Four Scarpetta Novels

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I think it would be a very good idea for you to keep your hands off me,” she quietly warns him.

  He removes his arm. “And I think it might be a good idea for you to learn how things are done down here.” He watches cars pull up to the curb. “We’re going to meet, all right. Any information about ongoing investigations is important. And if someone’s an informant . . .”

  “I am no informant,” she interrupts his outrageous intimation that if she doesn’t fully cooperate with him, he’ll subpoena her for deposition. “Who told you I was coming to Baton Rouge?”

  Albert begins to cry.

  “Let me let you in on a little secret, pretty lady. Nothing much happens around here that I don’t know about.”

  “Mr. Winn,” she says, “if you have a legitimate need to talk to me at some point, I’ll be happy to do so. But in an appropriate venue—which a sidewalk outside an airport clearly isn’t.”

  “And I’ll certainly look forward to that.” He holds up a hand and snaps his fingers, signaling his driver.

  She slings her bag over her shoulder and takes Albert’s hand. “Don’t worry. It’s all right,” she tells him. “I’m sure your aunt’s on her way. But if she’s been delayed for some reason, I’m not going to leave you all by yourself, okay?”

  “But I don’t know you. I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers,” he whines.

  “We sat together on the plane, didn’t we?” she replies as Weldon Winn’s white stretch limousine pulls up to the curb. “So you know me a little bit, and I promise you’re safe, perfectly safe.”

  Winn climbs into the backseat and shuts the door, disappearing behind dark tinted glass. Cars and taxis stop for pickups, trunks popping open. People hug loved ones. Albert’s wide, runny eyes dart around furtively, his fears quickly broaching hysteria. Scarpetta senses Winn looking out at her as the limousine drives off, and her thoughts are scattered like marbles dashed to the floor. It is hard for her to sort through what she should do next, but she starts with dialing directory assistance on her cell phone and finds out in short order that there is no listing for a Weldon Winn or anyone with the last name of Winn in New Orleans, where he claims to have a place in the French Quarter. His number in Baton Rouge is unlisted.

  “Why am I not surprised,” she mutters, and all she can suppose is that someone told the U.S. Attorney she was arriving here in the early evening, and he flew to Houston and made sure he was on her connecting flight and seated next to her.

  Added to that disturbing and enigmatic development is her responsibility for a child she doesn’t know, whose family seems to have abandoned him.

  “You have your aunt’s phone number, don’t you?” she says to Albert. “Come on, let’s call her. And by the way,” it occurs to her, “you haven’t told me your last name.”

  “Dard,” Albert says. “I have my own cell phone, but the battery’s dead.”

  “I beg your pardon? What did you say your last name is?”

  “Dard.” He hunches a shoulder to wipe his face.

  ALBERT DARD STARES DOWN AT the dirty sidewalk, focusing on dried gum, gray and shaped like a small cookie.

  “Why were you in Houston?” Scarpetta asks him.

  “To change planes.” He begins to sob.

  “But where were you first, where did you leave from?”

  “Miami,” he replies, increasingly distraught. “I was with my uncle for spring break, and then my aunt said I had to come home right away.”

  “When did she say that?” Having given up on his aunt, Scarpetta takes Albert’s hand, and they walk back inside the baggage area, headed for the Hertz rental car desk.

  “This morning,” he replies. “I think I did something bad. Uncle Walt walked into my bedroom and woke me up. He said I was going home. I was supposed to be with him another three days.”

  Scarpetta squats and looks him in the eyes, gently holding his shoulders. “Albert, where’s your mother?”

  He bites his bottom lip. “With the angels,” he says. “My aunt says they’re around us all the time. I’ve never seen even one.”

  “And your father?”

  “Away. He’s very important.”

  “Tell me your home phone number, and let’s find out what’s going on,” she says. “Or maybe you have your aunt’s cell number? And what is her name?”

  Albert tells her his aunt’s name and his home number. Scarpetta calls. After several rings, a woman answers.

  “Is Mrs. Guidon in, please?” Scarpetta asks as Albert holds her hand tightly.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” The woman is polite, her accent French.

