Trace ks-13

by Patricia Cornwell

  "I believe I'll have one more," he says.

  The women who work here are hostesses, not waitresses, and they expect to be treated like hostesses. Gentlemen drift in and out of the Other Way and do not snap their fingers at the ladies because they are hostesses and demand respect, so much respect that Pogue feels they are doing him a favor to let him come in and spend his money on their runny, bloody Bleeding Sunsets. His eyes move in the dark and he sees the redhead. She wears a skimpy, short black jumper that should have a blouse under it but doesn't. The jumper barely covers what she needs to cover, and he has never seen her bend over unless it is for reasons other than brushing off a tablecloth or setting down a drink. She bends over to give special men something to see, those special men who tip well and know how to talk the talk. The jumper has a bib that is nothing more than a square of black cloth smaller than a sheet of typing paper and held up by two black straps. The bib is loose. When she leans into a conversation or to pick up an empty glass, she jiggles inside the bib and may even spill out of it, but it is dark, very dark, and she has not bent over his table and probably won't and he cannot see well from where he sits.

  He gets up from his table near the door because he has no desire to yell out that he wants another Bleeding Sunset, and he's no longer sure he wants one. I Ic keeps thinking of the bright plastic orange with the green straw, and the more he sees it and remembers his disappointment, the more unfair it is. He stands by the table and reaches into a pocket and pulls out a twenty. Money in the Other Way is what it takes, like steak to a dog, he thinks. The redhead clicks over in her little stilt-high pointed shoes, jiggling inside her bib, pumping inside her tight little skirt. Up close, she is old. She is fifty-seven or fifty-eight, maybe sixty.

  "You heading out, hon?" She plucks the twenty off the table and doesn't look at him.

  There is a mole on her right cheek and it is drawn on, probably with eyeliner. He could have done a much better job. "I wanted another one," he says.

  "Don't we all, hon." Her laughter reminds him of a cat in pain. "Hold the phone and I'll bring ya one."

  "The ' 1 "I

  Its too late, he says.

  "Bessie girl, where s my whisky?" a quiet man asks from a nearby table.

  Pogue saw him earlier, saw him drive up in a big new Cadillac, a silver one. He is very old, at least eighty or eighty-one or eighty-two, and dressed in a pale blue seersucker suit and pale blue tie. Bessie shakes and bounces over to him and suddenly Pogue is gone even though he hasn't left yet. So he leaves. He may as well leave since he is already gone. He walks out the heavy dark door, out into the gravel parking lot, out into the dark, out to the black olive trees and palms along the sidewalk. He stands in the dense shadows of the trees and looks at the Shell station across North 26th Avenue, at the big seashell lit up bright yellow in the night, and he feels the warm breeze and is content to just stand for a few minutes, looking.

  The lit-up shell makes him think of the plastic oranges again. He doesn't know why, unless his mother used to buy the drinks for him at gas stations, and maybe she did. That would make sense if she bought them now and then, probably for a dime apiece when they were driving from Virginia to Florida, to Vero Beach every summer to visit her mother, who had money, a lot of it. He and his mother always stayed in a place called the Driftwood Inn, and he doesn't remember much about it except it looked like it was built of driftwood and at night he slept on the same inflated plastic raft that he floated on during the day.

  The raft was not very big and his arms and legs hung off it the same way they did when he was paddling around in the waves, and that was what he slept on in the living room while his mother stayed inside the bedroom with the door locked, the only air conditioner rattling from the window inside her closed-up and locked bedroom. He remembers how hot and sweaty he got, how his sunburned skin stuck to the plastic raft and every time he moved it felt like a Band-Aid being ripped off, all night long, all week long. That was their vacation. It was the only one they took each year, in the summer, always in August.

