Red Mist ks-19

by Patricia Cornwell

  While I understand the concept of fundamental randomness, the favored theory of physicists that the universe exists because of a Big Bang roll of the dice, and therefore we can expect a mindless messiness to rule our everyday lives, I don’t accept it. I honestly don’t believe it. Nature has its symmetries and laws, even if they are beyond the limits of our understanding, and there are no accidents, not really, only labels and definitions that we resort to for lack of any other way to make sense of certain events, especially god-awful ones.

  Chippewa Market is only a few blocks from Jaime’s apartment and the Jordans’ former home, and around the corner from the former halfway house on Liberty Street where Lola Daggette was a resident when she was arrested for murder. But Savannah Sushi Fusion is some fifteen miles northwest of where Jaime lived, and in fact is closer to the Georgia Prison for Women than to Savannah’s three-and-a-half-square-mile historic district.

  “The locations are telling us something. There’s a reason for them, and a message there,” I’m saying to Marino, as we climb out of the van into the steamy night air, and water pours from gutters and drips from trees, and puddles in the city’s sea-level streets are the size of small ponds. “Jaime put herself right in the middle of some sort of matrix, in the backyard of evil, and the sushi place is the odd man out, way off to the northwest, as if you’re heading to the airport or the prison, which might be how she discovered it. But why didn’t she use a place closer to where she lived if she was going to have take-out delivered several times a week?”

  “It’s advertised as having the best sushi in Savannah,” Marino says. “That’s what she told me one time when I was with her and she had it brought in. I said how do you eat that shit, and she said it was supposed to be the best in town, but it wasn’t as good as what she got in New York. Not that any of it’s good. Fish bait is fish bait, and tapeworms are tapeworms.”

  “How does one make a delivery on a bicycle from there? Some of it would be highway. Not to mention the distance in this weather.”

  “Hey, I need a couple of carts,” Marino yells for a bellman. “No way I’m letting anybody haul this shit upstairs,” he lets me know. “If you’re going to all this trouble to make sure everything’s safe, then we don’t let anything out of sight. Zero possibility of our stuff being tampered with. I’m not going to say you’re kooky as hell. But I’m sure it looks kooky to anybody watching. Like the Brady Bunch is on summer vacation and can’t afford to go out for a burger or order a pizza.”

  I trust nothing. Not a cup of coffee, not a bottle of water, unless I buy it. Until we have a better understanding of what is going on, we’re staying right here in Savannah, and no food or drink will be delivered to us by restaurants or room service, and we’re not touching prepackaged food or eating out. I’ve also given fair warning that there will be no housekeeping. Nobody outside our circle is to come into our rooms, period, unless it is a police officer or an agent we trust, and someone needs to be in residence at all times to make sure no one enters and touches anything, because we just don’t know who or what we’re up against. We will make our own beds, empty our own trash, and clean up after ourselves as best we can and eat what I prepare as if we are in quarantine.

  Marino rolls two luggage carts to the back of the van, and we start unloading cookware, appliances, and water and nonalcoholic beer and bottles of wine, and coffee, and fresh vegetables and fruit, and meats and cheese and pasta, and spices and canned goods and condiments. As if we are the Boxcar Children settling in.

  “I don’t see how it’s coincidental.” I continue to talk about the geography. “I want us to get an aerial view, maybe Lucy can get a satellite map up on the television screen and we can take a really close look, because it means something.” We roll our overloaded carts through the lobby, past the front desk and the crowded bar, and people stare at the couple in investigative uniforms who appear to be moving in or setting up an outpost, and I suppose we are.

  “But Jaime wasn’t around when it happened,” Marino says, as we push onward to the glass elevator. “She wasn’t staying in that apartment in the middle of the matrix or the evil backyard or whatever. She wasn’t here in 2002 when the Jordans were murdered.” He taps the elevator button several times. “So whatever the locations might have meant back then, they wouldn’t mean the same thing now. It’s apples and oranges. It’s you being spooky. I don’t know about the sushi place and the bicycle, though.”

