Four Scarpetta Novels (21 page)

He's inside a house he has watched for many months. He's imagined this and planned it at such great length that finally, the act of doing it is easy and perhaps a little disappointing. He squats and wiggles his sandy fingers through the spaces in the wire crate and whispers to the basset hound, “It's all right. Everything's going to be all right.”

The basset hound stops baying, and Will lets the dog lick the back of his hand, where there is no glue and no special sand.

“Good boy,” he whispers. “Don't worry.”

His sandy feet carry him from the laundry room toward the sound of the movie playing again in the great room. Whenever she smokes outside, she has a bad habit of leaving the door open wide as she sits on the steps and stares at the black-bottom pool that is a gaping wound, and some of the smoke drifts inside as she sits there and smokes and stares at the pool. The smoke has permeated whatever it touches, and he smells the stale stench and it gives a flinty edge to the air, a hard, gray matte finish like her aura. It is sickly. A near-death aura.

The walls and ceiling are washed with ocher and umber, the colors of the earth, and the stone floor is the color of the sea. Every doorway is an arch, and there are huge pots of acanthus that are limp and brown because she hasn't been watering them properly, and there is dark hair on the stone floor. Head hair, pubic hair, from when she paces about, sometimes nude, ripping at her hair. She's asleep on the couch, her back to him, the bald spot on the top of her head pale like a full moon.

His bare, sandy feet are quiet, and the movie plays. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close are drinking wine to an aria from
Madama Butterfly
playing on the hi-fi. Will stands in the arch and watches
Fatal Attraction
, knows all of it, has seen it many, many times, has watched it with her through the window without her knowing. He hears the dialogue in his head before the characters are saying it, and then Michael Douglas is leaving, and Glenn Close is angry and rips off his shirt.

Ripping, tearing, desperate to get at what was underneath. He had so much blood on his hands he couldn't see the color of his skin as he tried to tuck Roger's intestines in, and the wind and sand blasted both of them and they could barely see or hear each other
.

She sleeps on the couch, too drunk and drugged to hear him come in. She doesn't feel his specter floating near her, waiting to carry her away. She will thank him.

“Will! Help me! Please help me! Oh, please, God!” Screaming. “It hurts so bad! Please don't let me die!”

“You're not going to die.” Holding him. “I'm here. I'm here. I'm right here.”

“I can't stand it!”

“God will never give you more than you can bear.” His father always saying that, ever since Will was a boy.

“It isn't true.”

“What isn't true?” His father asked him in Rome as they drank wine in the dining room and Will was holding the stone foot of antiquity.

“It was all over my hands and my face, and I tasted it, tasted him. I tasted as much of him as I could to keep him alive in me because I promised he wouldn't die.”

“We should go outside. Let's go have a coffee.”

Will turns a knob on the wall, turns up the surround sound until the movie is blaring, and then she's sitting up, and then she's screaming, and he can barely hear her screams over the movie as he leans close to her, puts a sandy finger to her lips, shaking his head, slowly, to hush her. He refills her glass with vodka, hands it to her, and nods for her to drink. He sets the tackle box, flashlight, and camera on the rug and sits next to her on the couch and looks deeply into her bleary, bloodshot, panicky eyes. She has no eyelashes, has pulled all of them out. She doesn't try to get up and run. He nods for her to drink, and she does. Already she's accepting what must happen. She will thank him.

The movie vibrates the house and her lips say, “Please don't hurt me.”

She was pretty once.

“Shhhhh.” He shakes his head, hushing her again with his sandy finger, touching her lips, pressing them hard against her teeth. His sandy fingers open the tackle box. Inside are more bottles of glue and glue remover, and the bag of sand, and a black-handled six-inch double-edged wallboard saw and reciprocating saw blade, and various hobby knives.

Then the voice in his head. Roger crying, screaming, bloody froth bubbling from his mouth. Only it isn't Roger crying out, it's the woman begging with bloody lips, “Please don't hurt me!”

As Glenn Close tells Michael Douglas to fuck off, and the volume vibrates the great room.

