Four Scarpetta Novels (13 page)

“Impossible. What he told me is no proof.”

“What if he's this killer, Paulo?”

“If I had more evidence, I'd tell you. I have only his twisted tales and the uneasy feeling I got when I was contacted about the murdered prostitute who turned out to be the missing Canadian.”

“You were contacted? What? For your opinion? That's news to me.”

“It was worked by the state police. Not the Carabinieri. I give my free advice to many people. In summary, this patient never came to see me again, and I couldn't tell you where he is,” Dr. Maroni says.

“Couldn't or won't.”

“I couldn't.”

“Don't you see how it's possible he's Drew Martin's killer? He was referred to you by Dr. Self, and suddenly she hides at your hospital because of an e-mail from a madman.”

“Now you're perseverating and back to the VIP. I've never said Dr. Self is a patient at the hospital. But motivation for hiding is more important than the hiding place itself.”

“If only I could dig with a shovel inside your head, Paulo. No telling what I'd find.”

“Risotto and wine.”

“If you know details that could help this investigation, I don't agree with your secrecy,” the captain says, and then he says nothing because the waiter is heading toward them.

Dr. Maroni asks to see the menu again, even though he has tried everything on it by now because he dines here often. The captain, who doesn't want a menu, recommends the grilled Mediterranean spiny lobster, followed by salad and Italian cheeses. The male seagull returns alone. He stares through the window, ruffling his bright white feathers. Beyond are the lights of the city. The gold dome of Saint Peter's looks like a crown.

“Otto, if I violate confidentiality with so little evidence and am mistaken, my career is finished,” Dr. Maroni finally says. “I don't have a legitimate reason to expose further details about him to the police. It would be most unwise of me.”

“So you introduce the subject of who may be the killer and then close the door?” Captain Poma leans into the table and says in despair.

“I didn't open that door,” Dr. Maroni says. “All I did was point it out to you.”

 

Lost in her work, Scarpetta is startled when the alarm on her wristwatch goes off at quarter of three.

She finishes suturing the Y incision of the decomposing elderly woman whose autopsy was unnecessary. Atherosclerotic plaque. Cause of death, as expected, arteriosclerotic coronary vascular disease. She pulls off her gloves and drops them in a bright red biohazard trash can, then calls Rose.

“I'll be up in a minute,” Scarpetta tells her. “If you could contact Meddicks', let them know she's ready for pickup.”

“I was just coming down to find you,” Rose says. “Worried you might have accidentally locked yourself in the fridge.” An old joke. “Benton's trying to reach you. Says for you to check your e-mail when, and I quote, you are alone and composed.”

“You sound worse than you did yesterday. More congested.”

“I might have a bit of a cold.”

“I heard Marino's motorcycle a little while ago. And someone's been smoking down here. In the fridge. Even my surgical gown reeks of it.”

“That's odd.”

“Where is he? Be nice if he could have found time to help me out down here.”

“In the kitchen,” Rose says.

Fresh gloves, and Scarpetta pulls the elderly woman's body from the autopsy table into a sheet-lined sturdy vinyl bag on top of a gurney, which she rolls into the cooler. She hoses off her work station, places tubes of vitreous fluid, urine, bile, and blood, and a carton of sectioned organs into a refrigerator for later toxicological testing and histology. Bloodstained cards go under a hood to dry—samples for DNA testing that are included in each case file. After mopping the floor and cleaning surgical instruments and sinks and gathering paperwork for later dictation, she's ready to attend to her own hygiene.

At the back of the autopsy suite are drying cabinets with HEPA and carbon filters for bloody, soiled clothing before it is packaged as evidence and sent to the labs. Next is a storage area, then a laundry room, and finally the locker room, divided by a glass-block wall. One side for men, the other for women. At this early stage of her practice in Charleston, it's just Marino assisting her in the morgue. He has his side of the locker room and she has the other, and it always feels awkward to her when both of them are showering at the same time and she can hear him and see changes in light through the thick green translucent glass as he moves about.

