Red Mist

by Patricia Cornwell

  7

  It’s Kay Scarpetta—” I start to say, and she cuts me off in her crisp, strong voice.

  “You’re still staying the night, I hope.”

  “Excuse me?” She must think I’m someone else. “Jaime? It’s Kay—”

  “Your hotel is within walking distance of me.” Jaime Berger sounds as if she’s in a hurry, not rude but impersonal and brusque and not about to let me get in a word. “Check in first, and we’ll have a bite to eat.”

  It’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk, that maybe she’s not alone. This is absurd. You don’t agree to meet someone when you don’t know what it’s about, I tell myself.

  “Where?” I ask.

  Jaime gives me an address that is several blocks off Savannah’s riverfront. “I’ll look forward to it,” she adds. “See you shortly.”

  I call Lucy next as a man in cutoff jeans and a baseball cap climbs out of a dusty gold Suburban. He doesn’t give me a glance as he walks in my direction and slides a wallet out of his back pocket.

  “I need to ask you something,” I say immediately when my niece answers, and it’s an effort not to sound frustrated. “You know it’s never my intention to pry or interfere with your personal life.”

  “That’s not a question,” Lucy says.

  “I hesitated to call you about this, but now I really must. It doesn’t seem to be a secret that I’m down here. Do you understand what I’m getting at?” I turn my back to the man in the baseball cap as he gets cash out of the ATM next to me.

  “Maybe you could be a little less mysterious. It sounds like you’re inside a metal drum.”

  “I’m using a pay phone outside a gun store. And it’s raining.”

  “What the hell are you doing at a gun store? What’s wrong?”

  “Jaime,” I then say. “Nothing’s wrong. That I know of.”

  After a long pause, my niece asks, “What’s happened?”

  I can tell by her hesitation and the tone of her voice that she isn’t going to have information for me. She doesn’t know that Jaime is in Savannah. Lucy isn’t the reason Jaime somehow knows I’m here and why and where I’m staying.

  “I’m just making sure you didn’t perhaps mention to her that I was coming down to Savannah,” I reply.

  “Why would I do that? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on. In fact, a more accurate answer is I don’t know. But you haven’t talked to her recently.”

  “No.”

  “Any reason Marino would have?”

  “Why would he? What damn reason would he have to contact her?” Lucy says, as if it would be a massive betrayal for Marino, who used to work for Jaime, to talk to her about anything. “To have some friendly chat and divulge private information about what you’re doing? No way. Wouldn’t make sense,” she adds, and her jealousy is palpable.

  It doesn’t matter how attractive and formidable my niece is, she doesn’t believe she will ever be the most important person to anyone. I used to call her my green-eyed monster because she has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen and can be monstrously immature, insecure, and jealous. She’s not to be trifled with when she gets that way. Hacking into computers is as effortless as opening a cupboard for her, and she’s not bothered by spying or paying people back for what she perceives as crimes against her or someone she loves.

  “I certainly hope he wouldn’t divulge information to her or anyone,” I reply, and I wish the man in the baseball cap would finish up at the ATM. It occurs to me he might be listening to my conversation. “Well, if Marino’s said something,” I add, “I’ll find out soon enough.”

  I can hear Lucy typing on a keyboard. “We’ll just see. I’m in his e-mail. No. Doesn’t look like anything to or from her.”

  Lucy is the CFC’s systems administrator and can get into any electronic communications or files on the server, including mine. She can get into virtually anything she wants, period.

  “Not recently,” she then says, and I imagine her executing searches, scrolling through Marino’s e-mails. “Don’t see anything for this year.”

  She’s indicating she sees no evidence that Marino has e-mailed Jaime since she and Lucy broke up. But that doesn’t mean Marino and Jaime haven’t had contact by phone or some other means. He’s not naïve. He knows Lucy can look at anything on the CFC computer. He also knows that even if she didn’t have legal access, she’d look anyway, if that’s what she feels like doing. If Marino’s been in contact with Jaime and hasn’t mentioned it to me, it’s going to bother me considerably.

  “Would you mind asking him about it?” I say to Lucy as I rub my temples, my head throbbing.

