Four Scarpetta Novels (134 page)

A
LBERT DARD OPENS
the imposing door, the front of his long-sleeve shirt spotted with blood.

“What happened?” Scarpetta exclaims as she steps inside.

She gets down and gently raises his shirt. In a tic-tac-toe pattern on his stomach are shallow cuts. Scarpetta lets out a long breath as she lowers his shirt and stands up.

“When did you do this?” She takes his hand.

“After she left and didn't come back. Then he left. The man on the plane. I don't like him!”

“Your aunt didn't come back?”

Scarpetta noted when she approached the house that a white Mercedes and Mrs. Guidon's old Volvo were parked in front.

“You have a place where I can do something about those cuts?”

He shakes his head. “I don't want to do anything.”

“Well, I do. I'm a doctor. Come on.”

“You are?” He seems dazzled, as if he's never imagined that women could be doctors.

He leads her up the stairs to a bathroom that, like the kitchen, hasn't
been renovated in many years. Inside is a old-fashioned white tub, a white sink and a medicine cabinet, where she finds iodine but no Band-Aids.

“Let's get your shirt off.” She helps him pull it over his head. “Can you be brave? I know you can. Cutting yourself hurts, doesn't it?”

She is dismayed by the multitude of scars covering his back and shoulders.

“I don't really feel it when I do it,” he says, watching anxiously as she unscrews the cap from the iodine.

“I'm afraid you're going to feel this, Albert. A little sting.” She lies the way all doctors do when some procedure is going to hurt like hell.

She works quickly while he bites his lip. He waves his hands to cool the burning while he tries not to cry.

“You
are
brave,” she says, lowering the lid of the toilet and sitting on it. “You want to tell me why you started cutting yourself? Someone said it began several years ago.”

He hangs his head.

“You can tell me.” She takes both his hands. “We're friends, aren't we?”

He slowly nods.

“These people came,” he whispers. “I heard cars. My aunt went outside, so I did too, only I hid. And they pulled this lady out of a car and she was trying to scream but they had her tied up.” He points to his mouth, indicating a gag. “Then they pushed her into the cellar.”

“The wine cellar?”

“Yes.”

Scarpetta recalls Mrs. Guidon's insistence that she tour the wine cellar. Fear raises the hairs on the back of her neck. She is here. She doesn't know who else is here, except Albert, and someone could drive up at any moment.

“One of the people with the tied-up lady was a monster.” Albert's voice rises almost to a squeal as his eyes widen in terror. “Like I've seen on TV, in scary movies, with these sharp teeth and long hair. I was so afraid he saw me behind the bush!”

Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.

“And then my doggie, Nestlé. She never came home again!” He begins to cry.

Scarpetta hears the front door open and close, then footsteps downstairs.

“Is there a phone up here?” Scarpetta whispers to Albert.

Terrified, he wipes away tears.

She repeats her question urgently.

He stares at her, paralyzed.

“Go lock yourself in your room!”

He touches the wounds on his stomach, then rubs them, causing them to bleed.

“Go! Don't make any noise.”

He walks quickly, quietly down the hall and turns into a room.

For several minutes she waits, listening to footsteps until they stop. The footsteps sound like those of a man, relatively heavy, but not the sharp sound of hard leather against wood. He starts walking again, and Scarpetta's heart hammers as he seems to head toward the stairs. She hears him on the first step and walks out of the bathroom, because she does not want him—and she is certain he is Jean-Baptiste Chandonne—to find Albert.

At the top of the stairs she freezes, gripping the railing with all her might, looking down the staircase at him, the sight of him draining the blood from her head. She shuts her eyes and opens them again, thinking he will go away. Slowly, she takes one step at a time, holding on to the railing, staring. Midway, she sits down, staring.

Benton Wesley doesn't move as he too stares. His eyes glisten with tears that he quickly blinks away.

“Who are you?” Scarpetta's voice sounds miles away. “You aren't him.”

“I am.”

She begins to cry.

“Please come down. Or would you like me to come up and get you?” He doesn't want to touch her until she is ready. Until he is ready, too.

She gets up and slowly walks down the stairs. When she reaches him, she backs away, far away.

“So you're part of this, you bastard. You goddamn bastard.” Her voice shakes so violently that she can barely speak. “So I guess you'd better shoot me, because now I know. What you've been doing all this time I thought you were dead. With them!” She looks at the stairs, as if someone is standing there. “You are one of them!”

“I'm anything but,” he says.

Digging into a pocket of his suit jacket, he takes out a folded piece of white paper. He smooths it open. It is a National Academy of Justice envelope, just like the photocopy Marino showed her—the photocopy of the envelope containing the letters Chandonne wrote to Marino and her.

Benton drops the envelope to the floor where she can see it.

“No,” she says.

“Please, let's talk.”

“You told Lucy where Rocco was. You knew what she'd do!”

“You're safe.”

“And you set me up to see
him.
I never wrote to him. It was
you
who wrote a letter supposedly from me, claiming I wanted to come see him and make a deal.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why would you subject me to that? To make me stare at that man, that awful excuse for life?”

“You just called him a man. That's right. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is a man, not a monster, not a myth. I wanted you to confront him before he died. I wanted you to take back your power.”

“You had no right to control my life, to manipulate me that way!”

“Are you sorry you went?”

