Four Scarpetta Novels

by Patricia Cornwell

  His flight has been delayed another hour due to weather. Suddenly, he doesn’t want to go home to Trixie and get up in the morning and realize what happened in Boston. Thinking of his small house with its carport in its blue-collar neighborhood sinks his spirit lower into bitterness and a need to fight back. If only he could identify the enemy. Why he continues to live in Richmond makes no sense. Richmond is the past. Why he allowed Benton to blow him off makes no sense. He should never have walked away from Benton’s apartment.

  “You know what due to weather means?” Marino asks the young red-headed woman sitting next to him, filing her nails.

  Two rude behaviors Marino simply can’t tolerate are public farts and the scratching sound of manicures accompanied by drifting nail dust.

  The file continues to rapidly scratch-scratch.

  “It means they ain’t decided whether to fly our asses outta Boston yet. See? There ain’t enough passengers to make it worth their while. They lose money, they don’t go nowhere and blame it on something else.”

  The file freezes and the woman looks around at dozens of empty plastic seats.

  “You can sit here all night,” Marino goes on, “or come find a motel room with me.”

  After a moment of disbelief, she gets up and walks off in a huff.

  “Pig,” she says.

  Marino smiles, civility restored, his boredom assuaged, if only briefly. He is not going to wait for a flight that probably will never happen, and then he thinks of Benton again. Anger and paranoia ooze into his skull. His feeling of powerlessness and rejection settle more closely around him, choking him with a depression that stalls his thoughts and fatigues him as if he hasn’t slept in days. He can’t stand it. He won’t. He wishes he could call Lucy, but he doesn’t know where she is. All she told him was that she had business to take care of that required traveling.

  “What business?” Marino asked her.

  “Just business.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why the hell I work for you.”

  “I don’t wonder about it in the least. I never give it a thought,” Lucy said over the phone from her office in Manhattan. “You adore me.”

  Outside Logan Airport, Marino flags down a Cambridge Checker cab, practically stepping in front of it and waving his arms, ignoring the taxi line and the dozens of weary, unhappy people in it.

  “The Embankment,” he tells the driver. “Near where the band shell is.”

  SCARPETTA DOESN’T KNOW where Lucy is, either.

  Her niece doesn’t answer her home or cell phones and hasn’t returned numerous pages. Scarpetta can’t reach Marino, and she has no intention of calling Rose and telling her about the letter. Her secretary worries too much already. Scarpetta sits on her bed, thinking. Billy makes his way up the dog ramp and plops down just far enough away to make her reach if she wants to pet him, and she does.

  “Why do you always sit so far away from me?” she talks to him as she stretches out to stroke his soft, floppy ears. “Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to reposition myself and move closer to you.”

  She does.

  “You’re a very willful dog, you know.”

  Billy licks her hand.

  “I have to go out of town for a few days,” she tells him. “But Rose will take good care of you. Maybe you’ll stay at her house and she’ll take you to the beach. So promise you won’t get upset that I’m leaving.”

  He never does. The only reason he comes running when she heads out on a trip is that he wants a ride in the car. He’d ride around in a car all day, given the choice. Scarpetta dials Lucy’s office a second time. Although it is long past closing time, the phone is answered by an alive and awake human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tonight, it is Zach Manham’s turn.

  “Okay, Zach,” she says right off. “It’s bad enough you won’t tell me where Lucy is . . .”

  “It’s not that I won’t tell . . .”

  “Of course it is,” she cuts him off. “You know, but you won’t tell me.”

  “I swear to God I don’t know,” Manham replies. “Look, if I did, I’d call her on her international cell phone and at least tell her to call you.”

  “So she has her international cell phone with her. Then she’s out of the country?”

  “She always carries her international cell phone. You know, the one that takes photographs, videotapes, connects to the Internet. She’s got the latest model. It makes pizza.”

  Nothing is funny to Scarpetta right now.

  “I tried her cell phone. She’s not answering,” she says, “whether she’s in this country or some other one. So what about Marino? You holding out on me about him, too?”