  “I’m not someone she knows, but I’m with her nephew, Albert. At the airport. It appears there is no one to pick him up.” She hands the phone to Albert. “Here,” she says to him.

  “Who is it?” he asks, oddly. After a pause, he says, “Because you’re not here, that’s why. I don’t know her name.” He scowls, his tone snippy.

  Scarpetta does not volunteer her name to him. Albert lets go of her hand and balls up his fist. He begins smacking it against his thigh, punching himself.

  The woman talks fast, her voice audible but unintelligible. She and Albert are speaking French, and Scarpetta stares at Albert with renewed bewilderment as he angrily ends the call and returns the cell phone to her.

  “Where did you learn French?” she asks him.

  “My mom,” he gloomily says. “Aunt Eveline makes me talk it a lot.” Tears fill his eyes again.

  “I tell you what, let’s get my rental car, and I’ll take you home. You can show me where you live, can’t you?”

  He wipes his eyes and nods his head.

  BATON ROUGE IS A SKYLINE of black smokestacks of different heights, and a pearly smog hangs in a band across the dark horizon. In the distance, the night is illuminated by the blazing lights of petrochemical plants.

  Albert Dard’s mood is improving as his new friend drives along River Road, not far from LSU’s football stadium. Along a graceful bend in the Mississippi, he points to iron gates and old brick pillars up ahead.

  “There,” he says. “That’s it.”

  Where he lives is an estate set back at least a quarter of a mile from the road, a massive slate roof and several chimneys rising above dense trees. Scarpetta stops the car, and Albert gets out to enter a code on a keypad, and the gates slowly open. They drive slowly to the classical-revival villa with its small, wavy glass windows and massive masonry front porch. Old live oak trees bend over the property as if to protect it. The only car visible is an old white Volvo parked in front on the cobblestone drive.

  “Is your father home?” Scarpetta asks as her silver rental Lincoln bumps over pavers.

  “No,” Albert glumly replies as they park.

  They get out and climb steep brick steps. Albert unlocks the door and deactivates the burglar alarm, and they enter a restored antebellum home with hand-carved molding, dark mahogany, painted panels and antique Oriental rugs that are threadbare and dreary. Wan light filters through windows flanked by heavy damask draperies held back with tasseled cords, and a staircase winds up to a second floor, where someone’s quick footsteps sound against a wooden floor.

  “That’s my aunt,” Albert says as a woman with bones like a bird’s and unsmiling dark eyes descends the stairs, her hand gliding along the smooth, gleaming wooden banister.

  “I am Mrs. Guidon.” She walks with light, quick steps to the entrance hallway.

  With her sensuous mouth and delicate nostrils, Mrs. Guidon would be pretty, were her face not hard and her dress so severe. A high collar is fastened with a gold brooch, and she wears a long black skirt and clumsy lace-up black shoes, and her black hair is tightly pinned back. She appears to be in her forties, but her age is hard to determine. Her skin is unlined and so pale it is almost translucent, as if she has never seen the sun.

  “May I offer you a cup of tea?” Mrs. Guidon’s smile is as chilly as the stale, still air.

 
; “Yes!” Albert grabs Scarpetta’s hand. “Please come have tea. And cookies, too. You’re my new friend!”

  “There will be no tea for you,” Mrs. Guidon tells him. “Go up to your room right this minute. Take your suitcase with you. I will let you know when you can come down.”

  “Don’t leave,” Albert begs Scarpetta. “I hate you,” he says to Mrs. Guidon.

  She ignores him, obviously having heard this before. “Such a funny little boy who is very tired and cranky because it is very late. Now say good-bye. I’m afraid you won’t see this nice lady again.”

  Scarpetta is kind to him as she says good-bye.

  He trudges angrily up the stairs, looking back at her several times, his face painfully touching her heart. When she hears his footsteps on the wooden floor upstairs, she looks hard at her unpleasant and peculiar hostess.

