Body of Evidence (4 page)

I followed him out of the garage and back to his car. Night was falling fast, a chill in the air. He cranked the engine while I stared mutely out the side window at Beryl's house. Its sharp angles were deteriorating in the shadows, the windows dark. Suddenly the porch and living room lights blinked on.

"Geez," Marino muttered. "Trick or treat."

"A timer," I said.

"No kidding."

There was a full moon over Richmond as I followed the long road home. Only the most tenacious trick-or-treaters were still making the rounds, their ghastly masks and menacing child-size silhouettes lit up by my headlights. I wondered how many times my doorbell had gone unanswered. My house was a favorite because I was excessively generous with candy, not having children of my own to indulge. I would have four unopened bags of chocolate bars to dole out to my staff in the morning.

The phone started ringing as I was climbing the stairs. Just before my answering machine intervened, I snatched up the receiver. The voice was unfamiliar at first, then recognition grasped my heart. "Kay? It's Mark. Thank God you're home ..."

Mark James sounded as if he were talking from the bottom of an oil drum, and I could hear cars passing in the background.

"Where are you?" I managed to ask, and I knew I sounded unnerved.

"On Ninety-five, about fifty miles north of Richmond."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"At a phone booth," he went on to explain. "I need directions to your house."

After another gust of traffic, he added, "I want to see you, Kay. I've been in D. C. all week, been trying to get you since late afternoon, finally took a chance and rented a car. Is it all right?"

I didn't know what to say.

"Thought we could have a drink, catch up," said this man who had once broken my heart. "I've got reservations at the Radisson downtown. Tomorrow morning, early, there's a flight out of Richmond back to Chicago. I just thought ... Actually, there's something I want to discuss with you."

I couldn't imagine what Mark and I could have to discuss.

"Is it all right?" he asked again.

No, it wasn't all right! What I said was "Of course, Mark. It will be wonderful to see you."

After giving him directions, I went into the bathroom to freshen up, pausing long enough to take inventory. More than fifteen years had come and gone since our days together in law school. My hair was more ash than blond, and it had been long when Mark and I had last seen each other. My eyes were hazier, not as blue as they used to be. The unbiased mirror went on to remind me rather coldly that I would never see thirty-nine again and there was such a thing as face-lifts. In my memory Mark had remained barely twenty-four, when he became an object of passion and dependency that ultimately led to abject despair. After it was over, I did nothing but work.

He still drove fast and liked fine automobiles. Less than forty-five minutes later, I opened the front door and watched him get out of his rental Sterling. He was still the Mark I remembered, the same trim body and long-legged confident walk. Briskly mounting the steps, he smiled a little. After a quick hug, we stood awkwardly in the foyer for a moment and couldn't think of a significant thing to say.

"Still drinking Scotch?" I finally asked.

"That hasn't changed," he said, following me to the kitchen.

Retrieving the Glenfiddich from the bar, I automatically fixed his drink exactly as I had so long ago: two jiggers, ice, and a splash of seltzer water. His eyes followed me as I moved about the kitchen and set our drinks on the table. Taking a sip, he stared into his glass and began slowly swirling ice the way he used to when he was tense. I took a good, long look at him, at his refined features, high cheekbones, and clear gray eyes. His dark hair had begun to turn a little at the temples.

I shifted my attention to the ice slowly spinning inside his glass. "You're with a firm in Chicago, I assume?"

Leaning back in his chair, he looked up and said, "Doing strictly appeals, trial work only now and then. I run into Diesner occasionally. That's how I found out you're here in Richmond."

Diesner was the chief medical examiner in Chicago. I saw him at meetings and we were on several committees together. He had never mentioned he was acquainted with Mark James, and how he even knew I was once acquainted with Mark was a mystery.

"I made the mistake of telling him I'd known you in law school, think he brings you up from time to time to needle me/' Mark explained, reading my thoughts.

That I could believe. Diesner was as gruff as a billy goat, and he was none too fond of defense attorneys. Some of his battles and theatrics in court had become the stuff of legends.

Mark was saying, "Like most forensic pathologists, he's pro prosecution. I represent a convicted murderer and I'm the bad guy. Diesner will make a point of looking for me and as a by-the-way telling me about the latest journal article you published or some gruesome case you worked. Dr. Scarpetta. The famous Chief Scarpetta."

He laughed, but his eyes didn't.

"I don't think it's fair to say we're pro prosecution," I answered. "It seems that way because if the evidence is pro defendant, the case never sees a courtroom."

"Kay, I know how it works," he said in that give-it-a-rest tone of voice I remembered so well. "I know what you see. And if I were you, I'd want all the bastards to fry, too."

"Yes. You know what I see, Mark," I started to say. It was the same old argument. I couldn't believe it. He had been here less than fifteen minutes and we were picking up right where we had left off. Some of our worst fights used to be over this very subject. I was already an M. D. and enrolled in law school at Georgetown when Mark and I met. I had seen the darker side, the cruelty, the random tragedies. I had placed my gloved hands on the bloody spoils of suffering and death. Mark was the splendid Ivy Leaguer whose idea of a felony was for someone to nick the paint on his Jaguar. He was going to be a lawyer because his father and grandfather were lawyers. I was Catholic, Mark was Protestant. I was Italian, he was as Anglo as Prince Charles. I was brought up poor, he was brought up in one of the wealthiest residential districts of Boston. I had once thought ours would be a marriage made in heaven.

"You haven't changed, Kay," he said. "Except maybe you radiate a certain resolve, a hardness. I bet you're a force to be reckoned with in court."

"I wouldn't like to think I'm hard."

"I don't mean it as a criticism. I'm saying you look terrific."

He glanced around the kitchen. "And successful. You happy?"