She panics and sobs, shaking like someone having a seizure. He pulls his legs up on the couch, sits cross-legged. She stares at his sandpaper hands and sandpaper bottoms of mangled bare feet and the tackle box, the camera on the floor, and the realization of the inevitable seizes her blotchy, puffy face. He notices how unkempt her nails are and is overwhelmed by that same feeling he gets when he spiritually embraces people who are suffering unbearably and he releases them from their pain.

He can feel the subwoofer in his bones.

Her raw, bloody lips move. “Please don't hurt me, please, please don't,” and she cries and her nose runs and she wets her bloody lips with her tongue. “What do you want? Money? Please don't hurt me.” Her bloody lips move.

He takes off his shirt and khaki pants, neatly folds them, places them on the coffee table. He takes off his underwear, places it on top of his other clothes. He feels the power. It spikes through his brain like an electric shock, and he grabs her hard around the wrists.

D
awn. It looks like it might rain.

Rose gazes out a window of her corner apartment, the ocean gently lapping against the seawall across Murray Boulevard. Near her building—once a splendid hotel—are some of the most expensive homes in Charleston, formidable waterfront mansions she has photographed and arranged in a scrapbook that she peruses from time to time. It's almost impossible for her to believe what's happened, that she's living both a nightmare and a dream.

When she moved to Charleston, her one request was that she live close to the water. “Close enough to know it's there” is how she described it. “I suspect this will be the last time I'll follow you anywhere,” she said to Scarpetta. “At my age, I don't want a yard to bother with, and I've always wanted to live on the water, but not a marsh with that rotten-egg smell. The ocean. If only I could have the ocean at least close enough to walk to it.”

They spent a lot of time looking. Rose ended up on the Ashley River in a run-down apartment that Scarpetta, Lucy, and Marino renovated. It didn't cost Rose a penny, and then Scarpetta gave her a raise. Without it, Rose couldn't afford the lease, but that fact was never mentioned. All Scarpetta said was that Charleston is an expensive city compared to other places they've lived, but even if it wasn't, Rose deserved a raise.

She makes coffee and watches the news and waits for Marino to call. Another hour passes, and she wonders where he is. Another hour, and not a word, and her frustration grows. She's left several messages for him saying she can't come in this morning and could he drop by to help her move her couch? Besides, she needs to talk to him. She told Scarpetta she would. Now's as good a time as any. It's almost ten. She's called his cell phone again, and it goes straight to voicemail. She looks out the open window, and cool air blows in from beyond the seawall, the water choppy and moody, the color of pewter.

She knows better than to move the couch herself but is impatient and irked enough to do it. She coughs as she ponders the folly of a feat that would have been manageable not all that long ago. She wearily sits and loses herself in memories of last night, of talking and holding hands and kissing on this same couch. She felt things she didn't know she could feel anymore, all the while wondering how long it can last. She can't give it up, and it can't last, and she feels a sadness so deep and dark that there's no point in trying to see what's in it.

The phone rings, and it's Lucy.

“How did it go?” Rose asks her.

“Nate says hello.”

“I'm more interested in what he said about you.”

“Nothing new.”

“That's very good news.” Rose moves to the kitchen counter and picks up the television remote control. She takes a deep breath. “Marino's supposed to come by to move my couch, but as usual…”

A pause, then Lucy says, “That's one of the things I'm calling about. I was going to drop by to see Aunt Kay and tell her about my appointment with Nate. She doesn't know I went. I always tell her after the fact so she doesn't go crazy worrying. Marino's bike is parked at her house.”

“Was she expecting you?”

“No.”

“What time was this?”

“Around eight.”

“Impossible,” Rose says. “Marino's still in a coma at eight. At least these days.”

“I went to Starbucks, then headed back to her house around nine, and guess what? I pass his potato-chip girlfriend in her BMW.”

“You sure it was her?”

“Want her plate number? Her DOB? What's in her bank account—not much, by the way. Looks like she's gone through most of her money. Not from her dead rich daddy, either. Tells you something he left her nothing. But she makes a lot of deposits that don't make sense, spends it as fast as she gets it.”

“This is bad. Did she see you when you were coming back from Starbucks?”

“I was in my Ferrari. So unless she's blind in addition to being a vapid twat. Sorry…”

“Don't be. I know what a twat is, and no doubt she fits the bill. Marino has a special homing device that leads him directly to twats.”