  She does mind. I can hear her resistance when she says, “Sure. I can talk to him, but he’s still on vacation.”

  “Then interrupt his fishing trip, please.”

  I hang up as the man in the baseball cap disappears inside the gun store, and I decide he wasn’t paying attention to me, that I’m of no interest and am acting slightly paranoid. I follow the sidewalk past the hardware store, noticing what appears to be the same black Mercedes wagon with the Navy Diver bumper sticker parked in front of Monck’s Pharmacy. Small and overstocked, with no other customers in sight, it is reminiscent of a country store with aisles of home-care supplies such as walking aids, vascular stockings, and seat-lift chairs. Friendly signs posted everywhere promise customized medications and same-day delivery right to your doorstep,and I scan shelves for pain relievers as I try to come up with any possible reason why Jaime Berger might have an interest in Lola Daggette.

  What I don’t doubt is that Jaime is relentless. If Lola Daggette has information that is important for some reason, Jaime will do everything she can to make sure the convicted killer doesn’t take it to the grave. I can think of no other explanation for Jaime’s visiting the GPFW, but what I can’t fathom is how I factor in and why. Well, you’re about to find out,I tell myself, as I carry a bottle of Advil gel-caps to the counter, where no one is working. In a couple of hours you’ll know what there is to know.I decide water would be a good idea and return to the refrigerated section, selecting an iced tea instead, and I return to the counter and I wait.

  An older man in a lab coat is busy counting pills in back, filling prescriptions, and I don’t see anyone else, and I wait. I open the Advil and take three gelcaps, washing them down with the iced tea as my impatience grows.

  “Excuse me,” I announce myself.

  The pharmacist barely glances at me and calls out to someone behind him, “Robbi, can you get the register?” When no one answers, he stops what he’s doing and comes to the counter.

  “I sure am sorry. I didn’t realize I’m the only one here. Guess everybody’s out making deliveries, or maybe it’s break time again. Who knows?” He smiles at me as he takes my Visa card. “Will there be anything else?”

  It has stopped raining when I return to the van, and I notice that the black Mercedes wagon is gone. The sun breaks through the clouds as I drive away, and the wet pavement is bright in the sunlight. Then the old city comes into view, low brick and stone buildings spreading out to the Savannah River, and in the distance, silhouetted against the churning sky, is the familiar cable-stayed Talmadge Memorial Bridge, which would take me into South Carolina, were that my destination. I imagine splendid haunts such as Hilton Head and Charleston, envisioning the oceanfront condo Benton used to have in Sea Pines, and the historic carriage house with its lush garden that once was mine.

  So much of my past is rooted in the Deep South, and my mood is nostalgic and edgy as I reach the gray granite Customhouse and the gold-domed City Hall, then my hotel, a stolid Hyatt Regency on the river, where tugs and tour boats are moored. On the opposite shore is the posh Westin Resort, and farther down, cranes look like gigantic praying mantises perched above shipyards and warehouses, the water flat and the gray-green of old glass.

  I climb out of the van and apologize to a valet who looks very Caribbean in his white jack
et and black Bermuda shorts. I warn him about my cranky, undependable rental vehicle and feel obliged to let him know it wasn’t what I reserved and that it wanders all over the road and the brakes are bad, while I grab my overnight bag and other belongings. A hot breeze stirs live oaks, magnolias, and palms, and traffic bumping over brick pavers sounds like the rain, which has completely stopped, the sky patched with hints of blue as the sun sinks and shadows spread. This part of the world, where I’ve been so many times before, should be a welcome respite and a rich indulgence. Instead it feels unsafe. It feels like something to fear. I wish Benton were here. I wish I hadn’t come, that I had listened to him. I must find Jaime Berger without delay.

  The lobby is typical of most Hyatts I’ve stayed in, an expansive atrium surrounded by rooms on six floors, and as I ride the glass elevator up, I replay the exchange I just had with the clerk at the front desk, a young woman who claimed my reservation had been canceled hours earlier. When I said that wasn’t possible, she replied that she had taken the call herself not long after she started her shift at noon. A man called and canceled. Whoever it was had my reservation number and the correct information and was very apologetic.