"I like Virginia," I answered, looking away from him. "My only complaint is the winters, but I suppose you have a bigger complaint in that department. How do you stand Chicago six months out of the year?"

"Never gotten used to it, you want to know the truth. You'd hate it. A Miami hothouse flower like you wouldn't last a month."

He sipped his drink. "You're not married."

"I was."

"Hmmmm."

He frowned as he thought. 'Tony somebody ... I recall you started seeing Tony ... Benedetti, right? The end of our third year."

Actually, I was surprised Mark would have noticed, much less remembered. "We're divorced, have been for a long time," I said.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

I reached for my drink.

"Seeing anybody nice?" he asked.

"No one at the moment, nice or otherwise."

Mark didn't laugh as much as he used to. He volunteered matter-of-factly, "I almost got married a couple of years ago but it didn't work out. Or maybe I should be honest enough to say that at the last minute I panicked."

It was hard for me to believe he had never been married. He must have read my mind again.

"This was after Janet died." He hesitated. "I was married."

"Janet?"

He was swirling the ice in his glass again. "Met her in Pittsburgh, after Georgetown. She was a tax lawyer in the firm."

I was watching him closely, perplexed by what I saw. Mark had changed. The intensity that had once drawn me to him was different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was darker.

"A car accident," he was explaining. "A Saturday night. She went out for popcorn. We were going to stay up, watch a late movie. A drunk driver crossed over into her lane. Didn't even have his headlights on."

"God, Mark. I'm sorry," I said. "How awful."

"That was eight years ago."

"No children?"

I asked quietly.

He shook his head.

We fell silent.

"My firm's opening an office in D. C.," he said as our eyes met.

I did not respond.

"It's possible I may be relocated, move to D. C. We've been expanding like crazy, got a hundred-some lawyers and offices in New York, Atlanta, Houston."

"When would you be moving?"

I asked very calmly.

"It could be by the first of the year, actually."

"You're definitely going to do it?"

"I'm sick to death of Chicago, Kay, need a change. I wanted to let you know--that's why I'm here, at least the major reason. I didn't want to move to D. C. and have us run into each other at some point. I'll be living in northern Virginia. You have an office in northern Virginia. Odds are we would run into each other in a restaurant, at the theater one of these days. I didn't want that."

I imagined sitting inside the Kennedy Center and spotting Mark three rows ahead whispering into the ear of his beautiful young date. I was reminded of the old pain, a pain once so intense it was physical. He'd had no competition. He had been my entire emotional focus. At first a part of me had sensed it wasn't mutual. Later, I was sure of it.

"This was my major reason," he repeated, now the lawyer making his opening statement. "But there's something else that really has nothing to do with us personally."

I remained silent.

"A woman was murdered here in Richmond a couple of nights ago. Beryl Madison ..."

The look of astonishment on my face briefly stopped him.

"Berger, the managing partner, told me about it when he called me at my hotel in D. C. I want to talk to you about it--"

"How does it concern you?"

I asked. "Did you know her?"

"Remotely. I met her once, in New York last winter. Our office there dabbles in entertainment law. Beryl was having publishing problems, a contract dispute, and she retained Orndorff & Berger to set things straight. I happened to be in New York on the same day she was conferring with Sparacino, the lawyer who took her case. Sparacino ended up inviting me to join the two of them for lunch at the Algonquin."

"If there's any possibility this dispute you mentioned could be connected with her murder, you need to be talking to the police, not to me," I said, getting angry.

"Kay," he replied. "My firm doesn't even know I'm talking to you, okay? When Berger called yesterday, it was about something else, all right? He happened to mention Beryl Madison's murder in the course of the conversation, said for me to check the area papers, see what I could find out."

"Right. Translated into see what you could find out from your ex--" I felt a flush creeping up my neck. Ex-what?

"It isn't like that."

He glanced away. "I was thinking about you, thinking of calling you up before Berger called, before I even knew about Beryl. For two damn nights I actually had my hand on the phone, had already gotten your number from Information. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. And maybe I never would have had Berger not told me what happened. Maybe Beryl gave me the excuse. I'll concede that much. But it's not the way you think ..."

I didn't listen. It dismayed me that I wanted to believe him so much. "If your firm has an interest in her murder, tell me what it is, exactly."

He thought for a moment. "I'm not sure if we have an interest in her murder legitimately. Maybe it's personal, a sense of horror. A shock for those of us who had any exposure to her while she was alive. I will also tell you that she was in the midst of a rather bitter dispute, was getting royally screwed because of a contract she signed eight years ago. It's very complicated. Has to do with Gary Harper."

"The novelist?" I said, baffled. "That Gary Harper?"

"As you probably know," Mark said, "he doesn't live far from here, in some eighteenth-century plantation called Cutler Grove. It's on the James River, in Williams-burg."

I was trying to remember what I had read about Harper, who produced one novel some twenty years ago that won a Pulitzer Prize. A legendary recluse, he lived with a sister. Or was it an aunt? There had been much speculation about Harper's private life. The more he refused interviews and eluded reporters, the more the speculation grew.

I lit a cigarette.

"I was hoping you'd quit," he said.

"It would take the removal of my frontal lobe."

"Here's what little I know. Beryl had some sort of relationship with Harper when she was in her teens, early twenties. For a time, she actually lived in the house with him and his sister. Beryl was the aspiring writer, the talented daughter Harper never had. His protege. It was through his connections she got her first novel published when she was only twenty-two, some sort of quasi-literary romance she published under the name Stratton. Harper even conceded to giving a comment for the book jacket, some quote about this exciting new writer he'd discovered. It raised a lot of eyebrows. Her novel was more a commercial book than literature, and no one had heard a word from Harper in years."