“You don't sound good. Like you can hardly breathe,” Lucy says. “How about I come over a little later and move the couch?”

“I'll be right here,” Rose says, coughing as she hangs up.

She turns on the television in time to see a tennis ball kick up a puff of red dust off the line, Drew Martin's serve so fast and out of reach, her opponent doesn't even try. CNN plays footage from last year's French Open, the news about Drew going on and on. Replays of tennis and her life and death. Over and over again. More footage. Rome. The ancient city, then the small cordoned-off construction site surrounded by police and yellow tape. Emergency lights pulsing.

“What else do we know at this time? Are there any new developments?”

“Rome officials continue to be tight-lipped. It would appear there are no leads and no suspects, and this terrible crime continues to be shrouded in mystery. People here ask why. You can see them laying flowers at the edge of the construction site where her body was found.”

More replays. Rose tries not to watch. She's seen all of it so many times, but she continues to be mesmerized by it.

Drew slicing a backhand.

Drew charging the net and slamming a lob so hard it bounces into the stands. The crowd jumping to its feet and wildly cheering.

Drew's pretty face on Dr. Self's show. Talking fast, her mind jumping from one subject to the next, excited because she'd just won the U.S. Open, called the Tiger Woods of tennis. Dr. Self leaning into the interview, asking questions she shouldn't ask.

“Are you a virgin, Drew?”

Laughing, blushing, hiding her face with her hands.

“Come on.” Dr. Self smiling, so damn full of herself. “This is what I'm talking about, everyone.” To her audience. “Shame. Why do we feel shame when we talk about sex?”

“I lost my virginity when I was ten,” Drew says. “To my brother's bicycle.”

The crowd going crazy.

“Drew Martin dead at sweet sixteen,” an anchor says.

Rose manages to push the couch across the living room and shove it against the wall. She sits on it and cries. She gets up and paces and weeps, and moans that death is wrong and violence is unbearable and she hates it. Hates it all. In the bathroom, she retrieves a prescription bottle. In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of wine. She takes a tablet and washes it down with wine, and moments later, coughing and barely able to breathe, she washes down a second tablet. The telephone rings and she is unsteady when she reaches for it, dropping the receiver, fumbling to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Rose?” Scarpetta says.

“I shouldn't watch the news.”

“Are you crying?”

The room's spinning. She's seeing double. “It's just the flu.”

“I'm coming over,” Scarpetta says.

 

Marino rests his head against the back of the seat, his eyes masked by dark glasses, his big hands on his thighs.

He's dressed in the same clothes he had on last night. He slept in them, and it looks like it. His face is a deep red hue, and he has the stale stench of a drunk who hasn't bathed in a while. The sight and smell of him brings back memories that are too awful to describe, and she feels the rawness, the soreness of flesh he should never have seen or touched. She wears layers of silk and cotton, fabrics gentle to her skin, her shirt buttoned at the collar, her jacket zipped up. To hide her injuries. To hide her humiliation. Around him, she feels powerless and naked.

Another awful silence as she drives. The car is filled with the aromas of garlic and sharp cheese, and he has his window open.

He says, “The light hurts my eyes. I can't believe how much the light's killing my eyes.”

He has said this numerous times, offering an answer to an unasked question of why he won't look at her or take off his dark glasses despite the overcast sky and rain. When she made coffee and dry toast barely an hour ago and brought it to him in bed, he groaned as he sat up and held his head. Unconvincingly, he asked, “Where am I?”

“You were very drunk last night.” She set the coffee and toast on the bedside table. “Do you remember?”

“If I eat anything, I'll puke.”

“Do you remember last night?”

He says he doesn't remember anything after riding his motorcycle to her house. His demeanor says he remembers all of it. He continues to complain about feeling sick.

“I wish you didn't have food back there. Now's not a good time for me to smell food.”

“Too bad. Rose has the flu.”

She parks in the lot next to Rose's building.

“I sure as shit don't want to get the flu,” he says.

“Then stay in the car.”

“I want to know what you did with my gun.” He has said this several times as well.

“As I've told you, it's in a safe place.”

