Book of the Dead ks-15

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I avoided her for as long as I could,” Dr. Self says. “A situation very similar to yours, Kay. I knew of her. Why do people entangle themselves in the tentacles of someone poisonous? I hear myself talk, and every comment suggests a show. It’s exhausting and exhilarating when you realize you’ll never run out of shows. Marino should have known better. He’s so simple. Have you heard from him?”

  “You were the beginning and the end,” Scarpetta says. “Why couldn’t you leave him alone?”

  “He contacted me first.”

  “His e-mails were those of a desperately unhappy and frightened man. You were his psychiatrist.”

  “Years ago. I can scarcely remember it.”

  “You of all people know how he is, and you used him. You took advantage of him because you wanted to hurt me. I don’t care if you hurt me, but you shouldn’t have hurt him. Then you tried again, didn’t you? To hurt Benton. Why? To pay me back for Florida? I would think you’d have better things to do.”

  “I’m at an impasse, Kay. You see, Shandy should get what she deserves, and by now Paulo has had a long talk with Benton, am I wrong? Paulo called me, of course. I’ve managed to make sense of some of the pieces.”

  “To tell you the Sandman is your son,” Scarpetta says. “Paulo called to tell you that.”

  “One piece is Shandy. The other piece is Will. Yet another piece is Little Will, as I’ve always called him. My Will came home from a war and walked right into another war far more brutal. Do you think that didn’t push him beyond the beyond? Not that he was normal. I’d be the first to say that not even my tools would do any good under his hood. This was about a year, year and a half ago, Kay. He walked in and found his son half starved to death and bruised and battered.”

  “Shandy,” Scarpetta says.

  “Will didn’t do that. No matter what he’s done now, he didn’t do that. My son would never harm a child. Shandy probably thought it was very sporting of her to brutalize that boy just because she could. He was a nuisance. She’ll tell you that. A colicky baby and a crabby little boy.”

  “And she managed to hide him from the world?”

  “Will was in the Air Force. She kept their son in Charlotte until her father died. Then I encouraged her to move here, and that’s when she started abusing him. Severely.”

  “And she disposed of his body in a marsh? At night?”

  “Her? Not hardly. I can’t imagine it. She doesn’t even own a boat.”

  “How do you know a boat was used? I don’t recall that’s been established as a fact.”

  “She wouldn’t know the creeks and tides, would never go out on the water at night. Little secret — she can’t swim. Obviously, she would have needed help.”

  “Does your son have a boat and know the creeks and tides?”

  “He used to have one, and loved to take his little boy on ‘adventures.’ Picnics. Campouts on deserted islands. Discovering never-never lands, just the two of them. So imaginative and wistful — very much a child himself, really. It seems last time he was deployed, Shandy sold a lot of his things. Quite considerate, that one. I’m not sure he even owns a car anymore. But he’s resourceful. Light and quick on his feet. And covert, no doubt. Probably learned that over there.” She means Iraq.

  Scarpetta is thinking about Marino’s flat-bottom bass boat with its powerful outboard engine, bow-mount trolling motor, and oars. His boat that he hasn’t used for months and doesn’t even seem to think about anymore. Especially of late. Especially since Shandy. She would have known about the boat, even if they’d never gone out in it. She could have told Will. Maybe he borrowed it. Marino’s boat should be searched. Scarpetta wonders how she will explain all this to the police.

  “Who was going to take care of Shandy’s little inconvenience? The body. What was my son supposed to do?” Dr. Self says. “That’s what happens, isn’t it? One person’s sin becomes your own. Will loved his son. But when Daddy goes marching off to war, Mommy has to be both parents. And in this instance, Mommy is a monster. I’ve always despised her.”

  “You’ve supported her,” Scarpetta says. “Handsomely, I might add.”

  “Let’s see. And you know that? Let me guess. Lucy’s invaded her privacy, probably knows what she has — or had — in the bank. I wouldn’t have ever known my grandson was dead if Shandy hadn’t called. I suppose the day the body was found. She wanted money. More of it. And my advice.”

  “Is she and what she told you why you’re here?”

