Point of Origin ks-9

by Patricia Cornwell

IT WAS ALMOST midnight when I slowed at the guard booth in my neighborhood, and the security officer on duty stepped out to stop me. This was highly unusual, and I feared he would tell me that my burglar alarm had been going half the night or yet one more oddball had tried to drive through to see if I was at home. Marino had been dozing for the past hour and a half, and he came to as I rolled down my window.

  'Good evening,' I said to the guard. 'How are you doing, Tom?'

  'I'm fine, Dr Scarpetta,' he said, leaning close to my car. 'But you've had a few unusual events within the past hour or so, and I figured something wasn't right when I kept trying to reach you and you weren't home.'

  'What sort of events?' I asked as I began to imagine any number of threatening things.

  'Two pizza delivery guys showed up at almost the same time. Then three taxis came to take you to the airport, one right after the other. And someone tried to deliver a construction Dumpster to your yard. When I couldn't get hold of you, I turned every one of them around. They all said you had called them.'

  'Well, I certainly did not,' I said with feeling as my bewilderment grew. 'All this since when?'

  'Well, I guess the truck with the Dumpster was here maybe around five this afternoon. Everything else since then.'

  Tom was an old man who probably wouldn't have had a clue as to how to defend the neighborhood should true danger ever come around the bend. But he was courteous and considered himself a true officer of the law and in his mind was probably armed and experienced in combat. He was especially protective of me.

  'Did you get the names of any of these guys who showed up?' Marino asked loudly from the passenger seat.

  'Domino's and Pizza Hut.'

  Tom's animated face was shadowed beneath the brim of his baseball cap.

  'And the cabs were Colonial, Metro, and Yellow Cab. The construction company was Frick. Now I took the liberty to make a few calls. Every one of 'em had orders in your name, Dr Scarpetta, including the times you called. I got it written down.'

  Tom could not hide how pleased he was when he slipped a square of notepaper from a back pocket and handed it to me. His role had been more than the usual this night, and he was almost intoxicated by it. I turned on the interior light and Marino and I scanned the list. The taxi and pizza orders had been placed between ten-ten and eleven, while the Dumpster order had been placed earlier in the afternoon with instructions for a late afternoon delivery.

  'I know at least Domino's said it was a woman who called. I talked to the dispatcher myself. A young kid. According to him, you called and said to just bring a large thick crust pizza supreme to the gate and you'd get it from there. I got his name written down, too,' Tom reported with great pride. 'So none of this came from you, Dr Scarpetta?' He wanted to make sure.

  'No sir,' I answered. 'And if anything else shows up tonight, I want you to call me right away.'

  'Yo, call me, too,' said Marino, and he jotted his home number on a business card. 'I don't give a shit what time it is.'

  I handed Marino's card out my window and Tom looked at it carefully, even though Marino had passed through these gates more times than I could guess.

  'You got it, Captain,' Tom said with a deep nod. 'Yes sir, anybody else shows up, I'm on the horn, and I can hold 'em till you get here, if you want me to.'

  'Don't do that,' Marino said. 'Some kid with a pizza's not going to know a damn thing. And if it's real trouble, I don't want you tangling with whoever it is.'

  I knew right then that he was thinking about Carrie.

  'I'm pretty spry. But you got it, Captain.'

  'You did a great job, Tom,' I complimented him. 'I can't thank you enough.'

  'That's what I'm here for.'

  He pointed his remote control and raised the arm to let us through.

  'I'm listening,' I said to Marino.

  'Some asshole harassing you,' he said, his face grim in the intermittent bath of street lamps. 'Trying to upset you, scare you, piss you off. And doing a pretty damn good job, I might add.'

  'You don't think Carrie…' I went ahead and started to say.

  'I don't know,' Marino cut me off. 'But it wouldn't surprise me. Your neighborhood's been in the news enough times.'

  'I guess what would be good to know is if the orders were placed locally,' I said.

  'Christ,' he said as I turned into my driveway and parked behind his car. 'I sure as hell hope not. Unless it's someone else who's jerking you around.'