She parks. On the backseat is a box filled with covered dishes. She stayed up all night cooking. She cooked enough tagliolini with fontina sauce, lasagna Bolognese, and vegetable soup to feed twenty people.

“Last night you were in no condition to have a loaded gun,” she adds.

“I want to know where it is. What did you do with it?”

He walks slightly ahead of her, not bothering to ask if he can carry the box.

“I'll tell you again. I took it from you last night. I took your motorcycle key. Do you remember my taking your key away from you because you insisted on riding your motorcycle when you could barely stand up?”

“That bourbon in your house,” he says as they walk toward the whitewashed building in the rain. “Booker's.” As if it's her fault. “I can't afford good bourbon like that. It goes down so smooth, I forget it's a-hundred-and-twenty-something proof.”

“So I'm to blame.”

“Don't know why you got something that strong in your house.”

“Because you brought it over New Year's Eve.”

“Someone may as well have hit me over the head with a tire iron,” he says as they climb steps and the doorman lets them in.

“Good morning, Ed,” Scarpetta says, aware of the sound of a TV inside his office off the lobby. She hears the news, more coverage of Drew Martin's murder.

Ed looks toward his office, shakes his head, and says, “Terrible, terrible. She was a nice girl, a real nice girl. Saw her just here right before she got killed, tipped me twenty dollars every time she came through the door. Terrible. Such a nice girl. Acted like a normal person, you know.”

“She was staying here?” Scarpetta says. “I thought she always stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel. At least that's what's been in the news whenever she's in this area.”

“Her tennis coach has an apartment here, hardly ever in it, but he's got one,” Ed says.

Scarpetta wonders why she's never heard about that. Now isn't the time to ask. She's worried about Rose. Ed pushes the elevator button and taps the button for Rose's floor.

The doors shut. Marino's dark glasses stare straight ahead.

“I think I got a migraine,” he says. “You got anything for a migraine?”

“You've already taken eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. Nothing else for at least five hours.”

“That don't help a migraine. I wish you hadn't had that stuff in the house. It's like someone slipped me something, like I was drugged.”

“The only person who slipped you something is yourself.”

“I can't believe you called Bull. What if he's dangerous?”

She can't believe he'd say such a thing after what happened last night.

“I sure as hell hope you don't ask him to help in the office next,” he says. “What the hell does he know? He'll just get in the way.”

“I can't think about this right now. I'm thinking about Rose right now. And maybe this would be a good time for you to worry about somebody besides yourself.” Anger begins to rise, and Scarpetta walks quickly along a hallway of old white plaster walls and worn blue carpet.

She rings the bell to Rose's apartment. No answer, no sound inside except the TV. She sets the box on the floor and tries the bell again. Then again. She calls her cell phone, her landline. She hears them ringing inside, then voicemail.

“Rose!” Scarpetta pounds on the door. “Rose!”

She hears the TV. Nothing but the TV.

“We've got to get a key,” she says to Marino. “Ed has one. Rose!”

“Fuck that.” Marino kicks the door as hard as he can, and wood splinters and the burglar chain breaks, brass links clinking to the floor as the door flies open and bangs against the wall.

Inside, Rose is on the couch, motionless, her eyes shut, her face ashen, strands of long, snowy hair unpinned.

“Call nine-one-one now!” Scarpetta puts pillows behind Rose to prop her up as Marino calls for an ambulance.

She takes Rose's pulse. Sixty-one.

“They're on their way,” Marino says.

“Go to the car. My medical bag's in the trunk.”

He runs out of the apartment, and she notices a wineglass and a prescription bottle on the floor, almost hidden by the skirt of the couch. She's stunned to see that Rose has been taking Roxicodone, a trade name for oxycodone hydrochloride, an opioid analgesic that's notoriously habit-forming. The prescription of one hundred tablets was filled ten days ago. She takes the top off the bottle and counts the fifteen-milligram green tablets. There are seventeen left.

“Rose!” Scarpetta shakes her. She's warm and sweating. “Rose, wake up! Can you hear me! Rose!”

Scarpetta goes to the bathroom and returns with a cool washcloth, places it on Rose's forehead, and holds her hand, talking to her, trying to rouse her. Then Marino is back. He looks frantic and frightened as he hands Scarpetta the medical bag.