Predator ks-14

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Biology is cruel,” he said. “Physical liabilities are unforgiving. Nobody wants you if you’re scarred and crippled, useless and maimed.”

  “My God, Johnny. It’s just carpal tunnel surgery. Not amputation.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “We’re not here to talk about me.”

  She thinks about him as she sits at the bar inLorraine’s, watching people, mostly men, enter and leave the restaurant as snow gusts in.

  It has begun to snow inBostonasBentondrives his Porsche Turbo S past the Victorian brick buildings of the university medical campus and remembers the early days when Scarpetta used to summon him to the morgue at night. He always knew the case was bad.

  Most forensic psychologists have never been to a morgue. They have never seen an autopsy and don’t even want to look at the photographs. They are more interested in the details of the offender than in what he did to his victim, because the offender is the patient and the victim is nothing more than the medium he used to express his violence. This is the excuse many forensic psychologists and psychiatrists give. A more likely explanation is they don’t have the courage or the inclination to interview victims or, worse, spend time with their mauled dead bodies.

  Bentonis different. After more than a decade of Scarpetta, there is no way he couldn’t be different.

  “You have no right to work any case if you won’t listen to what the dead have to say,” she told him some fifteen years ago when they were working their first homicide together. “If you can’t be bothered with them, then, frankly, I can’t be bothered with you, Special Agent Wesley.”

  “Fair enough, Dr. Scarpetta. I’ll trust you to make introductions.”

  “All right then,” she said. “Come with me.”

  That was the first time he had ever been inside a morgue refrigerator, and he can still hear the loud clack of the handle pulling back and the whoosh of cold, foul air. He would know that smell anywhere, that dark, dead stench, foul and flat. It hangs heavy in the air, and he has always imagined that if he could see it, it would look like filthy ground fog slowly spreading out from whatever has died.

  He replays his conversation with Basil, analyzes every word, every twitch, every facial expression. Violent offenders promise all sorts of things. They manipulate the hell out of everybody to get what they want, promise to reveal the locations of bodies, admit to crimes that were never solved, confess the details of what they did, offer insights into their motivation and psychological state. In most cases, it is lies. In this case,Bentonis concerned. Something about at least some of what Basil confessed strikes him as true.

  He tries Scarpetta on his cell phone. She doesn’t answer. Several minutes later, he tries again and still can’t get her.

  He leaves a message: “Please call me when you get this,” he says.

  The door opens again and a woman comes in with the snow, as if blown in by the blizzard.

  She wears a long, black coat and is brushing it off as she pushes back her hood, and her fair skin is rosy from the cold, her eyes quite bright. She is pretty, remarkably pretty, with dark blond hair and dark eyes and a body that she flaunts. Lucy watches her glide to the back of the restaurant, glide between tables like a sexy pilgrim or a sensuous witch in her long, black coat, and it swirls around her black boots as she heads straight back to the bar where there are plenty of empty stools. She chooses one next to Lucy’s and folds her coat and sits on it without a word or a glance.

  Lucy drinks tequila and stares at the TV over the bar as if the latest celebrity romance is interesting. Buddy makes the woman a drink as if he knows what she likes.

  “I’ll have another,” Lucy tells him soon enough.

  “Coming up.”

  The woman with the black hooded coat gets interested in the colorful tequila bottle that Buddy lifts from a shelf. She keenly watches the pale amber liquor pour in a delicate stream, filling the bottom of the brandy snifter. Lucy slowly swirls the tequila, and the smell of it fills her nose all the way up to her brain.

  “That stuff will give you the headache from Hades,” the woman with the black hooded coat says in a husky voice that is seductive and full of secrets.

  “It’s much purer than regular liquor,” Lucy says. “Haven’t heard the word Hades in a while. Most people I know say hell.”

  “The worst headaches I ever got were from margaritas,” the woman offers, sipping a Cosmopolitan that is pink and lethal-looking in a champagne glass. “And I don’t believe in hell.”