  “I haven’t talked to him in days,” Manham says. “No, I don’t know where he is. He not answering his cell phone or pages, either?”

  “No.”

  “Want me to take a polygraph, Doc?”

  “Yes.”

  Manham laughs.

  “Okay, I quit. I’m too tired to keep this up all night,” Scarpetta says as she rubs Billy’s tummy. “If and when you ever hear from either one of them again, tell them to contact me immediately. It’s urgent. Urgent enough that I’m flying to New York tomorrow.”

  “What? Are you in danger?” Manham asks, alarmed.

  “I don’t want to talk about it with you, Zach. No offense intended. Good night.”

  She locks her bedroom door, sets the alarm and places her pistol on the bedside table.

  MARINO DOESN’T LIKE the taxi driver and asks him where he’s from.

  “Kabul.”

  “Kabul’s where, exactly?” Marino asks. “I mean, I know what country” (he doesn’t), “but not its exact geographical location.”

  “Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan.”

  Marino tries to envision Afghanistan. All that comes to mind are dictators, terrorists and camels.

  “And you do what there?”

  “I do nothing there. I live here.” The driver’s dark eyes glance at him in the rearview mirror. “My family worked in the wool mills, and I came here eight years ago. You should go to Kabul. It is very beautiful. Visit the old city. My name is Bbur. You have questions or need a cab, call my company and ask for me.” He smiles, his teeth gleaming white in the dark.

  Marino senses the driver is making fun of him, but he doesn’t get the joke. The driver’s identification card is fastened to the passenger’s seat visor, and Marino tries to read it, but can’t. His vision isn’t what it used to be, and he refuses to wear glasses. Despite Scarpetta’s urging, he also refuses laser surgery, which he adamantly claims will make him blind or damage his frontal lobe.

  “This way don’t look familiar,” Marino comments in his usual grumpy tone as unrecognizable buildings flow past his window.

  “We take a shortcut along the harbor, past the wharfs and then the causeway. Very pretty sights.”

  Marino leans forward on the hard bench seat, avoiding a spring that seems determined to work its way out of the vinyl upholstery and uncoil and bite his left buttock.

  “You’re heading north, you Mohammed scumbag! I may not be from Boston, but I know where the Embankment is, and you ain’t even on the right side of the fucking river!”

  The cabdriver who calls himself Bbur completely ignores his passenger and continues along his route, cheerfully pointing out the sights, including the Suffolk County Jail, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Burn Center. By the time he drops Marino off on Storrow Drive, close but not too close to Benton Wesley’s apartment building, the meter registers $68.35. Marino slings open the door and throws a crumpled one-dollar bill onto the front seat.

  “You owe me sixty-seven dollars and thirty-five cents.” The taxi driver smooths open the dollar bill on his leg. “I will call the police!”

  “And I’ll beat the shit out of you. And you can’t do nothing about it, because you ain’t legal, right? Show me your green card, asshole, and guess what, I’m the police and got a pistol
strapped under my arm.” He snatches out his wallet and flashes the badge he did not return to the Richmond Police Department after he retired.

  He said he lost it.

  Tires squeal as the taxi driver speeds off, screaming curses out his open window. Marino heads toward the Longfellow Bridge and veers off southeast, briefly following the same sidewalk he and Benton walked along earlier today. He takes a roundabout way beneath gas lamplight on Pinckney and Revere, constantly listening and checking his surroundings, making certain he isn’t being followed, as is his habit. Marino isn’t thinking about the Chandonne cartel. He is on the lookout for the usual street punks and lunatics, although he has seen no evidence of either in this section of Beacon Hill.

  When Benton’s building comes into view, Marino notices that the windows of unit 56 are dark.

  “Shit,” he mutters, tossing his cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out.

  Benton must have gone out for a late dinner, or to the gym, or for a jog. But that isn’t likely, and Marino’s anxieties tighten his chest with his every step. He knows damn well that Benton would leave lights on when he goes out. He isn’t the sort to walk into a completely dark house or apartment.