  “Shandy has managed to do a rather brilliant job of blackmailing me all these years. People don’t know I have a son. They certainly don’t know I have a grandson. If these facts were known, I would be viewed as neglectful. A terrible mother. A terrible grandmother. All those things my own dear mother says about me. By the time I became famous, it was too late to go back and undo my very deliberate distancing. I had no choice but to continue it. Mommie Dearest — and I mean Shandy — kept my secret in exchange for cashier’s checks.”

  “Now you intend to keep her secret safe in exchange for what?” Scarpetta says. “She abused her son to death and you want her to get away with it, in exchange for what?”

  “I suppose a jury would love to see the tape of her in your morgue, in your refrigerator, looking at her dead son. The murderer inside your morgue. Imagine what a story that would make. I would say, conservatively say, that you would have no career left, Kay. With that in mind, you should thank me. My privacy ensures your own.”

  “Then you don’t know me.”

  “I forgot to offer you coffee. Service for two.” Smiling.

  “I won’t forget what you’ve done,” Scarpetta says, getting up. “What you’ve done to Lucy, to Benton, to me. I’m not sure what you’ve done to Marino.”

  “I’m not sure what he did to you. But I know enough. How is Benton handling it?” She refills her coffee. “Such a peculiar thing to consider.” She leans back into the pillows. “You know, when Marino was seeing me in Florida, his lust couldn’t have been more palpable unless he’d grabbed me and torn off my clothes. It’s oedipal and pitiful. He wants to fuck his mother — the most powerful person in his life, and forever and a day he will chase the end of his oedipal rainbow. There was no pot of gold when he had sex with you. At last, at last. Hooray for him. It’s a wonder he hasn’t killed himself.”

  Scarpetta stands at the door, staring at her.

  “What kind of lover is he?” Dr. Self asks. “Benton, I can see. But Marino? I haven’t heard from him in days. Have the two of you worked it out? And what does Benton say?”

  “If Marino didn’t tell you, who did?” Scarpetta quietly asks.

  “Marino? Oh, no. Certainly not. He didn’t tell me about your little foray. He was followed to your house from, oh, dear, what’s the name of that bar? Another one of Shandy’s thugs, this one commissioned to give you serious thoughts about relocating.”

  “You did that, then. I thought so.”

  “To help you.”

  “Do you have so little in your life that you have to overpower people this way?”

  “Charleston isn’t a good place for you, Kay.”

  Scarpetta shuts the door behind her. She leaves the hotel. She walks over pavers, past a plashing fountain of horses, and into the hotel’s garage. The sun isn’t up yet, and she should call the police, but all she can think about is the misery one person can cause. The first shadow of panic touches her in a deserted level of concrete and cars, and she thinks about one remark Dr. Self made.

  It’s a wonder he hasn’t killed himself.

  Was she making a prediction or voicing an expectation or hinting at yet another horrible secret she knows? Now Scarpetta can think of nothing else, and she can’t call Lucy or Benton. Truth be told, they have no sympathy for him, may even hope he ate his gun or drove off a bridge, and she imagines Marino dead inside his truck at the bottom of the Cooper River.

  She decides to call Rose, and gets out her cell phone, but there’s no signal, a
nd she walks to her SUV, vaguely aware of the white Cadillac parked next to it. She notices an oval sticker on the rear bumper, recognizes the HH for Hilton Head, and she feels what is happening before she is aware of it, and turns around as Captain Poma rushes out from behind a concrete support. She feels the air move behind her, or she hears it, and he lunges, and she wheels around as something clamps her arm. For a suspended second, a face is level with hers, a young man with a buzz cut and a red, swollen ear, staring wildly. He slams against her car, and a knife clatters at her feet, and the captain is punching him and yelling.

  Chapter 23

  Bull holds his cap in his hands.

  He is stooped over a little in the front seat, mindful that his head touches the roof if he sits up straight, which is what he’s prone to do. Bull carries himself with pride, even when he’s just been bailed out of the city jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

  “I sure thank you for the ride, Dr. Kay,” he says as she parks in front of her house. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

  “Don’t keep saying that, Bull. I’m really angry right now.”