  'Take a number and stand in line.'

  I cut the engine.

  'I can sleep on your couch if you want me to,' Marino said as he opened his door.

  'Of course not,' I said. 'I'll be fine. As long as no construction Dumpsters show up. That would be the last straw with my neighbors.'

  'I don't know why you live here, anyway.'

  'Yes, you do.'

  He got out a cigarette and clearly did not want to go anywhere.

  'Right. 'The guard booth. Shit, talk about a placebo.'

  'If you don't feel okay to drive, I'd be pleased to have you stay on my couch,' I said.

  'Who, me?'

  He fired his lighter and puffed smoke out the open car door.

  'It ain't me I'm worried about, Doc.'

  I got out of my car and stood on the driveway, waiting for him. His shape was big and tired in the dark, and I suddenly was overwhelmed by sad affection for him. Marino was alone and probably felt like hell. He couldn't have memories worth much, between violence on the job and bad relationships the rest of the time. I supposed I was the only constant in his life, and although I was usually polite, I wasn't always warm. It simply wasn't possible.

  'Come on,' I said. 'I'll fix you a toddy and you can crash here. You're right. Maybe I don't want to be alone and have five more pizza deliveries and cabs show up.'

  'That's what I'm thinking,' he said with feigned cool professionalism.

  I unlocked my front door and turned off the alarm, and very shortly Marino was on the wrap-around couch in my great room, with a Booker's bourbon on the rocks. I made his nest with sweet-smelling sheets and a baby-soft cotton blanket, and for a while we sat in the dark talking.

  'You ever think we might lose in the end?' he muttered sleepily.

  'Lose?' I asked.

  'You know, good guys always win. How realistic is that? Not so for other people, like that lady that burned up in Sparkes's house. Good guys don't always win. Uh uh, Doc. No fucking way.'

  He halfway sat up like a sick man, and took a swallow of bourbon and struggled for breath.

  'Carrie thinks she's gonna win, too, in case that thought's never entered your mind,' he added. 'She's had five fucking years at Kirby to think that.'

  Whenever Marino was tired or half drunk, he said fuck a lot. In truth, it was a grand word that expressed what one felt by the very act of saying it. But I had explained to him many times before that not everyone could deal with its vulgarity, and for that matter, some perhaps took it all too literally. I personally never thought of fuck as sexual intercourse, but rather of wishing to make a point.

  'I can't entertain the thought that people like her will win,' I said quietly as I sipped red burgundy. 'I will never think that.'

  'Pie in the sky.'

  'No, Marino. Faith.'

  'Yo.' He swallowed more bourbon. 'Fucking faith. You know how many guys I've known to drop dead of heart attacks or get killed on the job? How many of them do you think had faith? Probably every goddamn one of them. Nobody thinks they're gonna die, Doc. You and me don't think it, no matter how much we know. My health sucks, okay? You think I don't know I'm taking a bite of a poison cookie everyday? Can I help it? Naw. I'm just an old slob who has to have his steak biscuits and whiskey and beer. I've given up giving a shit about what the doctors say. So soon enough, I'm gonna stoop over in the saddle and be outta here, you know?'

  His voice was getting husky and he was beginning to get maudlin.

  'So a bunch of cops will come to my funeral, and you
'll tell the next detective to come along how it wasn't all that bad to work with me,' he went on.

  'Marino, go to sleep,' I said. 'And you know that's not how I feel at all. I can't even think of something happening to you, you big idiot.'

  'You really mean that?' He brightened a bit.

  'You know damn well I do,' I said, and I was exhausted, too.

  He finished his bourbon and softly rattled the ice in the glass, but I didn't respond, because he'd had enough.

  'Know what, Doc?' he said thickly. 'I like you a lot, even if you are a pain in the fucking ass.'

  'Thank you,' I said. 'I'll see you in the morning.'

  'It is morning.'

  He rattled ice some more.

  'Go to sleep,' I said.