  Climbing the stairs to the fifth floor is worse than last time, because adrenaline and beer quicken his straining heart until he can scarcely breathe. When he reaches unit 56, he bangs on the door. Not a sound comes from inside.

  He pounds harder and calls out, “Yo, Tom!”

  LUCY STARTS THE MERCEDES and suddenly stares at Rudy in the pitch dark.

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe it!” She pounds the steering wheel with her fist, accidentally blaring the horn.

  “What!” Rudy jumps, startled and suddenly frantic. “What the hell? What the hell are you doing!”

  “My tactical baton. Goddamn son of a bitch! I left it on the night table inside the room. It’s going to have my fingerprints on it, Rudy.”

  How could she make such a brain-dead mistake? All went according to plan until she made an oversight, a mindless blunder, the very sort of blunder that catches people on the run all the time. The engine rumbles quietly on the side of the dark street, neither Lucy nor Rudy quite sure what to do. They are free. They got away with it. No one near or inside the hotel saw them, and now one of them must go back.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy whispers. “I’m a fucking idiot,” she says. “You stay here.”

  “No. I’ll take care of it.” Rudy’s fear turns to the more manageable emotion of rage, and he resists taking it out on her.

  “I fucked it up. I get to fix it.” She swings open the car door.

  BEV KIFFIN RUNS HER FINGERS through a rack of cheap acetate panties and bras.

  The women’s lingerie section of Wal-Mart is near arts and crafts and directly across from men’s athletic shoes, a section of the store she frequently haunts. She is certain, however, that the clerks in their cheap blue vests and name tags don’t recognize her. This is the type of business where tired, glazed employees don’t pay much attention to common-looking people like Bev who root around for bargains in a discount store that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  A red, lacy bra captivates her imagination, and she checks sizes, looking for a 38D. Finding one in black, she tucks it up a sleeve of her dark green rain slicker. The bra is followed by two pairs of bikini-cut panties, size large. Stealing lingerie and other items that do not have security sensors is so easy. She wonders why everybody doesn’t do it. Bev has no fear of consequences. No frontal-lobe alarm sounds when she contemplates committing a crime, no matter how serious. Opportunities come and go on her radar screen, some bigger and brighter than others, such as the woman who has just wandered into the arts and crafts section, interested in needlepoint.

  The thought of such a stupid domestic hobby fills Bev with contempt as she instantly deduces that the attractive blonde dressed in jeans and a light blue jacket is naïve.

  A lamb.

  Bev continues rummaging through the lingerie rack, the target on her radar flashing brighter with each passing second, her pulse picking up, her palms getting clammy.

  The woman drops skeins of colorful floss and a needlepoint pattern of an eagle and a flag into her cart. So she’s patriotic, Bev thinks. Maybe she has a husband or boyfriend in the military, might be gone, maybe still in Iraq. She’s at least thirty-five, maybe close to forty. Could be her man’s in the National Guard.

  The cart rolls forward, getting closer.

  Bev detects cologne. The scent is unfamiliar and probably expensive. The woman’s legs are slender, her posture good. She works out in the gym. She’s got free time on her hands. If she has children, she must be able to afford having someone take care of them while she’s trotting off to the gym or maybe the hair salon.

  Bev scans a scrap of paper, a shopping list, feigning that she is unaware of the woman, who pauses in the aisle, looking directly at the rack of lingerie. She wants to keep her man happy.

  A lamb.

  Good-looking.

  An air about her that Bev associates with intelligence.

  She can sense when people are smart. They don’t have to say one word, because the rest of them is talking. The woman pushes her cart straight to the rack, not even a foot from where Bev is standing, and the perfume crawls up Bev’s sinuses, burrowing way up inside her skull, and her focus sharpens to a point as the woman unzips her jacket, picks a sheer red bra off the rack and holds it up to firm, ample breasts.

  Hatred and envy electrify every nerve and muscle in Bev’s matronly body, her upper lip breaking out in a cold sweat. She wanders in the direction of men’s running shoes as the woman dials a cell phone. It rings somewhere for several seconds.