  Pogue watches headlights coming and taillights going, bright white and red eyes flying by in the night, and he looks up ahead to his left and waits for the traffic light to change. When it does, the traffic slows, and then he trots across the clear lane of eastbound traffic and darts between cars in the westbound lane. At the Shell station, he looks up at the bright yellow shell floating high above him in the dark and he watches an old man in baggy shorts pumping gas at one pump and another old man in a rumpled suit pumping gas at a different pump. Pogue stays in the shadows and moves silently to the glass door and a bell jingles as he walks inside and heads straight back to the drink machines. The lady at the counter is ringing up a bag of chips, a six-pack of beer, and gas, and doesn't look at him.

  Near the coffee machine is the soda machine, and he takes five of the biggest plastic cups and lids and walks up to the counter with them. The cups are bright with cartoon designs and the lids he picks out are white with a little spout for drinking. He sets the cups and lids on the counter.

  "Do you have any plastic oranges with green straws? Orange drinks?" he asks the lady behind the counter.

  "What?" She frowns and picks up one of the cups. "There's nothing in these. You buying Big Slurps or not?"

  "Not," he says. "I just want the cups and the lids."

  "We don't sell just cups."

  "That's all I want," he says.

  She peers over her glasses to look at his face, and he wonders what she sees when she looks at his face like that. "We don't sell just the cups, I'm telling you."

  "I'd rather buy the orange drinks if you've got them," he replies.

  "What orange drinks?" Her impatience flares. "See that big cooler back there? What's in there is what we got."

  "They're in plastic oranges that look just like oranges and come with a green straw."

  Her frown dissolves into a look of amazement and her brightly painted lips part in a gaping smile that reminds him of a jack-o'-lantern. "Well, I'll be damned, now I know exactly what you're talking about. Those damn orange drinks. Darling, they haven't been sold in years. Damn, I haven't thought about those forever."

  "Then I'll just take the cups and lids," he insists.

  "Lord, I give up. Good thing my shift's about to end, tell you that."

  "A long night," he says.

  "Just got longer." She laughs. "Those damn oranges with the straws." She looks toward the door as the old man in baggy shorts comes in to pay for his gas.

  Pogue doesn't pay any attention to him. Pogue stares at her, at her dyed hair as platinum as fishing line and her powdered skin that looks like a soft, wrinkled cloth. If he touched her skin, it would feel like butterfly wings. If he touched her skin, the powder would come off, just like butterfly wings. Her name tag says EDITH.

  "Tell you what," Edith is speaking to him. "I'm gonna charge you fifty cents per empty cup and throw in the lids for nothing. Now I got other customers." Her fingers peck on the register and the drawer slides open.

  Pogue hands Edith a five-dollar bill and his fingers touch her fingers as he takes his change, and her fingers are cool and quick and soft, and he knows the skin on them is loose, the loose skin that women her age have. Outside in the humid night, he waits for traffic and crosses the street the same way he did minutes earlier. He lingers beneath the same black olive trees and palms, watching the front door of the Other Way Lounge. When no one comes or goes, he walks rapidly to his car and gets in.

  33

  "You should tell him," Marino says. "Even if it don't turn out the way you think, he ought to know what's going on."

  "That's how people head off down the wrong path," Scarpetta replies.

  "It's also how they get a head start."

  "Not this time," she says.

  "You're the boss, Doc."

  Marino is stretched out on his bed inside the Marriott on Broad Street, and Scarpetta is sitting in the same chair she was sitting in earlier, but
she has pulled it closer to him. He looks very big but less threatening in loose white cotton pajamas she found for him at a department store south of the river. Beneath the light, soft fabric his wounds are dark orange with Betadine. He claims his injuries aren't hurting as much, not nearly as much. She has changed out of her mud-spattered midnight blue suit and is wearing tan corduroys and a dark blue turtleneck sweater and loafers. They are in his room because she did not want him in her room, so she decided his room was safe enough, and they have eaten sandwiches sent up by room service and now they are just talking.

  "But I still don't see why you can't just bounce it off him," Marino says, and he is fishing. His curiosity about her relationship with Benton is as pervasive as dust. She notices it constantly and it gets on her nerves, and there is no use trying to get rid of it.