  I did not turn off my bedside lamp until two A.M., and thank God it was Fielding's turn to spend Saturday in the morgue. It was almost nine when I got motivated to put my feet on the floor, and birds were raucous in my garden, and the sun was bouncing light off the world like a manic child with a ball. My kitchen was so bright it was almost white, and stainless steel appliances were like mirrors. I made coffee and did what I could to clear my head as I thought of the files downloaded into my computer. I thought of opening sliders and windows to enjoy spring air, and then Carrie's face was before me again.

  I went into the great room to check on Marino. He slept the way he lived, struggling against his physical existence as if it were the enemy, the blanket kicked practically to the middle of the floor, pillows beaten into shape, and sheets twisted around his legs.

  'Good morning,' I said.

  'Not yet,' he mumbled.

  He turned over and punched the pillow to submission under his head. He wore blue boxer shorts and an undershirt that stopped six inches short of covering his swollen belly, and I always marveled that men were not shy about fat the way women were. In my own way I very much cared about staying in shape, and when my clothes starting feeling tight around the waist, both my general disposition and libido turned much less agreeable.

  'You can sleep a few more minutes,' I said to him.

  I gathered up the blanket and spread it across him. He resumed snoring like a wounded wild boar, and I moved to the kitchen table and called Benton at his New York hotel.

  'I hope I didn't wake you,' I said.

  'Actually, I was almost out the door. How are you?'

  He was warm but distracted.

  'I'd be better if you were here and she were back behind bars.'

  'The problem is, I know her patterns and she knows I know them. So I may as well not know them, if you see what I mean,' he said in that controlled tone that meant he was angry. 'Last night, several of us disguised ourselves as homeless people and went down into the tunnels in the Bowery. A lovely way to spend the evening, I might add. We revisited the spot where Gault was killed.'

  Benton was always very careful to say where Gault was killed instead of where you killed Gault.

  'I am convinced she's gone back there and will again,' he went on. 'And not because she misses him, but that any reminder of the violent crimes they committed together excites her. The thought of his blood excites her. For her it's a sexual high, a power rush that she's addicted to, and you and I both know what that means, Kay. She'll need a fix soon, if she hasn't already gotten one that we just haven't found out about yet. I'm sorry to be a doomsayer, but I have a gut feeling that whatever she does is going to be far worse than what she did before.'

  'It's hard to imagine anything could be worse than that,' I said, though I really did not mean it.

  Whenever I had thought that human beings could get no worse, they did. Or perhaps it was simply that primitive evil seemed more shocking in a civilization of highly evolved humans who traveled to Mars and communicated through cyberspace.

  'And so far no sign of her,' I said. 'Not even a hint.'

  'We've gotten hundreds of leads going nowhere. NYPD's set up a special task force, as you know, and there's a command center with guys taking calls twenty-four hours a day.'

  'How much longer will you stay up there?'

  'Don't know.'

  'Well, I'm sure if she's still in the area, she knows damn well where you are. The New York Athletic Club, where you always stay. Just two buildings from where she and Gault had a room back then.' I was upset again. 'I guess that's the Bureau's idea of sticking you in a shark cage and waiting for her to come and get it.'

  'A good analogy,' he said. 'Let's hope it works.'

  'And what if it does?' I said as fear cut through my blood and made me angrier. 'I wish you'd come home and let the FBI do its job. I can't get over it, you retire and they don't give you the time of day until they want to use you for bait…!'

  'Kay…'

  'How can you let them use you…'

  'It's not like that. This is my choice, a job I have to finish. She was my case from the start, and as far as I'm concerned, she still is. I can't just relax at the beach knowing she's loose and going to kill again. How can I just look the other way when you, Lucy, Marino - when all of us are very possibly in danger?'

  'Benton, don't turn into a Captain Ahab, okay? Don't let this become your obsession. Please.'

  He laughed.

  'Take me seriously, goddamn it.'

  'I promise I'll stay away from white whales.'

  'You're already chasing the hell out of one.'

  'I love you, Kay.'

