Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  “We got a hit on the camper,” he said. “Traced it back to a manufacturer, then to an address in Newport News. Thought you’d want to know. Agents should be there right about now.”

  “Wish the Bureau had gotten that hit a little sooner,” I said. “I’ll see the agents at the door.”

  “What did you say?”

  I got off the phone.

  “I communicated with you because I knew you would pay attention.” Crowder kept talking at a higher pitch. “And to make you try and for once finally lose. The famous doctor. The famous chief.”

  “You were a colleague and friend,” I said.

  “And I resent you!” Her face was flushed, bosom heaving as she raged. “I always have! The way the system’s always treated you better, all the attention you get. The great Dr. Scarpetta. The legend. But ha! Look who won. In the end I outsmarted you, didn’t I?”

  I would not answer her.

  “Ran you around, didn’t I?” She stared, reaching for a bottle of aspirin and shaking out two. “Brought you close to death’s door and had you waiting in cyberspace. Waiting for me!” she said triumphantly.

  Something metal loudly rapped on her front door. I pushed back my chair.

  “What are they going to do? Shoot me? Or maybe you should. I bet you’ve got a gun in one of those bags.” She was getting hysterical. “I’ve got one in the other room and I’m going to get it right now.”

  She got up as the knocking continued, and a voice demanded, “Open up, FBI.”

  I grabbed her arm. “No one’s going to shoot you, Phyllis.”

  “Let go of me!”

  I steered her toward the door.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Your punishment will be to die the way they did.” I pulled her along.

  “NO!” she screamed as the door crashed open, slamming against the wall and jarring framed photographs loose from their hooks.

  Two FBI agents stepped inside with pistols drawn, and one of them was Janet. They cuffed Dr. Phyllis Crowder after she collapsed to the floor. An ambulance transported her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where twenty-one days later she died, shackled in bed, covered with fulminating pustules. She was forty-four.

  EPILOGUE

  I could not make the decision right away but put it off until New Year’s Eve when people are supposed to make changes, resolutions, promises they know they’ll never keep. Snow was clicking against my slate roof as Wesley and I sat on the floor in front of the fire, sipping champagne.

  “Benton,” I said, “I need to go somewhere.”

  He looked confused, as if I meant right now, and said, “There’s not much open, Kay.”

  “No. A trip, in February, maybe. To London.”

  He paused, knowing what I was thinking. He set his glass on the hearth and took my hand.

  “I’ve been hoping you would,” he said. “No matter how hard it is, you really should. So you can have closure, peace of mind.”

  “I’m not sure it’s possible for me to have peace of mind.”

  I pulled my hand away and pushed back my hair. This was hard for him, too. It had to be.

  “You must miss him,” I said. “You never talk about it, but he was like a brother. I remember all the times we did things together, the three of us. Cooking, watching movies, sitting around talking about cases and the latest lousy thing government had done to us. Like furloughs, taxes, budget cuts.”

  He smiled a little, staring into flames. “And I would think about what a lucky bastard he was to have you. Wonder what it was like. Well, now I know, and I was right. He was lucky as hell. He’s probably the only person I’ve ever really talked to, besides you. Kind of strange, in a way. Mark was one of the most self-centered people I’ve ever met, one of these beautiful creatures, narcissistic as hell. But he was good. He was smart. I don’t think you ever stop missing someone like him.”

  Wesley was wearing a white wool sweater and cream-colored khakis, and in firelight he was almost radiant.

  “You go out tonight and you’ll disappear,” I said.

  He gave me a puzzled frown.

  “Dressed like that in the snow. You fall in a ditch, no one will see you until spring. You should wear something dark on a night like this. You know, contrast.”

  “Kay. How about I put on some coffee.”

  “It’s like people who want a four-wheel-drive vehicle for winter. So they buy something white. Tell me how that makes sense when you’re sliding on a white road beneath a white sky with white stuff swirling everywhere.”

  “What are you talking about?” His eyes were on me.