For an instant, she is speechless. Then she says, “You were wrong. He didn't die.”

“I didn't anticipate his seeing you would give him cause to stay alive. I should have known. Psychopaths like him don't want to die. I suppose
because he pled guilty in Texas, where he knew he would be death-eligible, I was fooled into thinking he really did want . . .”

“You were wrong,” she accuses him again. “You've had too damn much time to play God. And I don't know what you've turned into, some, some . . .”

“I was wrong, yes. I miscalculated, yes. Became a machine, Kay.”

He said her name. And it shakes her to her soul.

“There is no one here to hurt you now,” he then says.

“Now?”

“Rocco is dead. Weldon Winn is dead. Jay Talley is dead.”

“Jay?”

Benton flinches. “I'm sorry. If you still care.”

“About Jay?” Confusion spins. She feels dizzy, about to faint. “Care about him? How could I? Do you know everything?”

“More than everything,” he replies.

I
NSIDE THE KITCHEN, THEY SIT
at the same butcher-block table where Scarpetta talked to Mrs. Guidon on a night Scarpetta scarcely remembers.

“I got in too deep,” Benton is saying.

They are sitting across from each other.

“It was here, in this place of theirs, where a lot of the major players come to do their dirty business at the port and the Mississippi. Rocco. Weldon Winn. Talley. Even Jean-Baptiste.”

“You've met him?”

“Many times,” Benton says. “Here in this house. He found me amusing and much nicer to him than the others were. In and out, you name it. Guidon was the matron of the manor, you might say. As bad as the rest of them.”

“Was?”

Benton hesitates. “I saw Winn go into the wine cellar. I didn't know the others were in there, thought maybe Jean-Baptiste was, hiding. It was her and Talley. I had no choice.”

“You killed them.”

“I had no choice,” Benton repeats.

Scarpetta nods.

“Six years ago, another agent was working with me, Minor. Riley Minor. Supposedly from around here. He did something stupid, I'm not sure what. But they did their number on him.” Benton nods in the direction of the wine cellar. “The torture chamber, where they make everybody talk. There are old iron rings in the walls from the slave days, and Talley was fond of heat guns and other means of deriving information. Quickly.

“When I saw them dragging Minor into the cellar, I knew the operation was over and I got the hell away.”

“You didn't try to help him?”

“Impossible.”

She is silent.

“If I hadn't
died,
I would have, Kay. If I hadn't
died,
I could never have been around you, Lucy, Marino. Ever. Because they would have killed you, too.”

“You are a coward,” she says, drained of emotion.

“I understand your hating me for all I made you suffer.”

“You could have told me! So I wouldn't suffer!”

He looks at her for a long moment, remembers her face. It hasn't changed much. None of her has.

“What would you have done, Kay, had I told you my death had to be faked and I would never see you again?” he asks.

She doesn't have the answer she thought she might. The truth is, she wouldn't have allowed him to vanish, and he knows it. “I would have taken my chances.” Grief closes her throat again. “For you, I would have.”

“Then you understand. And if it's any consolation, I've suffered. Not a day has gone by when I didn't think of you.”

She shuts her eyes and tries to steady her breathing.

“Then I couldn't take it anymore. Early on I became so miserable, so goddamn angry, and I began to figure away. Like chess . . .”

“A game?”

“Not a game. I was very serious. One by one, to eliminate the major threats, knowing that once I came out, I could never go back, because if I failed, I would be recognized. Or simply killed during the process.”

“I have never believed in vigilantism.”

“I suppose you can talk to your friend Senator Lord about that. The Chandonnes heavily fund terrorism, Kay.”

She gets up. “Too much, too much for one day. Too much.” She glances up, suddenly remembering Albert. “Is that little mistreated boy really Charlotte Dard's son?”

“Yes.”

“Please don't tell me you're his father.”

“Jay Talley is. Was. Albert doesn't know that. He's always been given this mysterious line about a very prominent but busy father he's never met. A kid's fantasy. He still believes he has this omnipotent father somewhere. Talley had a brief affair with Charlotte. One night while I was here, there was a garden party and Charlotte invited an acquaintance, an antiques dealer . . .”

“I know,” Scarpetta says. “At least that question will be answered.”

“Talley saw her, spoke to her, went to her house. She resisted him, which is something he won't tolerate. He murdered her, and because Charlotte had seen the two of them together, and because Talley was tired of Charlotte, bored with her, he saw to it that she died. Met her, brought her pills.”

“The poor little boy.”

“Don't worry,” Benton says.

“Where are Lucy and Marino? Where are Rudy and Nic?” Now she remembers them.

“Picked up by a Coast Guard helicopter about half an hour ago. After raiding Bev Kiffin and Jay Talley's hideout.”

“How do you know?”

He gets up from the table. “I have my sources.”

Senator Lord enters Scarpetta's mind again. The Coast Guard is now Homeland Security. Yes, Senator Lord would know.

Benton moves closer to her, looking into her eyes. “If you hate me forever, I'll understand. If you don't want to be with me I don't blame . . . well, you shouldn't. Jean-Baptiste is still out there. He will come after me. Somehow.”

She says nothing, waiting for the hallucination to pass.

“Can I touch you?” Benton asks.

“It doesn't matter who else is out there. I've been through too much.”

“Can I touch you, Kay?”

She lifts his hands and presses them against her face.