  "I'll take the soil samples to the labs first thing in the morning," she tells him. "We'll know in a hurry whether a mistake has been made. If one has, there is no point in my telling Benton about it. A mistake is not germane to the case. It would simply be a mistake. A bad one."

  "You don't believe it, though." He looks at her from clouds of pillows she plumped behind him. His color is better. His eyes are brighter.

  "I don't know what I believe," she says. "It makes no sense either way. If the trace evidence found on the tractor driver isn't a mistake, then how do you explain it? How could the same type of evidence turn up in Gilly Paulsson's case? Perhaps you have a theory."

  Marino thinks hard, his eyes fixing on the window filled with blackness and the lights of downtown. "I can't think how," he says. "I swear to God, I can't come up with anything except what I said in the meeting. And that was just being a smartass."

  "Who? You?" she asks dryly.

  "Seriously. How could what's-his-name Whitby have the same trace on him that she did? In the first place, she died two weeks before he did. So why would he have it on him at all, especially two weeks after she got it on her? It don't look good," he decides.

  Her spirit recoils and she feels a sickness that she has learned to recognize as fear. The only logical explanation at the moment is cross contamination or mislabeling. Either can happen more easily than people might think. All it takes is for one evidence bag or test tube to be placed in the wrong envelope or rack or the wrong label to be stuck on a sample. This can happen in five seconds of inattention or confusion and then the evidence suddenly came from a source that either makes no sense or, worse, answers a question that could set a suspect free or send him to court, to prison, to the death chamber. She thinks of dentures. She envisions the Fort Lee soldier trying to force the wrong dentures into the dead obese woman's mouth. That's all it takes, one lax moment like that.

  "I still don't see why you don't bounce it off Benton," Marino says, reaching for a glass of water by the bed. "What would be wrong with my having a few beers? A few hairs of the dog?"

  "What would be right with it?" She has file folders in her lap and is idly flipping through copies of reports, seeing if anything she already knows about Gilly and the tractor driver might suddenly tell her something new. "Alcohol interferes with healing," she says. "It's not been much of a friend to you anyway, has it?"

  "Last night it wasn't."

  "Order what you want. I'm not going to tell you what to do."

  He hesitates and she senses that he wants her to tell him what to do, but she won't. She's done it before and it is a waste, and she doesn't want to be his co-pilot as he flies like a crazed mad bomber through life. Marino looks at the phone, his hands in his lap, and he reaches for the water.

  "How are you feeling?" she asks, turning a page. "Need more Advil?"

  "I'm okay. Nothing a few beers wouldn't fix."

  "That's up to you." She turns another page, scanning the long list of Mr. Whitby's ruptured and lacerated organs.

  "You sure she's not going to call the cops?" Marino asks.

  She feels his eyes on her. They shine on her like the soft heat from a lamp and she doesn't blame him for feeling scared. The accusations alone would ruin him, that is the truth of the matter. He would be destroyed in law enforcement, and it is quite possible that a Richmond jury would find him guilty just because he is a man, a very big man, and Mrs. Paulsson is skilled at acting pitiful and helpless. The thought of her sharpens Scarpetta's anger.

  "She won't," she says. "I called her bluff. Tonight she'll dream about all the magical evidence I carried out of her house. Most of all, she'll dream about the game. She doesn't want the cops or anyone else knowing about the little game or games that go on in her historic little house. Let me ask you something." She looks up from the papers in her lap. "Had Gilly been alive and home, do you think Suz, as you call her, would have done what she did last night? Conjecture, granted. But what's your instinct?"

  "I think she does whatever the hell she wants," he replies in a dead tone, the flat tone of resentment and outrage restrained by shame.

  "Do you remember if she was drunk?"

  "She was high," he replies. "High as a kite."

  "On alcohol or maybe something else in addition?"

  "I didn't see her pop any pills or smoke nothing or shoot up. But there's probably a lot I didn't see."

  "Someone is going to have to talk to Frank Paulsson," Scarpetta says, looking at another report. "Depending on what we find out tomorrow, we might see if Lucy would help."