  I asked the clerk if whoever did this was from my office in Cambridge, and she said she thought so. I asked if his name was Bryce Clark, and she wasn’t sure, and then I suggested it probably was my office calling to confirm, not to cancel, and there had been a misunderstanding. No, she shook her head. Absolutely not. The clerk said the person called to cancel with the explanation that Dr. Scarpetta was very disappointed she couldn’t make it to Savannah because it’s one of her favorite cities, and he hoped there would be no charge for the room even through he was canceling at the last minute. Supposedly I’d missed my connection in Atlanta and therefore couldn’t possibly get here in time for the appointment I had. The man was quite chatty, the clerk said, convincing me it was my extroverted chief of staff, Bryce, who has yet to call me back.

  The canceled room is like the cargo van, like the note from Kathleen Lawler and the pay phone, like everything else that’s happened today, and I tell myself I’ll know what it’s all about soon enough. I unlock my door and enter a room overlooking the river as a container ship as tall as the hotel silently glides past, headed out to sea, and I try to reach Benton, but he’s not answering. I send him a text message letting him know I’m heading out for a meeting, and I give him the address Jaime gave me, because someone I trust needs to know where I’ll be. But I tell him nothing else, not who I’m going to see or that I’m uneasy and suspicious of just about everyone. Unpacking my overnight bag, I deliberate about changing my clothes and decide not to bother.

  Jaime Berger is on a mission in the Lowcountry, and apparently she put Kathleen Lawler up to the task of arranging a meeting with me while I’m here. Indeed, Jaime may have used her to lure me here to begin with. But no matter how much I dissect the information I have, it all seems far-fetched, and I can’t stop sorting through it in hopes it will make sense. But it seems impossibly illogical. If Jaime is behind my coming to the GPFW today and knows I’m spending the night in this hotel, then why would she need an inmate to sneak a cell phone number to me? Why wouldn’t Jaime simply call me herself? My cell phone number hasn’t changed. Hers hasn’t, either. She has my e-mail address.

  She could have reached me directly any number of ways, and why a pay phone? What was that about? The cargo van, my canceled reservation, and I think about what Tara Grimm said to me. Coincidences.I’m not someone who believes in them, and she’s right, at least about the events of late. There are too many coincidences for them to be random and meaningless. They add up to something, but I really can’t imagine what, and I may as well stop driving myself crazy about it. I brush my teeth and wash my face, in the mood for a long hot shower or bath that I don’t have time for right now.

  I study myself in the mirror over the bathroom sink and decide I look wilted by heat and rain, by hours spent in a prison and driving a malfunctioning van with no air-conditioning, and this isn’t the way I want Jaime to see me. I can’t completely define the way she makes me feel, but I recognize ambivalence and self-consciousness, a certain discomfort that has never gone away in all the years I’ve known her. It’s irrational, but I can’t seem to help it. To watch Lucy so openly adore her was indescribable.

  I remember the first time they met more than a decade ago, how animated Lucy was, how riveted she was to Jaime’s every word and gesture. Lucy couldn’t take her eyes off her, and when it finally became what it was meant to become many years later, I was amazed and pleased. I was startled and unnerved. Most of all, I didn’t trust it. Lucy was going to get hurt, I thought all along. She was going to get as badly hurt as she’s ever been in her life, I feared. No woman she’s ever been with can compare to Jaime, who is close to my age and undeniably powerful and compelling. She’s rich. She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful.

  I scrutinize my short blond hair and muss it with a dab of gel, staring at the face staring back at me. The overhead light is unkind, creating shadows that accentuate my strong features, deepening the fine lines at the corners of my eyes and the shallow folds from my nose to my mouth. I look shopworn. I look older. Jaime’s going to sum me up in a glance by saying that what I’ve been going through has taken its toll. Almost being murdered has left its mark. Stress is toxic. It kills cells. It causes your hair to fall out. Extreme stress interferes with sleep and you never look rested. I don’t look awful, really. It’s the lighting in here, and I think of Kathleen Lawler’s complaints about bad lighting and bad mirrors as I uncomfortably recall recent comments Benton has made.