  “How cold you are to a little boy, Mrs. Guidon,” she says. “What kind of people are you and his father, that you would hope a stranger would bring him home?”

  “I am disappointed.” Her imperious demeanor doesn’t waver. “I thought a scientist of your renown would investigate before making assumptions.”

  LUCY AND MARINO connect by cell phone.

  “Where’s she staying?” she asks from her parked black Lincoln Navigator SUV.

  She and Rudy figured out that the best way to be inconspicuous was to pull into the Radisson parking lot and sit with the engine and lights off.

  “The coroner. I’m glad she ain’t by herself in no hotel.”

  “None of us need to be in a hotel,” Lucy says. “Damn, could you drive a louder truck?”

  “If I had one.”

  “How does he check out? What’s his name?”

  “Sam Lanier. His background’s clean as a whistle. When he called to check out the Doc, I got the impression he’s an okay guy.”

  “Well, if he isn’t, she’ll be all right. Because he’s about to have three other houseguests,” Lucy says.

  A FRAGILE WEDGEWOOD TEACUP lightly clinks against a saucer.

  Mrs. Guidon and Scarpetta sit at a kitchen table made of a centuries-old butcher block that Scarpetta finds repulsive. She can’t help but imagine how many chickens and other animals were slaughtered and chopped up on the worn, sloping wood with its hack marks, cracks and discoloration. It is an unpleasant by-product of her profession that she knows too much, and it is almost impossible to kill bacteria on porous materials such as wood.

  “How many times must I demand to know why I’m here and how you managed to get me here?” Scarpetta’s eyes are intense.

  “I find it charming that Albert seems to have decided you are his friend,” Mrs. Guidon remarks. “I try very hard to encourage him. He wants nothing to do with school sports or any other activities that might expose him to children his own age. He thinks he belongs right here at this table”—she taps the butcher block with her small, milky white knuckles—“talking to you and me as if he is our peer.”

  After years of dealing with people who refuse to answer questions or can’t or are in denial, Scarpetta is skilled at catching truths as they subtly show themselves. “Why doesn’t he associate with children his own age?” she inquires.

  “Who knows? It is a mystery. He has always been odd, really, preferring to stay home and do homework, entertaining himself with those peculiar games children play these days. Cards with those awful creatures on them. Cards and computers, cards and more cards.” Her gestures are dramatic, her French accent heavy, her English stilted and faltering. “He has been more this way as he gets older. Isolated and playing the card games. Often, he is home, stays in his room with the door shut and will not come out.” Suddenly, she softens and seems caring.

  Every detail Scarpetta observes is conflicting and disturbing, the kitchen an argument of anachronisms that seem a metaphor for this house and the people who live in it. Behind her is a cavernous fireplace, with formidable hand-forged andirons capable of bearing a load of wood large enough to heat up a room three times this size. A door leads outside, and next to it is a complicated alarm system keypad and an Aiphone with a video screen for the cameras that no doubt guard every entrance. Another keypad, this one much larger, indicates the old mansion is a smart house with multiple modems that allow the occupants to remotely control heating, cooling, lights, entertainment centers and gas fireplaces, and even turn appliances off and on. Yet the appliances and thermostats Scarpetta has seen so far have not been upgraded for what she estimates is at least thirty years.

  A knife holder on the granite countertop is empty, and there are no knives in the porcelain sink, not a knife anywhere in sight. Yet hanging over the fireplace is a rack of nineteenth-century swords, and on the heavy chestnut mantel is a revolver with rubber grips, most likely a .38, in a black leather holster.

  Mrs. Guidon follows Scarpetta’s eyes, and for an instant, her face registers anger. She has made an oversight, a telling mistake. Leaving the revolver in plain view was not intentional. “I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that Mr. Dard is very security-conscious.” She sighs, shrugging, as if taking her guest into her confidence and hinting that Mr. Dard is ridiculously cautious and paranoid. “Baton Rouge is high-crime. I’m sure you know that. Living in a house like this and having wealth causes concerns, although I’m not the type to be looking over my shoulder all the time.”