  “It’s not apples and oranges.”

  “Except if you were going to poison her food, it wouldn’t be all that hard if she was a regular customer of some place and had stuff delivered all the time,” he says. “That’s the only connection I’m seeing. A place she used all the time. Didn’t matter where it was.”

  “And how would you know Jaime used that place all the time and had her charge card on file unless she was in sight? Within range? Unless both of you were common to the same environment somehow?”

  “How the hell do you think so much? I don’t have any thoughts left in my damn head, and I’m dying to smoke, I admit it. See? No evasiveness. I didn’t buy any cigarettes during our shop-a-thon. But I’m letting you know I need one really bad, and I might go through two six-packs of Buckler, whatever it takes.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” I again say to him, as the elevator doors slide open and we roll our provisions inside, plastic bags swaying from the frames of the carts.

  “Plus, I’m hungry as hell. Like one of those times when nothing I’m going to do will make me feel good,” he says, and he is getting grouchier by the minute, about to come out of his skin.

  “I’m going to whip up a very simple spaghetti and salad of mixed greens.”

  “Maybe I want a damn cheeseburger with bacon and fries from room service.” He irritably taps the button for our floor, then taps it again, then taps the button for the doors to shut.

  “It won’t take me long. You drink all the Buckler you want and take a hot shower. You’ll feel better.”

  “A damn cigarette is what I want,” he says, as the glass elevator takes off like a lazy helicopter, rising slowly above floors with their vine-draped balconies. “You need to quit telling me I’m going to feel better. This is why people go to meetings. Because they feel like fucking shit and want to kill everyone who says they’re going to feel better.”

  “If you need to find an AA meeting, I’m sure we can.”

  “No way in fucking hell.”

  “It’s not going to help if you go back to things that hurt you,” I say to him.

  “Don’t lecture me. I can’t take it right now.”

  “I don’t mean to lecture you. Please don’t smoke.”

  “If I have to go to the bar to bum one, I’m going to. You don’t want me to be evasive, right? So I’m telling you. I want a damn cigarette.”

  “Then I’ll go with you. Or Benton will.”

  “Hell, no. I’ve had enough of him for one day.”

  “You have every right to be devastated and disappointed,” I reply quietly.

  “It’s not got a damn thing to do with disappointment,” he retorts.

  “Of course it does.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t tell me what it has to do with.”

  We can barely see each other around all the bags and boxes as we argue about what he doesn’t feel, and I know that at the root of his anger is his pain, and he’s crushed. He had feelings for Jaime that I’m aware of at some level, but I’ll likely never know the extent of them and whether he might have been attracted to her or was in love with her, and I know for a fact he had attached his future to hers. He was going to help her out, and he hoped to do so in this part of the world, where he likes the lifestyle and the weather. Now all of that is changed forever.

  “Look,” Marino says, as the elevator stops on the top floor. “Sometimes nothing makes anybody feel better. I can’t stand what was done to her, okay? It makes me crazy that we were right there eating with her in her own damn living
room and had no idea. Jesus. She’s eating poison right before our eyes and is going to die and we got no clue, and I leave and then you do. Goddamn it. And she was all by herself going through hell like that. Why the hell didn’t she call nine-one-one?” He asks the same question Sammy Chang did, the question most people would ask.

  We are rolling our carts along the balcony that wraps around the hotel’s atrium, heading to a series of rooms that make up our camp, a suite for Benton and me, with a connecting room on either side: one for Lucy, one for Marino.

  “She was drinking,” I reply. “And that certainly didn’t help her judgment. But the more relevant factor is human nature, and it’s typical for people to put off doing something as drastic as calling for an ambulance. Strange thing is, people will call the police quicker than they will ask for a rescue squad or the fire department, because we tend to feel ashamed and embarrassed when we hurt ourselves or accidentally set our house on fire. We’re much more comfortable siccing the police on someone.”