  I’m starting to look more like my mother, he mentioned the other day when he came up behind me and put his arms around me as I was getting dressed. He said it was the style of my hair, maybe because it’s a little shorter, and he meant it as a compliment, but I didn’t take it as one. I don’t want to look like my mother, because I don’t want to be anything like my mother, not anything like my only sibling, Dorothy, either, both of them still in Miami and always complaining about one thing or another. The heat, the neighbors, the neighbors’ dogs, the feral cats, politics, crime, the economy, and, of course, me. I’m a bad daughter, a bad sister, and a bad aunt to Lucy. I never come to visit and rarely call. I’ve forgotten my Italian heritage, my mother said to me recently, as if growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Miami somehow makes me a native of the Old Country.

  Outside the hotel, the sun has dipped behind stone and brick buildings along Bay Street, and the air is still hot but not nearly as humid. A bell in City Hall tolls, its rich metallic peal sounding the half hour as I follow steep granite steps down to River Street, walking behind and below the hotel. Through lighted arched windows on the lower level I see a ballroom being set up for some event, and then the river is before me. It has turned a deep indigo blue in the waning light of the approaching night, and the sky is clearing, the moon huge and egg-shaped as it rises, and streets and sidewalks are thick with tourists arriving for sunset cruises and the restaurants and shops. Old men sell stiff yellow flowers woven of sweetgrass, the air fragrant with the vanilla scent of the long, thin leaves, and I hear the distant sentimental notes of a Native American flute.

  I’m vividly aware of everything I pass. I notice every person, but I don’t look directly at anyone. Who else knows I’m here? Who else cares, and why?I walk with purpose I don’t really feel, wishing I could duck inside one of the fine restaurants and forget about Jaime Berger and what she might want from me. I wish I could forget Kathleen Lawler and her hideous biological daughter and the horror of what happened to Jack Fielding, which was worse than death. He degenerated into something unrecognizable in those six months I was at Dover Air Force Base getting board-certified in radiologic pathology so we could begin doing CT scans or virtual autopsies at my new headquarters in Cambridge. I’d given Jack the opportunity of a lifetime, trusting him to run the place while I was gone, and he did. Right into the ground
.

  It might have been the drugs he was on, his daughter turning him into a crazed beast, and some of what he did may have been for money. What I won’t say to anyone is that Jack is better off dead and I’m grateful I won’t have to confront him and finally banish him for good. I can’t imagine what he was thinking unless he just didn’t care, but he spared both of us the vilest and most brutal showdown, and that’s exactly what it would have been. A face-off that was a lifetime in coming, and one he would lose decisively. He had to have known that when I got home I would discover every bad thing he was doing, every loathsome violation, that I would uncover every immoral and selfish act. Jack Fielding knew he was done. He knew I would not have forgiven him. I would not have taken him back or protected him this time. When Dawn Kincaid killed him, he was already dead.

  And in an odd way, realizing all this has given me an unexpected satisfaction and a little more self-respect. I have changed, and it’s for the better. You really can’t love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be. Were Jack still alive, I would not love him. When I examined his dead body in the cellar of his Salem house, I did not feel love for him. He was stiff and cold beneath my hands, unyielding and stubborn, holding on to his dirty secrets in death the same way he did in life, and a part of me was glad he was gone. I was relieved. I was grateful. Thank you for the freedom, Jack. Thank you for being gone forever so I don’t feel obliged to waste any more of my life on you.

  I wander for a while to clear him out of my head, to steel myself, to wipe my eyes and hope they aren’t red. Turning on Houston Street away from the river as the City Hall bell rings nine times, I move deeper into the historic district, taking a right on East Broughton and stopping on Abercorn in front of the Owens-Thomas House, a two-century-old mansion of limestone and Ionic columns that is a museum now. Around it are other gracious antebellum buildings and homes, and I’m reminded of the three-story old brick house I saw on the news nine years ago. I wonder where the Jordans lived and if it might be near here, and did the killer or killers target the family in advance, or were they random victims of opportunity? Most people in this area have burglar alarms, and it nags at me that the Jordans’ must not have been armed, not that everybody bothers, even wealthy people, who should know better.