  “I know you are, and I sure am sorry, because it’s nothing you did.” He opens his door and is slow working his way out of the front seat. “I tried to get the dirt off my boots, but it looks like I messed up your mat a little, so I think I best clean it or at least shake it out.”

  “Don’t apologize anymore, Bull. You’ve been doing it since we left the jail, and I’m so mad I could spit, and next time something like this happens, if you don’t call me right away, I’m going to be mad at you, too.”

  “Wouldn’t want that.” He shakes out his mat, and she’s getting the idea that he’s about as stubborn as she is.

  It’s been a long day full of painful images, and near misses, and bad smells, and then Rose called. Scarpetta was up to her elbows in Lydia Webster’s decomposed body when Hollings appeared at the autopsy table and said he had news and she needed to hear it. How Rose found out, exactly, isn’t exactly clear, but a neighbor of hers who knows a neighbor of a neighbor of Scarpetta’s — someone she’s never met — heard a rumor that the neighbor Scarpetta has met — Mrs. Grimball — had Bull arrested for trespassing and attempted burglary.

  He was hiding behind a pittosporum to the left of Scarpetta’s front porch, and Mrs. Grimball happened to spot him while she was looking out her upstairs window. It was nighttime. Scarpetta can’t blame a neighbor for being alarmed by such a sight, unless that neighbor happens to be Mrs. Grimball. Calling nine-one-one to report a prowler wasn’t enough. She had to embellish her story and claim Bull was hiding on her property, not Scarpetta’s, and the long and short of it is Bull — who has been arrested before — went to jail, where he’s been since the middle of the week, and where he’d likely still be, had Rose not interrupted an autopsy. After Scarpetta was attacked in a parking garage.

  Now Will Rambo is in the city jail, not Bull.

  Now Bull’s mother can relax. Doesn’t have to keep lying, saying he’s out picking oysters or just out, period, because the last thing she wants is for him to get fired again.

  “I’ve thawed stew,” Scarpetta says, unlocking her front door. “There’s plenty of it, and I can only imagine what you’ve had to eat for the last few days.”

  Bull follows her into the foyer, and the umbrella stand grabs her attention and she stops and feels terrible. She reaches inside it and pulls out Marino’s motorcycle key and the magazine from his Glock, then the Glock itself from a drawer. She feels so unsettled, she almost feels sick. Bull doesn’t say anything, but she can feel him wondering about what she just retrieved from the umbrella stand, why those items were in there. It’s a moment before she can talk. She locks the key, the magazine, and the pistol inside the same metal box where she keeps the bottle of chloroform.

  She warms up stew and homemade bread, and sets a place at the table, and pours a big glass of peach-flavored iced tea and drops in a sprig of fresh mint. She tells Bull to sit down and eat, that she’ll be on the upstairs porch with Benton, and to call up to them if Bull needs anything. She reminds him that too much water and the daphne will curl up and die in a week and the pansies need deadheading, and he sits down and she serves him.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she says. “You know more about gardening than I do.”

  “Never hurts to be reminded,” he says.

  “Maybe we should plant some daphne by the front gate so Mrs. Grimball can smell its lovely fragrance. Maybe it will make her more pleasant.”

  “She was trying to do the right thing.” Bull opens his napkin and tucks it into his shirt. “I shouldn’t have been hiding, but after that man on the chopper showed up in the alley with a gun, I’ve been keeping my eye out. It was a feeling I had.”

  “I believe in trusting feelings.”

  “I know I do. There’s a reason for them,” Bull says, tasting his tea. “And something told me to wait in the bushes that night. I was watching your door, but the funny thing about it is I should have been watching the alley. Since you told me that’s where the hearse probably was when Lucious got killed, meaning that killer was back there.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t.” She thinks of Morris Island and what they found there.

  “Well, I wish I had been.”

  “It would have been nice if Mrs. Grimball had bothered to call the police about the hearse,” Scarpetta says. “She has you thrown in jail and doesn’t bother reporting a hearse in my alley late at night.”