  Scarpetta hides how much she dislikes Mrs. Guidon and is infuriated about what Albert’s life must be like. She wonders how far she can go to pry loose the secrets that haunt this very old estate.

  “Albert seems very unhappy and misses his dog,” she says. “Perhaps you should get him another one. Especially if he’s lonely and has no friends.”

  “With him, I believe it is genetics. His mother—my sister—wasn’t well.” Mrs. Guidon pauses, then adds, “Of course, you know that.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to know. You seem to know so much about me.”

  “Now, you are perceptive,” Mrs. Guidon replies with a touch of condescension. “But not as cautious as I would have guessed. Albert called me on your cell phone, remember? That was careless for someone of your reputation.”

  “What do you know of my reputation?”

  “Caller ID came back to your name, and I am aware you haven’t suddenly arrived in Baton Rouge for a little vacation. Charlotte’s case is complicated. No one seems to have any idea what happened to her or why she went to a horrible motel frequented by truck drivers and the dregs of society. So Dr. Lanier has solicited your assistance, no? But I, at least, am relieved and grateful, and let’s just say it was planned that you would sit next to Albert and drive him home, and here you are.” She lifts her teacup. “All things happen for a reason, as you must know.”

  “How could you possibly have orchestrated all this?” Scarpetta pushes her, warns her, making it clear that she has had enough. “I don’t suppose U.S. Attorney Weldon Winn is involved with your scheming, since he just happened to sit next to me, too.”

  “There is much you don’t know. Mr. Winn is a close family friend.”

  “What family? Albert’s father didn’t show up at the airport. Albert doesn’t seem to even know where he is. What did any of you suppose would happen to a young boy traveling alone?”

  “He wasn’t alone. He was with you. And now you are here. I wanted to meet you. Perfect.”

  “Family friend?” Scarpetta repeats. “Then why did Albert not know Weldon Winn, if he is such a good family friend?”

  “Albert has never met him.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “That’s not for you to say.”

  “I’ll say whatever I want, since you seemed to have assigned Albert to me and were certain he would be safe with me—a perfect stranger—and that I would bring him home. How could you be sure I would take it upon myself to look after him or that I’m trustworthy?” Scarpetta pushes back her chair and gets up, and it scrapes loudly against heart-of-pine flooring. “He lost h
is mother, who the hell knows about the father, and he’s lost his dog, and next he’s abandoned and frightened. In my business, this is called child neglect, child abuse.” Her anger flashes.

  “I am Charlotte’s sister.” Mrs. Guidon gets up, too.

  “All you’ve done is manipulate me. Or try to. I’m leaving now.”

  “Please let me show you around first,” Mrs. Guidon says. “Particularly

  le cave.”

  “How could you possibly have a wine cellar in an area where the water table is so high that plantation houses have to be built on pillars?” Scarpetta asks.

  “So you are not always observant. This house is on an elevation, built in 1793. The original owner found the perfect location for what he had in mind. He was a Frenchman, a wine connoisseur who often traveled back to France. Slaves constructed a wine cellar, like the ones he knew in France, and I doubt there is another one like it in this country.” She walks to the door leading outside and opens it. “You simply must see it. Baton Rouge’s best-kept secret.”

  Scarpetta stands where she is. “No.”

  Mrs. Guidon lowers her voice and is almost gentle when she explains, “You are wrong about Albert. I was circling the airport. I saw the two of you on the sidewalk. Had you left him, I would have picked him up, but based on what I know about you, you would not leave him. You are too caring, too decent. And you are wary about the evils in this world.” She states this not with feeling but as fact.

  “How could you have been circling the airport? I called you at home . . .”

  “Programmed to roll over to my cell phone. I actually was looking at you when you called me.” This amuses her. “I got to the house no more than fifteen minutes before you did, Dr. Scarpetta. I don’t blame you for being angry and confused, but I wanted to talk to you when Jason wasn’t here. Albert’s father. Believe me, you are very fortunate that he isn’t here.” She hesitates, holding the kitchen door open wide. “When he’s around, there is no such thing as privacy. Please come.” She motions to her.