She enters her side of the locker room, shuts and locks the door. She removes her disposable shoe covers, apron, cap, and face mask, and drops them in a biohazard trash can, then tosses her surgical gown in a hamper. She showers, scrubbing herself with antibacterial soap, then blow-dries her hair and changes back into her suit and pumps. Returning to the corridor, she walks the length of it to a door. On the other side is the steep flight of worn oak stairs that lead directly up to the kitchen where Marino is popping open a can of Diet Pepsi.

He looks her up and down. “Aren't we dressed fancy,” he says. “You forget it's Sunday and think you got court? So much for my ride to Myrtle Beach.” A long night of carousing shows on his flushed, stubbly face.

“Count it as a gift. Another day of being alive.” She hates motorcycles. “Besides, the weather is bad and supposed to get worse.”

“Eventually I'm gonna get you on the back of my Indian Chief Roadmaster and you'll be hooked, be begging for more.”

The idea of straddling his big motorcycle, her arms around him, her body pressed against him, is a complete turnoff, and he knows it. She's his boss, and in many ways always has been for the better part of twenty years, and that no longer seems all right with him. Certainly both of them have changed. Certainly they've had their good times and bad. But over recent years and especially of late, his regard for her and his job has become increasingly unrecognizable, and now this. She thinks of Dr. Self's e-mails, wonders if he assumes she's seen them. She thinks of whatever game Dr. Self is engaging him in—a game he won't understand and is destined to lose.

“I could hear you come in. Obviously, you parked your motorcycle in the bay again,” she says. “If it gets hit by a hearse or a van,” she reminds him, “the liability's yours and I won't feel sorry for you.”

“It gets hit, there'll be an extra dead body wheeled in, whatever dumb-shit funeral home creepy-crawler didn't look where he was going.”

Marino's motorcycle, with its sound barrier–breaking pipes, has become yet one more point of contention. He rides it to crime scenes, to court, to emergency rooms, to law offices, to witnesses' homes. At the office, he refuses to leave it in the parking lot and tucks it in the bay, which is for body deliveries, not personal vehicles.

“Has Mr. Grant gotten here yet?” Scarpetta says.

“Drove up in a piece-of-shit pickup truck with his piece-of-shit fishing boat, shrimp nets, buckets, other crap in back. One big son of a bitch, pitch-black. I've never seen black people as black as they are around here. Not a drop of cream in the coffee. Not like our ole stomping grounds in Virginia where Thomas Jefferson slept with the help.”

She's in no mood to engage in his provocations. “Is he in my office, because I don't want to make him wait.”

“I don't get why you dressed up for him like you're meeting with a lawyer or a judge or going to church,” Marino says, and she wonders if what he really hopes is that she dressed up for him, perhaps because she read Dr. Self's e-mails and is jealous.

“Meeting with him is as important as meeting with anyone else,” she says. “We always show respect, remember?”

Marino smells like cigarettes and booze, and when “his chemistry's off,” as Scarpetta understates it all too often these days, his deep-seated insecurities shift his bad behavior into high gear, a problem made quite threatening by his physical formidability. In his mid-fifties, he shaves off what is left of his hair, typically wears black motorcycle clothing and big boots, and, as of the past few days, a gaudy necklace with a silver dollar dangling from it. He is fanatical about lifting weights, his chest so broad he's known to brag that it takes two x-rays to capture his lungs on film. In a much earlier phase of his life, based on old photographs she's seen, he was handsome in a virile, tough way, and might still be attractive were it not for his crassness, slovenliness, and hard living that at this point in his life can't be blamed on his difficult upbringing in a rough part of New Jersey.

“I don't know why you still entertain the fantasy that you'll fool me,” Scarpetta says, shifting the conversation away from the ridiculous subject of how she is dressed and why. “Last night. And clearly in the morgue.”

“Fool you about what?” Another gulp from the can.

“When you splash on that much cologne to disguise cigarette smoke, all you do is give me a headache.”

“Huh?” He quietly belches.

“Let me guess, you spent the night at the Kick 'N Horse.”

“The joint's full of cigarette smoke.” He shrugs his massive shoulders.