  “Honey?” she sweetly, happily says. “Still here. I know. Such a big place.” She laughs. “I like the Wal-Mart off Acadian better.” She laughs again. “Well, maybe I will if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  She holds out her left arm, glancing at the watch peeking out of her sleeve, the sort of watch runners wear. Bev expected something fancier.

  A LIGHT, MISTY RAIN DAMPENS the streets of Szczecin as Lucy nears the Radisson Hotel.

  This time she doesn’t have to wait for the clerk to leave the front desk. The lobby is deserted. She walks inside, casually but briskly, and heads to the elevators. Her finger is about to make contact with the elevator button when the doors part and a very intoxicated man lurches out, knocking into her.

  “ ’Scussssse me!” he says loudly, startling Lucy and jerking her mind out of gear.

  What to do? What to do?

  “Now, aren’t you the prettiest thing I’ve seen forever!”

  His words slur as if his mouth is numb with lidocaine, and he is almost yelling as he leers at her, checking her out from her hair to her cleavage to her satin cowboy boots. He announces that his party is going strong in room 301 and she must come. He goes on and on. My, my, how beautiful and sexy she is, and obviously American, and he was from Chicago, transferred recently to Germany, and is lonely and separated from his wife, who is a bitch.

  The desk clerk rushes back to the lobby, and not a minute later a security guard follows and speaks in English to the drunk.

  “Perhaps you should go back to your room. It is late, and you should go to sleep,” the guard says stiffly, eyeing Lucy with distaste and suspicion, as if assuming she is the vulgar man’s girlfriend, or perhaps a prostitute, and is probably drunk, too.

  She stabs at the elevator button, missing it several times, swaying and clutching the drunk man’s arm.

  “Come on, baby, let’s go,” she slurs with a Russian accent, leaning against him.

  “Now ain’t that sweet . . .” He is about to show besotted surprise and pleasure in her company when she reaches up and kisses him hard on the mouth.

  The elevator doors open and she pulls him inside, wrapping herself around him and continuing a long, tongue-groping kiss that tastes like garlic and whiskey. The security guard stares ston
ily at them as the doors shut.

  Mistake.

  The guard will remember her face. Lucy’s face is hard to forget, and the guard had plenty of time to look at it because Lucy was trapped with the drunk asshole.

  Big mistake.

  She hits button 2 as the man paws her. He doesn’t seem to notice that the elevator is stopping at the wrong floor, but suddenly his new lover is running away, clutching at her clothes. He tries to chase after her, wildly waving his arms, cursing, catching his toe on the carpet and stumbling.

  Lucy follows exit signs, turning into another hallway, then into a stairway. She silently makes her way up three flights and waits on the dimly lit landing, holding her breath and listening, sweat rolling down her face and soaking her sexy black blouse. Possibly, it was habit more than instinct that caused her to pluck up a plastic hotel key from the table in Caggiano’s room and tuck it in a pocket of her windbreaker. Whenever she checks out of a hotel, she always keeps a key, if it is a disposable one, in the event she suddenly realizes she has forgotten something. Once, and she doesn’t like to remember this, she left her gun in a bedside drawer and didn’t realize it until she was climbing into a taxi. Thank God she still had a key.

  The Do Not Disturb sign hangs ominously from the doorknob of room 511, and Lucy searches the hallway, desperately hoping she is not surprised by anyone else. As she makes her approach, she faintly hears the television inside Rocco’s room, and a sick pain stabs her stomach. Fear burns. Recalling what she and Rudy just did is awful, and now she must confront their sin again.

  A green light flickers, and she pushes open the door with her elbows because she has no fresh gloves, having raced off without them. She runs into a wall of rank smell from Rocco’s last greasy meal and detects his alcohol-saturated blood. It coagulates like pudding under his head, his eyes half open and dull, the chair overturned, the gun under his chest, every detail exactly as she and Rudy had left it. Blow flies buzz around his body, searching for the perfect piece of moist human real estate to appropriate for their eggs. Lucy stares, transfixed, at the frenzied insects.