  “You’ll believe in it if you keep drinking that shit,” Lucy replies, and in the mirror behind the bar, she watches the front door open again and more snow blow intoLorraine’s.

  Wind gusting in from the bay sounds like silk whipping, reminding her of silk stockings whipping on a clothesline, although she has never seen silk stockings on a clothesline or heard what they sound like in the wind. She is aware of the woman’s black stockings because tall stools and short, slitted skirts are not a safe combination unless a woman is in a bar where the men are interested only in one another, and inProvincetown, this is usually the case.

  “Another Cosmo, Stevie?” Buddy asks, and now Lucy knows her name.

  “No,” Lucy answers for her. “Let Stevie try what I’m having.”

  “I’ll try anything,” Stevie says. “I think I’ve seen you at the Pied and the Vixen, dancing with different people.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “I’ve seen you. You’re hard to miss.”

  “You come here a lot?” Lucy asks, and she has never seen Stevie before, not at the Pied or the Vixen or any other club or restaurant in Ptown.

  Stevie watches Buddy pour more tequila. He leaves the bottle on the bar, steps away and busies himself with another customer.

  “This is my first time,” Stevie says to Lucy. “A Valentine’s Day present to myself, a week in Ptown.”

  “In the dead of winter?”

  “Last I checked, Valentine’s Day was always in the winter. It happens to be my favorite holiday.”

  “It’s not a holiday. I’ve been here every night this week and never seen you.”

  “What are you? The bar police?” Stevie smiles and looks into Lucy’s eyes so intensely it has an effect.

  Lucy feels something. No, she thinks. Not again.

  “Maybe I don’t come in here only at night like you do,” Stevie says, reaching for the tequila bottle, brushing Lucy’s arm.

  The feeling gets stronger. Stevie studies the colorful label, sets the bottle back on the bar, taking her time, her body touching Lucy. The feeling intensifies.

  “Cuervo? What’s so special about Cuervo?” Stevie asks.

  “How would you know what I do?” Lucy says.

  She tries to make the feeling go away.

  “Just guessing. You look like a night person,” Stevie says. “Your hair is naturally red, isn’t it. Maybe mahogany mixed with deep red. Dyed hair can’t look like that. You haven’t always worn it long, as long as it is now.”

  “Are you some kind of psychic?”

  The feeling is awful now. It won’t go away.

  “Just guessing,” Stevie’s seductive voice says. “So, you haven’t told me. What’s so special about Cuervo?”

  “Cuervo Reserva de la Familia. It’s special enough.”

  “Well, that’s something. It looks like this is my night for first times,” Stevie says, touching Lucy’s arm, her hand resting on it for a minute. “First time in Ptown. First time for one hundred percent a gave tequila that costs thirty dollars a shot.”

  Lucy wonders how Stevie can know it costs thirty dollars a shot. For someone unfamiliar with tequila, she seems to know a lot.

  “I believe I’ll have another,” Stevie calls out to Buddy, “and you really could pour a little more in the glass. Be sweet to me.”

  Buddy smiles as he pours her another, and two shots later, Stevie leans against Lucy and whispers in her ear, “You got anything?”

  “Like what?” Lu
cy asks, and she gives herself up to it.

  The feeling is fueled by tequila and plans to stay for the night.

  “You know what,” Stevie’s voice says quietly, her breath touching Lucy’s ear, her breast pressed again her arm. “Something to smoke. Something that’s worth it.”

  “What makes you think I’d have something?”

  “Just guessing.”

  “You’re remarkably good at it.”

  “You can get it anywhere here. I’ve seen you.”

  Lucy made a transaction last night, knows just where to do it, at the Vixen, where she doesn’t dance. She doesn’t remember seeing Stevie. There weren’t that many people, never are this time of year. She would have noticed Stevie. She would notice her in a huge crowd, on a busy street, anywhere.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s the bar police,” Lucy says.

  “You have no idea how funny that is,” Stevie’s seductive voice says. “Where you staying?”

