car and my address was in there. And that would lead me to ask if he’s a suspect in her murder.”
“I imagine everyone associated with her is being questioned. Or will be. And you said ‘his car.’ How do you know he has a car in Charleston?”
“Because I happen to know he has an apartment here,” he says.
“Most people—including people in his building—don’t know he has an apartment here. I’m wondering why you do.”
“We keep a guest book,” he says. “It’s always on a podium outside the chapel, so those who attend a wake or a service can sign in. Perhaps he attended a funeral here. You’re welcome to look at the book. Or books. Going back as far as you’d like.”
“The last two years would be fine,” she says.
Shackles attached to a wooden chair inside an interrogation room.
Madelisa Dooley wonders if she’ll end up in that room next. For lying.
“A lot of drugs, but we’ve got everything,” Investigator Turkington says as she and Ashley follow him past one unsettling room after another inside the southern branch of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s office. “Burglaries, robberies, homicides.”
It’s larger than she imagined, because it never occurred to her there might be crime on Hilton Head Island. But according to Turkington, there’s en
ough of it south of the Broad River to keep sixty sworn officers, including eight investigators, busy around the clock.
“Last year,” he says, “we worked more than six hundred serious crimes.”
Madelisa wonders how many of them were trespassing and lying.
“I can’t tell you how shocked I am,” she nervously says. “We thought it was so safe here, haven’t even bothered locking our door.”
He leads them into a conference room and says, “You’d be amazed how many people think just because they’re rich, they’re immune to anything bad happening to them.”
It flatters Madelisa that he must assume she and Ashley are rich. She can’t think of anybody who’s ever thought that about them, and she’s happy for a moment until she remembers why they’re here. Any minute, this young man in his smart suit and tie will figure out the truth about Mr. and Mrs. Ashley Dooley’s economic status. He’ll put two and two together when he finds out about their unimpressive North Charleston address and the cheap town house they rented here, so far back in the pine trees one can’t even see a hint of the ocean.
“Please have a seat.” He pulls out a chair for her.
“You sure are right,” she says. “Money certainly doesn’t make you happy or cause people to get along.” As if she knows.
“That’s quite a camcorder you’ve got there,” he says to Ashley. “How much that set you back? At least a thousand.” He indicates for Ashley to hand it over to him.
“I don’t know why you’ve got to take it from me,” he says. “Why can’t you just look at what I got real quick?”
“What I’m still unclear about”—Turkington’s pale eyes stare right at her—“is why you went up to that house to begin with. Why you walked right on to that property, even though there’s a No Trespassing sign.”
“She was looking for the owner,” Ashley replies, as if he’s talking to his camcorder on the table.
“Mr. Dooley, please don’t answer for your wife. According to what she told me, you weren’t a witness, were out on the beach when she found what she did in the house.”
“I don’t see why you’ve got to keep it.” Ashley obsesses about his camcorder while Madelisa obsesses about the basset hound all alone in the car.
She left the windows cracked so he could get air, and thank God it’s not hot out. Oh, please, don’t let him bark. She loves that dog already. Poor baby. What he’s been through, and she remembers touching the sticky blood on his fur. She can’t mention the dog, even if it might help her explain that the only reason she went near house was to find his owner. If the police discover she has that poor, sweet puppy, they’ll take him, and he’ll end up in the pound and eventually be put to sleep. Just like Frisbee.
“Looking for the owner of the house. So you’ve said a number of times. I’m still unclear as to why you were looking for the owner.” Turkington’s pale eyes are fixed on her again, his pen resting on the legal pad he’s writing on as he continues to make a record of her lies.
“It’s such a beautiful house,” she says. “I wanted Ashley to film it but didn’t think that was right without permission. So I looked for people out by the pool, looked for anybody who might be home.”
“There aren’t many people here this time of year, not up there where you were. A lot of those big places are second, third homes for very wealthy people and they don’t rent them and it’s off-season.”
“That’s exactly true,” she agrees.
“But you assumed someone was home because you said you saw something cooking on the grill?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“How’d you see that from the beach?”
“I saw smoke.”
“You saw smoke from the grill and maybe smelled what was being barbecued.” He writes it down.
“That’s exactly right.”
“What was it?”
“What was what?”
“What was being cooked on the grill?”
“Meat. Pork, maybe. Could have been London broil, I guess.”
“And you took it upon yourself to walk right into the house.” He makes more notes, then the pen goes still and he looks up at her. “You know, that’s the part that I still can’t figure out.”
It’s the part she’s had a hard time figuring out, too, no matter how much she’s thought about it. What lie can she tell that will have the ring of truth?