  “Yeah, like the time I had the chimney fire, you remember that? My old house on Southside? I refused to call. Climbed up on the roof with the hose, which was stupid as hell.”

  “People delay, they put it off,” I say, as we roll our carts along, and hanging vines growing from the balconies on every floor remind me of Tara Grimm and all the devil’s ivy in her office that she lets grow out of control to teach people a life lesson.

  Be careful what you let take root, because one day that’s all there is. Something took root in her, and all that’s left is evil.

  “They keep hoping they’ll feel better or can fix the problem themselves and then reach the point of no return,” I tell Marino. “Like the lady with the bucket. Remember her? She dies of CO poisoning while acting like a bucket brigade, house burns up and firefighters find her charred body next to her bucket. It’s worse for those who work in the professions we do. You, Jaime, Benton, Lucy, me, all of us would be reluctant to call police or paramedics. We know too much. We make terrible patients and usually don’t follow our own rules.”

  “I don’t know. If I couldn’t breathe, I think I’d call,” Marino says. “Or you might take Benadryl or Sudafed or root around for an inhaler or an EpiPen, and when nothing worked, you probably wouldn’t be in a condition to call anyone.”

  Benton must have heard us making our way along the open-air balcony, and the door to our suite opens before we get there. He steps outside, holding the door open wide, and his hair is damp and he’s changed his clothes, showered and fresh, but his eyes are clouded by what has happened and what worries him, and I imagine Lucy worries him most of all. I haven’t talked to her since I saw her last when I was on the elevator in Jaime’s building, on my way to discover an answer I would give anything to change.

  “How are things?” It’s my way of asking him about my niece. “We’re okay. You look exhausted.”

  “Like a train wreck. That probably would be a more apt description,” I reply, as he helps us get the carts inside, and I pause to take my boots off. “I’ll clean up in a minute, but let me get things set up and dinner started. I promise I’m safe. In non-air-conditioned vehicles all day, rained on, and I look like hell and don’t smell good, but nothing to worry about.”

  As if they’ve never been exposed to me after I’ve been at crime scenes or in the morgue.

  “Sorry I didn’t have access to a locker room when I left the apartment.” I continue to talk and apologize because there’s no sign of Lucy, and that can’t be good.

  I’m sure she knows we’re here, but she’s not come out to see us, and I interpret that as a danger sign.

  “But it’s almost a certainty it’s something Jaime ate,” I’m explaining. “I’m very suspicious of botulinum toxin in her food, possibly in Kathleen Lawler’s food. MGH should be testing Dawn Kincaid for it, but they’ve likely thought of that, and I’m sure they have access to fluorescent tests, which are highly sensitive and quick. You might want to mention it to someone up there. One of the agents working her case,” I reiterate to Benton.

  “Apparently she hadn’t eaten anything when she started having symptoms,” he says. “I don’t think it’s believed she was poisoned with food, but I’ve passed along your suspicions about the possibility of botulism.”

  “Maybe something she drank,” I reply.

  “Maybe.”

  “Possible you can get a detailed inventory of what was in her cell, of what she might have had access to?”

  “It’s not likely you’re going to be allowed to have that information,” Benton says. “I’m probably not going to be allowed to have it, either, for obvious reasons. Considering what Dawn Kincaid has accused you of.”

  “Your mistake was not hitting her harder with the fucking flashlight,” Marino says.

  “Well, I certainly can’t be blamed for what’s happened to her now,” I reply. “What about the sushi restaurant? Do we know anything more about that?”

  “Kay, who would be telling me?” Benton says patiently.

  “Yes, everybody’s going to be secretive when all I want to do is stop the person from killing someone else.”

  “All of us want the same thing,” he says. “But your connection to Dawn Kincaid, to Kathleen Lawler and Jaime, creates more than a minor problem when it comes to sharing information. You can’t work those cases, Kay. You just can’t.”