“And I'm sure you didn't add to it. You were smoking in the morgue. In the fridge. Even the surgical gown I put on smelled like cigarette smoke. Were you smoking in my locker room?”

“Probably drifted in from my side. The smoke, I mean. I might have carried my cigarette in there, in my side. I can't remember.”

“I know you don't want lung cancer.”

He averts his eyes the way he does when a certain topic of conversation is uncomfortable, and he chooses to abort it. “Find anything new? And I don't mean the old lady, who shouldn't have been sent here just because the coroner didn't want to deal with a stinky decomp. But the kid.”

“I've put him in the freezer. There's nothing more we can do right now.”

“I can't stand it when it's kids. I figure out who did that little kid down there, I'll kill him, tear him to pieces with my bare hands.”

“Let's don't threaten to kill people, please.” Rose is in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. Scarpetta isn't sure how long she's been standing there.

“It ain't no threat,” Marino says.

“That's exactly why I mentioned it.” Rose steps into the kitchen, dressed as neat as a pin—her old-fashioned expression—in a blue suit, her white hair tucked back in a French twist. She looks exhausted, and her pupils are contracted.

“You lecturing me again?” Marino says to her with a wink.

“You need a good lecture or two. Or three or four,” she says, pouring herself a cup of strong black coffee, a “bad” habit she quit about a year ago and now, apparently, has resumed. “And in case you've forgotten”—she eyes him above the rim of her coffee mug—“you have killed people before. So you shouldn't make threats.” She leans against the countertop and takes a deep breath.

“I told you. It ain't no threat.”

“You sure you're all right?” Scarpetta asks Rose. “Maybe you're getting more than a little cold. You shouldn't have come in.”

“I had a little chat with Lucy,” Rose says. To Marino, “I don't want Dr. Scarpetta alone with Mr. Grant. Not even for a second.”

“Did she mention he passed his background check?” Scarpetta says.

“You hear me, Marino? Not for one second do you leave Dr. Scarpetta alone with that man. I don't give a hoot about his background check. He's bigger than you are,” says the ever-protective Rose, probably upon the ever-protective Lucy's instructions.

Rose has been Scarpetta's secretary for almost twenty years, following her from pillar to post, in Rose's words, and through thick and thin. At seventy-three, she's an attractive, imposing figure, erect and keen, daily drifting in and out of the morgue armed with phone messages, reports that must be signed right this minute, any matter of business she decides can't wait, or simply a reminder—no, an order—that Scarpetta hasn't eaten all day and take-out food—healthy, of course—awaits her upstairs and she
will
go eat it now and she
won't
have another cup of coffee because she drinks too much coffee.

“He's been in what appears to be a knife fight.” Rose continues to worry.

“It's in his background check. He was the victim,” Scarpetta says.

“He looks very violent and dangerous, and is the size of a freighter. It concerns me greatly that he wanted to come here on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps hoping he'd find you alone,” she says to Scarpetta. “How do you know he isn't the one who killed that child?”

“Let's just hear what he has to say.”

“In the old days, we wouldn't do it like this. There would be a police presence,” Rose insists.

“This isn't the old days,” Scarpetta replies, trying not to lecture. “This is a private practice, and we have more flexibility in some ways and less in others. But in fact, part of our job has always been to meet with anyone who might have useful information, police presence or not.”

“Just be careful,” Rose says to Marino. “Whoever did this to that poor little boy knows darn well his body's here and Dr. Scarpetta's working on it, and usually when she works on something, she figures it out. He could be stalking her, for all we know.”

Usually Rose doesn't get this overwrought.

“You've been smoking,” Rose then says to Marino.

He takes another big gulp of Diet Pepsi. “Should've seen me last night. Had ten cigarettes in my mouth and two in my ass while I was playing the harmonica and getting it on with my new woman.”

“Another edifying evening at that biker bar with some woman whose IQ is the same as my refrigerator. Sub-Zero. Please don't smoke. I don't want you to die.” Rose looks troubled as she walks over to the coffeemaker and starts filling the pot with water to make a fresh pot. “Mr. Grant would like coffee,” she says. “And no, Dr. Scarpetta, you can't have any.”