  As I followed the hallway to my office, I wondered why I bothered saying the same old words to him. I knew his behavior almost as well as I knew my own, and the idea that he wouldn't be doing exactly what he was right now was about as unthinkable as my letting another forensic pathologist take over the Warrenton case because it was my right to take it easy at this stage in my life.

  I turned on the light in my spacious paneled office, and opened the blinds to let the morning in. My work space adjoined my bedroom, and not even my housekeeper knew that all of the windows in my private quarters, like those in my downtown office, were bulletproof glass. It wasn't just the Carries of the world who worried me. Unfortunately, there were the countless convicted killers who blamed me for their convictions, and most of them did not stay locked up forever. I had gotten my share of letters from violent offenders who promised to come see me when they got out. They liked the way I looked or talked or dressed. They would do something about it.

  The depressing truth, though, was that one did not have to be a detective or profiler or chief medical examiner to be a potential target of predators. Most victims were vulnerable. They were in their cars or carrying groceries into their homes or walking through a parking lot, simply, as the saying goes, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I logged onto America Online and found Lucy's ATF repository research files in my mailbox. I executed a print command and returned to the kitchen for more coffee.

  Marino walked in as I was contemplating something to eat. He was dressed, his shirttail hanging out, his face dirty with stubble.

  'I'm outta here,' he said, yawning.

  'Would you like coffee?'

  'Nope. Something on the road. Probably stop at Liberty Valance,' he said as if we'd never had our discussion about his eating habits.

  'Thanks for staying over,' I said.

  'No problem.'

  He waved at me as he walked out, and I set the alarm after him. I returned to my study, and the growing stack of paper was rather disheartening. After five hundred pages, I had to refill the paper tray, and the printer ran another thirty minutes. The information included the expected names, dates, and locations, and narratives from investigators. In addition, there were scene drawings and laboratory results, and in some instances, photographs that had been scanned in. I knew it would take me the rest of the day, at the very least, to get through the stack. I was already feeling that this had probably been a Pollyanna idea that would prove a waste of time.

  I had gone through no more than a dozen cases when I was startled by my doorbell. I was not expectin
g anyone, and I almost never had unannounced visitors in my private, gated neighborhood. I suspected it might be one of the local children selling raffle tickets or magazine subscriptions or candy, but when I looked into the video screen of my camera system, I was stunned to see Kenneth Sparkes standing outside my door.

  'Kenneth?' I said into the Aiphone, and I could not keep the surprise out of my voice.

  'Dr Scarpetta, I apologize,' he said into the camera. 'But I really need to speak to you.'

  'I'll be right there.'

  I hurried across the house, and opened the front door. Sparkes looked weary in wrinkled khaki slacks and a green polo shirt spotted with sweat. He wore a portable phone and a pager on his belt, and carried a zip-up alligator portfolio.

  'Please come in,' I said.

  'I know most of your neighbors,' he said. 'In case you're wondering how I got past the guard booth.'

  'I've got coffee made.'

  I caught the scent of his cologne as we entered the kitchen.

  'Again, I hope you'll forgive me for just showing up like this,' he said, and his concern seemed genuine. 'I just don't know who else to talk to, Dr Scarpetta, and I was afraid if I asked you first, you would say no.'

  'I probably would have.'

  I got two mugs out of a cabinet.

  'How do you take it?'

  'The way it comes out of the pot,' said he.

  'Would you like some toast or anything?'

  'Oh no. But thank you.'

  We sat at the table before the window, and I opened the door leading outside because my house suddenly seemed warm and stuffy. Misgivings raced through my mind as I was reminded that Sparkes was a suspect in a homicide, and that I was deeply involved in the case, and here I was alone with him in my house on a Saturday morning. He set the portfolio on the table and unzipped it.

  'I suppose you know everything about what goes on in an investigation,' he said.

  'I never know everything about anything, really.' I sipped my coffee.

  'I'm not naive, Kenneth,' I said. 'For example, if you didn't have clout, you wouldn't have gotten inside my neighborhood, and you wouldn't be sitting here now.'

  He withdrew a manila envelope from the portfolio and slid it across the table to me.