  “The fact is I’m not going to transfer a neurotoxin like botulinum from my clothes or boots, of course, but I’m going to get out of them anyway,” I decide. “Unfortunately, no rooms come with a washer and dryer, so there was no way around that. If you could find the trash bags I just bought,” I say to Benton. “My shirt and pants are going in one, and I’ll send them out to be laundered or, better yet, pitch them. I might just pitch my boots, too. Maybe everything, I don’t know. Maybe you could get me a robe.”

  “Believe I’ll go clean up.” Marino grabs two nonalcoholic beers, doesn’t matter that they aren’t chilled, and walks through the living room to his connecting door.

  I find sanitizing wipes in my shoulder bag and clean my face, my neck, my hands, as I’ve done multiple times this day, and Benton finds a robe for me and opens a trash bag. I take off the uniform I’ve lived in since the sun came up, the black cargo pants and black shirt that Marino packed in a go-bag weeks ago when a plan was being hatched and it wasn’t what he thought. Jaime tricked all of us. I don’t know the extent of her deception or her motivation or ultimately what she had in mind. It wasn’t right or fair, and much of it was unkind, but she didn’t deserve to die and to die so cruelly.

  The kitchenette has cupboards with dishes and silverware, and a refrigerator and a microwave, and I set up the butane stove and the toaster oven, and we begin to put away food and supplies. There is no sign of Lucy. Her room is off the dining area to the right of the living room, and the door is shut.

  “What I didn’t get a chance to do was go to a pharmacy.” I unwrap cookware and pull tags off utensils I bought. “One with home healthcare, some things we should have on hand, but nothing was open after six, not the sort of pharmacy I have in mind that has home medical equipment and supplies. I’ll give Marino a list, and maybe he can pick up what I need in the morning.”

  “Seems to me you’ve got everything covered,” Benton says, with a calmness that makes me only more unnerved, as if it portends a bad storm.

  “An Ambu bag, I should at least have one of those. So simple, but the difference between life and death. I used to keep one in my car. I don’t know why I don’t do it anymore. Complacency is a terrible thing.”

  “Lucy’s been in her room working on her computers,” Benton says, because I haven’t asked about her directly and he knows why. “She went out for a run and both of us went to the gym. I think she’s in the shower, or she was a few minutes ago.”

  I wash a new cutting board and two new pots.

  “Kay, you’re going to have to handle it better than this,” Benton says, as he places b
ottles of water in the refrigerator.

  “Handle her or handle what’s happened to Jaime? What is it I’m supposed to handle in this situation where nobody wants me to handle anything at all?”

  “Please don’t get defensive.” He finds a corkscrew in a drawer.

  “I’m not.” I peel the skin off a sweet onion and rinse green peppers while Benton decides on a bottle of Chianti. “I’m not trying to be defensive. I’m not trying to be anything except responsible, to do what’s right and safe.” I begin to dice. “To do anything I can. I admit I feel I’ve gotten all of you into this, and I don’t know how one apologizes for such a thing.”

  “You didn’t get us into anything.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? Latchkey in a hotel room in Savannah, Georgia, with someone who finds it necessary to throw her clothes away. A thousand miles from home and afraid to drink the water.”

  Benton opens the wine, and we seem headed for a repeat of our last night together in Cambridge before I came to Savannah against his wishes. In the kitchen, cooking and cutting vegetables, and boiling water, and drinking wine and having heated discussions and forgetting to eat.

  “I haven’t talked to Lucy all day because of where I’ve been and what I was doing,” I then say, and he silently watches me, waiting for what I’m really feeling to come out. “And I thought it best to talk to her in person,” I say next. “Not over the phone while I’m riding around in Marino’s loud van.”

  Benton hands me a glass of wine, and I’m not in a mood to sip. I’m in a mood to drink, to throw back the entire glass. One swallow and I feel the effect instantly.

  “I don’t know how to handle her.” I’m suddenly tearful and so tired I can barely stand. “I don’t know what she must think of me, Benton. How much does she know about what’s happened? Has she been told that Jaime was slurring her words and her eyelids were drooping when I was with her last night and I left her anyway? That I was furious and disgusted with her and just walked out?”