  “I saw him brought into lockup,” Bull says. “They locked him up, and he was fussing his ear hurt, and one of the guards asked him what happened to his ear, and he said he got bit by a dog and it’s infected and he needs a doctor. There was a lot of talk about him, about his Cadillac with a stolen tag, and I heard a policeman say that man cooked some lady on a grill.” Bull drinks his tea. “Been thinking Mrs. Grimball could’ve seen his Cadillac, and she didn’t tell about it any more than she did the hearse. Not to the police, she didn’t. Funny how people think one thing they see’s important, and something else isn’t. You might think to ask if a hearse in the alley at night means somebody died and maybe you should look into it. What if it’s somebody you know? She won’t like going to court.”

  “None of us will like it.”

  “Well, she won’t like it the most,” Bull says, lifting his spoon but too polite to eat while they’re talking. “She’ll think she can smart off at the judge. I’d buy me a ticket to see that. Some years back, I was working in this very garden, and I seen her throw a bucket of water on a cat hiding under her house because it just had kittens.”

  “Don’t say anything more, Bull. I can’t stand it.”

  She goes up the stairs, and walks through the bedroom to the small porch that overlooks the garden. Benton is talking on the phone and probably has been ever since she saw him last. He’s changed into khakis and a polo shirt, and he smells clean and his hair is damp, and behind him is a trellis of copper pipes she constructed so passionflowers could climb like a lover up to her window. Below is the flagstone patio, and then the shallow pond she fills with an old, leaky hose. Depending on the time of year, her garden is a symphony. Crepe myrtles, camellias, canna lilies, hyacinths, hydrangea, daffodils, and dahlias. She can’t plant enough pittosporum and daphne, because anything that has a lovely scent is her friend.

  The sun is out, and suddenly she’s so tired, her vision is blurry.

  “That was the captain,” Benton says, putting the phone down on a glass-top table.

  “Are you hungry? Can I get you some tea?” she asks.

  “How about I get you something?” Benton looks at her.

  “Take off your glasses so I can see your eyes,” Scarpetta says. “I don’t feel like looking into your dark glasses right now. I’m so tired. I don’t know why I’m so tired. I didn’t used to get this tired.”

  He takes off his glasses, folds them, and sets them on the table. “Paulo’s resigned and not c
oming back from Italy, and I don’t think anything’s going to happen to him. The hospital president is doing nothing but damage control because our friend Dr. Self was just on Howard Stern, talking about experiments straight out of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I hope he asks her how big her breasts are and if they’re real. Forget it. She’d tell him. She’d probably show him.”

  “I guess there’s nothing about Marino.”

  “Look. Give me time, Kay. And I don’t fault you. We’ll work our way past this. I want to touch you again and not think of him. There, I’ve said it. Yes, it bothers the hell out of me.” He reaches for her hand. “Because I feel partly to blame. Maybe more than partly. Nothing would have happened if I’d been here. I’m going to change that. Unless you don’t want me to.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I’d be happy if Marino stays away,” Benton says. “But I don’t wish any harm to him, and I hope nothing has happened to him. I’m trying to accept that you defend him, worry about him, still care about him.”

  “The plant pathologist is coming in an hour. We have spider mites.”

  “And I thought what I have is a headache.”

  “If something’s happened to him, especially if he did it to himself, I won’t get over it,” Scarpetta says. “Maybe my worst flaw. I forgive people I care about, and then maybe they do it all over again. Please find him.”

  “Everybody’s trying to find him, Kay.”

  A long silence, nothing but birds. Bull appears in the garden. He starts uncoiling the hose.

  “I need to take a shower,” Scarpetta says. “I’m a disgrace, didn’t take a shower over there. Wasn’t the most private locker room, and I had nothing to change into, why you put up with me I’ll never know. Don’t worry about Dr. Self. A few months in prison would be good for her.”

  “She’ll film her shows there and make more millions. Some woman inmate will become her slave and knit her a shawl.”

  Bull waters a bed of pansies, and there’s a rainbow in the spray of the hose.