  Marino gets a look on his face and smiles for the first time in hours. "Holy shit. What an idea. She's a pilot. Let her loose on the pervert."

  "Exactly." Scarpetta turns a page and takes a deep, quiet breath. "Nothing," she says. "Absolutely nothing that tells me anything more about Gilly. She was asphyxiated and had chips of paint and metal in her mouth. Mr. Whitby's injuries are consistent with his being run over by the tractor. For the hell of it, we should find out if there is any possibility he has some connection to the Paulssons."

  "She would know," Marino says.

  "You're not calling her." She does tell him what to do in this situation. He is not to call Suzanna Paulsson. "Don't push your luck." She looks up at him.

  "I wasn't saying I would. Maybe she knew the tractor driver. Hell, maybe he was into the game. Maybe they have a perverts' club."

  "Well, they aren't neighbors." Scarpetta looks at paperwork in Whitby's folder. "He lived over near the airport, not that it matters, necessarily. Tomorrow while I'm in the labs, maybe you can see what you can find out."

  Marino doesn't answer her. He doesn't want to talk to any Richmond cops.

  "You've got to walk into it," she says, closing the file folder.

  "Walk into what?" He looks at the phone by the bed, probably thinking about beer again.

  "You know what."

  "I hate it when you talk like that," he says, getting crabby. "Like I'm supposed to figure out something from a word or two. I guess some guys would be grateful to know a woman who only talks in a few words."

  She folds her hands on top of the file folder in her lap and is somewhat amused. Whenever she's right, he gets cranky. She waits to see what he'll say next.

  "All right," he says, unable to stand the silence for long. "Walk into what? Just tell me what the hell I need to walk into besides the loony bin, because right about now I'm feeling half crazy."

  "You need to walk into what you fear. And you fear the police because you're still afraid that Mrs. Paulsson has called them. She hasn't. She won't. Get it over with and then the fear will be gone."

  "It ain't about fear. It's about being stupid," he retorts.

  "Good. Then you'll call Detective Browning or someone, because if you don't, you're being stupid. I'm going back to my room now," she adds, getting up from the chair and moving it back near the window. "I'll see you in the lobby at eight."

  34

  She drinks a glass of wine in bed, and it is not a very good wine, a Cabernet that has a sharp aftertaste. But she drinks every drop in the glass as she sits alone inside her hotel room. It is two hours earlie
r in Aspen and maybe Benton is out to dinner or in a meeting, busy with his case, his secret case that he will not discuss with her.

  Scarpetta rearranges the pillows behind her back, propped up in bed, and sets the empty wineglass on the bedside table, next to the phone. She looks at the phone, then looks at the TV wondering if she should turn it on. Deciding not to turn on the TV, she looks at the phone again and picks up the receiver. She dials Benton's cell phone number because he said not to call his town home, and he meant it when he told her that. He was clear about it. Don't call the condo, he told her. I won't be answering the land line, he said.

  That doesn't make sense, she replied what now seems months ago. Why won't you answer the phone in your condo?

  I don't want distractions, he replied. I won't be answering the land line. If you really have to reach me, Kay, call my cell phone. Please don't take it personally. It's just the way it is. You know how it is.

  Benton's cell phone rings twice and he answers.

  "What are you doing?" she asks, staring at the blank TV screen opposite the bed.

  "Hi," he says softly but distantly. "I'm in my office."

  She imagines the third-floor bedroom he has turned into an office inside his Aspen condo. She imagines him sitting at his desk, a document opened on his computer screen. He is working on his case, and she feels better knowing he is home, working.

  "It was a pretty rough day," she says. "How about you?"

  "Tell me what's going on."

  She starts to tell him about Dr. Marcus but doesn't want to get into it. Then she starts to tell him about Marino, but the words won't come out. Her brain is sluggish and for some reason she feels stingy toward Benton. She longs for him and feels stingy toward him and doesn't want to tell him much of anything.