“Like I told you over the phone,” she says, “I was looking for the owner and then started getting worried. Started imagining some rich old person barbecuing and all of a sudden having a heart attack. Why else would you put something on the grill and then disappear? So I kept calling ‘Anybody home?’ Then I found the laundry-room door open.”
“You mean unlocked.”
“Yes, it was.”
“The door next to the window where you said a pane of glass was missing and another pane was broken,” Investigator Turkington says, writing it down.
“And I went in, knowing I probably shouldn’t. But I thought in my head, What if that rich old person is lying on the floor after having a stroke?”
“That’s the thing—where you make hard choices in life,” Ashley says, his eyes jumping back and forth from the investigator to the camcorder. “Don’t go in? Or never forgive yourself later when you read in the paper that someone could have used your help.”
“Did you film the house, sir?”
“Filmed some porpoises while I was waiting for Madelisa to come back out.”
“I asked if you filmed the house.”
“Let me think. I guess a little bit. Earlier, with Madelisa in front of it. But I wasn’t going to show it to anybody if she couldn’t get permission.”
“I see. You wanted permission to film the house but filmed it anyway without permission.”
“And when we didn’t get permission, I erased it,” Ashley says.
“Really?” Turkington says, looking at him for a long moment. “Your wife runs out of the house afraid somebody’s been murdered in there and it occurs to you to erase part of what you filmed because you failed to get permission from whoever might have been murdered?”
“I know it sounds strange,” Madelisa says. “But what matters is I didn’t mean any harm.”
Ashley says, “When Madelisa ran out and was all upset about what she saw in there, I was desperate to call nine-one-one but didn’t have my phone. She didn’t have hers, either.”
“And you didn’t think to use the one in the house?”
“Not after what I saw in there!” Madelisa says. “I felt like he was still in there!”
“‘He’?”
“It was just this awful feeling. I’ve never been so scared. You don’t really think after what I saw I’d stop to use the phone when I could feel something watching me.” She rummages through her purse for a tissue.
“So we hurried back to our condo, and she got so hysterical, I had to calm her down,” Ashley says. “She just cried like a baby and we missed our tennis clinic. She cried and cried, well into the night. Finally, I said, ‘Honey, why don’t you sleep on it and let’s talk about it again in the morning.’ Truth is, I wasn’t sure I believed her. My wife here has quite the imagination. Reads all these mystery books, watches all these crime shows, you know. But when she kept on crying, I started to get worried maybe there was something to it. So I called you.”
“Not until after another tennis clinic,” Turkington points out. “She’s still so upset, yet you went to tennis this morning, then back to your condo, showered, changed, and packed the car to head back to Charleston. Then finally got around to calling the police? I’m sorry. I’m supposed to believe this?”
“If it wasn’t true, why’d we cut our vacation two days short? We planned it for a whole year,” Ashley says. “You’d think you’d get a refund when there’s an emergency. Maybe you could put in a word for us with the rental agent.”
“If that’s why you called the police,” Turkington says, “you just wasted y
our time.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep my camcorder. I erased what little bit I filmed in front of the house. There’s nothing to see. Just Madelisa in front of it, talking to her sister for maybe ten seconds.”
“Now her sister was with you?”
“Talking to her on the camcorder. I don’t know what you’d see that’s helpful, because I erased it.”
Madelisa made him erase it because of the dog. He had filmed her petting the dog.
“Maybe if I saw what you recorded,” Turkington says to Ashley, “I would see the smoke rising up from the barbecue. You said that’s what you saw from the beach, didn’t you? So if you filmed the house, wouldn’t the smoke be in it?”
This takes Ashley by surprise. “Well, I don’t think I got that part, wasn’t aiming my camcorder in that direction. Can’t you just watch what’s on it and give it back? I mean, most of what’s on there is Madelisa and a few porpoises and other stuff I’ve filmed at home. I don’t see why you’ve got to keep my camcorder.”
“We have to be sure there’s nothing you recorded that might give us information about what happened, details you might not be aware of.”
“Like what?” Ashley says, alarmed.
“Like, for instance, are you telling the truth about your not going inside the house after your wife told you what she did.” Investigator Turkington is getting very unfriendly now. “I find it unusual you didn’t go in and check out your wife’s story for yourself.”
“If what she said was true, there’s no way I was walking in there,” Ashley says. “What if some killer was hiding in there?”
Madelisa remembers the sound of running water, the blood, the clothes, the photograph of the dead tennis player. She envisions the mess in the huge living room, all those prescription bottles and vodka. And the projector turned on with nothing playing on the movie screen. The detective doesn’t believe her. She’s in for a world of trouble. Breaking and entering. Stealing a dog. Lying. He can’t find out about the dog. They’ll take him and put him to sleep. She loves that dog. The hell with lies. She’ll tell lies all the way to hell for that dog.
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