  “Not far from here.”

  6

  The state Medical Examiner’s Office is located where most are, on the fringe of a nicer part of town, usually at the outer limits of a medical school. The red-brick-and-concrete complex backs up to the Massachusetts Turnpike, and on the other side of it is the Suffolk County House of Corrections. There is no view and the noise of traffic never stops.

  Bentonparks at the back door and notes only two other cars in the lot. The dark-blue CrownVictoriabelongs to Detective Thrush. The Honda SUV probably belongs to a forensic pathologist who doesn’t get paid enough and probably wasn’t happy when Thrush persuaded him to come in at this hour.Bentonrings the bell and scans the empty back parking lot, never assuming he is safe or alone, and then the door opens and Thrush is motioning him inside.

  “Jeez, I hate this place at night,” Thrush says.

  “There’s not much to like about it any time of day,”Bentonremarks.

  “I’m glad you came. Can’t believe you’re out in that,” he says, looking out at the black Porsche as he shuts the door behind them. “In this weather? You crazy?”

  “All-wheel drive. It wasn’t snowing when I went to work this morning.”

  “These other psychologists I’ve worked with, they never come out, snow, rain or shine,” Thrush says. “Not the profilers, either. Most FBI I’ve met have never seen a dead body.”

  “Except for the ones at headquarters.”

  “No shit. We got plenty of them at state police headquarters, too. Here.”

  He handsBentonan envelope as they follow a corridor.

  “Got everything on a disk for you. All the scene and autopsy pictures, whatever’s written up so far. It’s all there. It’s supposed to snow like a bitch.”

  Bentonthinks of Scarpetta again. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and they’re supposed to spend the evening together, have a romantic dinner on the harbor. She’s supposed to stay through Presidents’ Day weekend. They haven’t seen each other in almost a month. She may not be able to get here.

  “I heard light snow showers are predicted,”Bentonsays.

  “A storm’s moving in from theCape. Hope you got something to drive other than that million-dollar sports car.”

  Thrush is a big man who has spent his life inMassachusettsand talks like it. There isn’t a single R in his vocabulary. In his fifties, he has military-short gray hair and is dressed in a rumpled brown suit, has probably worked nonstop all day. He and Benton follow the well-lit corridor. It is spotless and scented with air deodorizer and lined with storage and evidence rooms, all of them requiring electronic passes. There is even a crash cart-Bentoncan’t imagine why-and a scanning electron microscope, the facility the most spacious and best equipped of any morgue he has ever seen. Staffing is another story.

  The office has suffered crippling personnel problems for years because of low salaries that fail to attract competent forensic pathologists and other staff. Added to this are alleged mistakes and misdeeds resulting in scathing controversies and public-relations problems that make life and death difficult for everyone involved. The office isn’t open to the media or to outsiders, and hostility and distrust are pervasive.Bentonwould rather come here late at night. To visit during business hours is to feel unwelcome and resented.

  He and Thrush pause outside the closed door of an autopsy room that is used in high-profile cases or those that are considered a biohazard or bizarre. His cell phone vibrates. He looks at the display. No ID is usually her.

  “Hi,” Scarpetta says. “I hope your night’s been better than mine.”

  “I’m at the morgue.” Then, to Thrush, “One minute.”

  “That can’t be good,” Scarpetta says.

  “I’ll fill you in later. Got a question. You ever heard of something that happened at a Christmas shop in Las Olas maybe two and a half years ago?”

  “By something I assume you mean a homicide.”

  “Right.”

  “Not offhand. Maybe Lucy can try to track it down. I hear it’s snowing up there.”

  “I’ll get you here if I have to hire Santa’s reindeer.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me, too,” he says.

  He ends the call and asks Thrush, “Who are we dealing with?”

  “Well, Dr. Lonsdale was nice enough to help me out. You’ll like him. But he didn’t do the autopsy. She did.”

  She is the chief. She got where she is because she’s a she.

