Learning that his son is dead would inevitably result in Marino retracing Rocco’s steps, which would lead Marino and his compatriots to Baton Rouge, where Rocco keeps an apartment and has for many years. The port in Baton Rouge is formidable. The Gulf Coast is gold. All manner of valuable and dangerous materials travels the Mississippi daily. Baton Rouge is yet another Chandonne holding, and Rocco has enjoyed many successes and gratifications there, including sovereign immunity from the police, and intrigues, including protecting Jay Talley and Jean-Baptiste Chandonne as they enjoyed their fair share of fun in the Baton Rouge area.
Jean-Baptiste and Jay were only sixteen the first time they visited Baton Rouge. Jean-Baptiste honed his murderous skills by killing prostitutes after Jay was serviced by them. Those cases have never been linked because the former coroner abdicated his investigative rights to other agencies, and the police didn’t give a damn about prostitutes.
One step would lead to another until Marino discovered Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin in Baton Rouge and eliminated them. That was the plan. Scarpetta was never supposed to be part of it. His pulse beats rapidly in his temples.
He holds his wrist close to his face, unable to read the time on his cheap black plastic watch because the dial isn’t luminescent. By design, it isn’t. He wants nothing that glows in the dark.
“What time should we get there?” he asks in the same clipped tone.
“I dunno exactly,” his driver replies. “Depends if the traffic stays light like this. Maybe another two, two and a half hours.”
A car draws close to them from the rear, its high beams bouncing blinding white light off the taxi’s rearview mirror. The driver curses as a black Porsche 911 passes, its receding red taillights reminding Benton of hell.
SCARPETTA 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.
THE 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 Chandonn
e 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.”
WHENEVER 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.
MON PETIT AGNEAU PRISÉ!” My little treasured lamb, Scarpetta translates as her heart freezes at the sight of Chandonne’s handwriting and she feels his presence in his letter to her.
She has been sitting in the same position for so long—in the straight-backed wooden chair by her bedroom’s open door—that her lower back aches and the small glass table is sweating from the humid sea air. As she remembers to breathe, she realizes that every muscle is tense, her entire body like a clenched fist.
The letter, the letter, the letter.
It stuns her that his handwriting is beautiful, a practiced calligraphy penned in black ink, not a single word crossed through, not a single mistake that she can see at a glance. He must have spent a lot of time writing this letter to her, as if it was a loving endeavor, and the idea of that just adds to the horror. He thinks of her. He is telling her so by the very act of his artistic penmanship.
She reads his words:
Do you know about the Red Stick yet and that you must go there?
But not until you come to see me first. In the Longhorn State, as they say!
You see, I direct you.
You have no will of your own. You may think you do, but I am the current running through your body, every impulse coming from me. I am inside you. Feel it!
Do you remember that night? You eagerly opened your door and then attacked me because you could not face your longing for me. I have forgiven you for taking my eyes, but you could not take my soul. It follows you constantly. If you try, you can touch it.
Maintenant! Maintenant! It is time. The Red
Stick awaits you.
You must come to me first or it will be too late to hear my stories.
Only for you will I tell them.
I know what you want, mon petit agneau prisé! I have what you want.
In two weeks I will be dead and have nothing to say. Ha!
Will you release me to the ecstasy?
Or will I release you? Sinking my teeth into your soft, round loveliness.
If you do not find me, I will find you.
Love and rapture,
Jean-Baptiste
In the old-style bathroom with its plain white toilet, its plain plastic shower curtain around the plain white tub, its mildew-stained white walls, Scarpetta vomits. She drinks a glass of water from the tap and returns to the bedroom, to the table, to that blighted piece of paper, which she suspects will offer her no evidence. He is too clever to leave evidence.
She sits in the chair, trying to fight the images of the filthy beast flying through her front door like an evil spirit crackling out of hell. Scarcely can she recall in detail the pursuit, that terrible pursuit around her living room, as he swung an iron hammer, the same iron hammer he had used before to shatter women’s heads and bodies to battered flesh and splintered bone, especially their faces.
At the time she was the medical examiner for the Richmond murders, it never occurred to her that she might be the next one. Since that near-death experience, she struggles to will away her imagined destruction of her own body and face. He would not have raped her. He isn’t capable of rape. Jean-Baptiste’s revenge on the world is to cause death and disfigurement, to re-create others in his own image. He is the ultimate embodiment of self-hate.
If it is true that she saved her life by permanently blinding him, then he should be so lucky as to be spared his own reflection in the polished metal mirror he must look at every day inside his death row cell.
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