  “I don’t know.”

  I lifted the bottle of champagne out of its bucket. Water dripped as I refilled our glasses, and I was ahead of him, about two to one. The CD player was stacked with hits from the seventies, and Three Dog Night was vibrating speakers in the walls. It was one of those rare times I might get drunk. I could not stop thinking about it and seeing it in my mind. I did not know until I was in that room with the wires hanging out of the ceiling and saw where gory severed hands and feet had been lined in a row. It was not until then that the truth seared my mind. I could not forgive myself.

  “Benton,” I quietly said, “I should have known it was her. I should have known before I got to her house and walked in there and saw the photographs and that room. I mean, a part of me must have known, and I didn’t listen.”

  He did not answer, and I took this as a further indictment.

  “I should have known it was her,” I muttered again. “People might not have died.”

  “Should is always easy to say after the fact.” His tone was gentle but unwavering. “People who live next door to the Gacys, the Bundys, the Dahmers of the world are always the last to figure it out, Kay.”

  “And they don’t know what I do, Benton.” I sipped champagne. “She killed Wingo.”

  “You did the best you could,” he reminded me.

  “I miss him,” I said with a sad sigh. “I haven’t been to Wingo’s grave.”

  “Why don’t we switch to coffee?” Wesley said again.

  “Can’t I just drift now and then?” I didn’t want to be present.

  He started rubbing the back of my neck, and I shut my eyes.

  “Why do I always have to make sense?” I muttered. “Precise about this, exact about that. Consistent with, and characteristic of. Words cold and sharp like the steel blades I use. And what good will they do me in court? When it’s Lucy in the balance? Her career, her life? All because of that bastard, Ring. Me, the expert witness. The loving aunt.” A tear slid down my cheek. “Oh God, Benton. I’m so tired.”

  He moved over and put his arms around me, pulling me into his lap so I could lean back my head.

  “I’ll go with you,” he quietly said into my hair.

  We took a black cab to London’s Victoria Station on February 18, the anniversary of a bombing that had ripped through a trash can and collapsed an underground entrance, a tavern and a coffee bar. Rubble had flown, shattered glass from the roof raining down in shrapnel and missiles with terrible force. The IRA had not targeted Mark. His death had nothing to do with his being FBI. He simply had been in the wrong place at the wrong time like so many people who are victims.

  The station was crowded with commuters who almost ran me over as we made our way to the central area where Railtrack ticket agents were busy in their booths, and displays on a wall showed times and trains. Kiosks were selling sweets and flowers, and one could get a passport picture taken or have money changed. Trash cans were tucked inside McDonald’s and places like that, but I did not see a single one out in the open.

  “No good place to hide a bomb now.” Wesley was observing the same thing.

  “Live and learn,” I said as I began to tremble inside.

  I silently stared around me as pigeons flapped overhead and trotted after crumbs. The entrance for the Grosvenor Hotel was next to the Victoria Tavern, and it was here that it had happene
d. No one was completely certain what Mark had been doing at the time, but it was speculated that he had been sitting at one of the small, high tables in front of the tavern when the bomb exploded.

  We knew he had been waiting for the train from Brighton to arrive because he was meeting someone. To this day I did not know who, because the individual’s identity could not be revealed for security reasons. That’s what I had been told. I had never understood many things, such as the coincidence of timing, and whether this clandestine person Mark was meeting may have been killed, too. I scanned the roof of steel girders and glass, the old clock on the granite wall, and archways. The bombing had left no permanent scars, except on people.

  “Brighton is a rather odd place to be in February,” I commented to Wesley in an unsteady voice. “Why would someone be coming from a seaside resort that time of year?”

  “I don’t know why,” he said, looking around. “This was all about terrorism. As you know, that was what Mark was working on. So no one’s saying much.”

  “Right. That was what he was working on, and that was how he died,” I said. “And no one seems to think there was a link. That maybe it wasn’t random.”