  “You ask me,” Thrush says, “women got no business doing this anyway. What kind of woman would want to do this?”

  “There are good ones,”Bentonsays. “Very good ones. Not all of them get where they are because of their gender. More likely, in spite of it.”

  Thrush is unfamiliar with Scarpetta.Bentonnever mentions her, not even to people he knows rather well.

  “Women shouldn’t see shit like this,” Thrush says.

  The night air is penetrating and milky-white up and downCommercial Street. Snow swarms in lamplight and lights the night until the world glows and seems surreal as the two of them walk in the middle of the deserted silent street east along the water to the cottage Lucy began renting several days ago after Marino got the strange phone call from the man named Hog.

  She builds a fire, and she and Stevie sit in front of it on quilts and roll a joint with very good stuff fromBritish Columbia, and they share it. They smoke and talk and laugh, and then Stevie wants more.

  “Just one more,” she begs as Lucy undresses her.

  “That’s different,” Lucy says, staring at Stevie’s slender nude body, at the red handprints on it, maybe tattoos.

  There are four of them. Two on her breasts as if someone is grabbing them, two on her upper inner thighs as if someone is forcing her legs apart. There are none on her back, none where Stevie couldn’t reach and apply them herself, assuming they are fake. Lucy stares. She touches one of the handprints, places her hand over one of them, fondling Stevie’s breast.

  “Just checking to see if it’s the right fit,” Lucy says. “Fake?”

  “Why don’t you take off your clothes.”

  Lucy does what she wants, but she won’t take off her clothes. For hours, she does what she wants in the firelight, on the quilts, and Stevie lets her, is more alive than anyone Lucy has ever touched, smooth with soft contours, lean in a way Lucy isn’t anymore, and when Stevie tries to undress her, almost fights her, Lucy won’t allow it, then Stevie gets tired and gives up and Lucy helps her to bed. After she is asleep, Lucy lies awake listening to the eerie whining of the wind, trying to figure out exactly what it sounds like, deciding it doesn’t sound like silk stockings after all, but like something distressed and in pain.

  7

  The autopsy room is small with a tile floor and the usual surgical cart, digital scale, evidence cabinet, autopsy saws and various blades, dissecting boards and a transportable autopsy table latched to the front of a wall-mounted dissecting sink. The walk-in refrigerator is built into a wall, the door partially open. />
  Thrush handsBentona pair of blue nitrile gloves, asks him, “You want booties or a mask or anything?”

  “No thanks,”Bentonsays as Dr. Lonsdale emerges from the refrigerator, pushing a stainless-steel cadaver carrier bearing the pouched body.

  “We need to make this quick,” he says as he parks near the sink and locks two of the swivel casters. “I’m already in deep shit with my wife. It’s her birthday.”

  He unzips the pouch and spreads it open. The victim has raggedly cut short, black hair that is damp and still gory with bits of brain and other tissue. There is almost nothing left of her face. It looks as if a small bomb blew up inside her head, which is rather much what happened.

  “Shot in the mouth,” Dr. Lonsdale says, and he is young with an intensity that borders on impatience. “Massive skull fractures, brain pulpifaction, which of course we usually associate with suicides, but nothing else about this case is consistent with suicide. It appears to me that her head was tilted pretty far back when the trigger was pulled, explaining why her face is basically shot off, some of her teeth blown out. Again, not uncommon in suicides.”

  He switches on a magnifying lamp and positions it close to the head.

  “No need to pry open her mouth,” he comments. “Since she has no face left. Thank God for small favors.”

  Bentonleans close and smells the sweet, putrid stench of decomposing blood.

  “Soot on the palate, the tongue,” Dr. Lonsdale continues. “Superficial lacerations of the tongue, the perioral skin and nasolabial fold due to the bulging-out effect when gases from the shotgun blast expand. Not a pretty way to die.”

  He unzips the pouch the rest of the way.

  “Saved the best for last,” Thrush says. “What do you make of it? Reminds me of Crazy Horse.”