  He did not respond, and I looked at him, my soul heavy and sinking down into the darkness of a fathomless sea. People, and pigeons, and constant announcements on the PA blended into a dizzying din, and for an instant, all went black. Wesley caught me as I swayed.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I want to know who he was seeing,” I said.

  “Come on, Kay,” he said, gently. “Let’s go someplace where you can sit down.”

  “I want to know if the bombing was deliberate because a certain train was arriving at a certain time,” I persisted. “I want to know if this is all fiction.”

  “Fiction?” he asked.

  Tears were in my eyes. “How do I know this isn’t some cover-up, some ruse, because he’s alive and in hiding? A protected witness with a new identity.”

  “He’s not.” Wesley’s face was sad, and he held my hand. “Let’s go.”

  But I wouldn’t move. “I must know the truth. If it really happened. Who was he meeting and where is that person now?”

  “Don’t do this.”

  People were weaving around us, not paying any attention. Feet crashed like an angry surf, and steel clanged as construction workers laid new rail.

  “I don’t believe he was meeting anyone.” My voice shook and I wiped my eyes. “I believe this is some great big Bureau lie.”

  He sighed, staring off. “It’s not a lie, Kay.”

  “Then who! I have to know!” I cried.

  Now people were looking our way, and Wesley moved me out of traffic, toward platform 8, where the 11:46 train was leaving for Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye. He led me up a blue and white tile ramp into a room of benches and lockers, where travelers could store belongings and claim left baggage. I was sobbing, and could not help myself. I was confused and furious as we went into a deserted corner and he kindly sat me on a bench.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Benton, please. I’ve got to know. Don’t make me go the rest of my life not knowing the truth,” I choked between tears.

  He took both my hands. “You can put this to rest right now. Mark is dead. I swear. Do you really think I could have this relationship with you if I knew he were alive somewhere?” he passionately said. “Jesus. How can you even imagine I could do something like that!”

  “What happened to the person he was meeting?” I kept pushing.

  He hesitated. “Dead, I’m afraid. They were together when the bomb went off.”

  “Then why all the secrecy about who he was?” I exclaimed. “This isn’t making sense!”

  He hesitated again, this time longer, and for an instant, his eyes were filled with pity for me and it looked like he might cry. “Kay, it wasn’t a he. Mark was with a woman.”

  “Another agent.” I did not understand.

  “No.”

  “What are you saying?”

  The realization was slow because I did not want it, and when he was silent, I knew.

  “I didn’t want you to find out,” he said. “I didn’t think you needed to know that he was with another woman when he died. They were coming out of the Grosvenor Hotel when the bomb went off. It had nothing to do with him. He was just there.”

  “Who was she?” I felt relieved and nauseated at the same time.

  “Her name was Julie McFee. She was a thirty-one-year-old solicitor from London. They met through a case he was working. Or maybe through another agent. I’m really not sure.”

  I looked into his eyes. “How long had you known about them?”

  “For a while. Mark was going to tell you, and it wasn’t my place to.” He touched my cheek, wiping away tears. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how this makes me feel. As if you haven’t suffered enough.”

  “In a way it makes it easier,” I said.

  A teenager with body piercing and a mohawk slammed a locker door. We waited until he sauntered off with his girl in black leather.

  “Typical of my relationship with him, in truth.” I felt drained and could scarcely think as I got up. “He couldn’t commit, take a risk. Never would have, not for anyone. He missed out on so much, and that’s what makes me saddest.”

  Outside it was damp with a numbing wind blowing, and the line of cabs around the station did not end. We walked hand in hand and bought bottles of Hooper’s Hooch, because one could drink alcoholic lemonade on the streets of England. Police on dappled horses clopped past Buckingham Palace, and in St. James’s Park, a band of guards in bearskin caps were marching while people pointed cameras. Trees swayed and drums faded as we walked back to the Athenaeum Hotel on Piccadilly.

  “Thank you.” I slipped my arm around him. “I love you, Benton,” I said.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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