Four Scarpetta Novels (23 page)

“Just tell me what I can do.” As grief tightens its grip.

“Change what you can. Don't ever think you can't.”

“Tell me. I'll do anything you want,” Scarpetta says.

“It's not until you're dying that you begin to realize all the things in life you could have changed. This I can't change.” Rose taps her chest. “You have the power to change almost anything you want.”

Images from last night, and for an instant, Scarpetta imagines she smells him, feels him, and she struggles not to show how devastated she is.

“What is it?” Rose squeezes her hand.

“How can I not feel terrible?”

“You were just thinking about something, and it wasn't me,” Rose says. “Marino. He looks awful and is acting odd.”

“Because he got shit-face drunk,” Scarpetta says, anger in her voice.

“‘Shit-face.' Now, that's a term I haven't heard you use. But then I'm getting rather vulgar myself these days. I actually used the word
twat
this morning when I was talking to Lucy on the phone—referring to Marino's latest. Who Lucy happened to pass in your neighborhood around eight. When Marino's motorcycle was still parked in front of your house.”

“I have a box of food for you. It's still in the hall. Let me get it and I'll put it away.”

A coughing fit, and when Rose removes the tissue from her mouth, it is spotted with bright red blood.

“Please let me take you back to Stanford,” Scarpetta says.

“Tell me what happened last night.”

“We talked.” Scarpetta feels her face turn red. “Until he was too drunk.”

“I don't believe I've ever seen you blush.”

“A hot flash.”

“Yes, and I have the flu.”

“Tell me what to do for you.”

“Let me go about my business as usual. I don't want to be resuscitated. I don't want to die in a hospital.”

“Why don't you move in with me?”

“That's not going about my business as usual,” Rose says.

“Will you at least give me permission to talk to your doctor?”

“There's nothing else for you to know. You asked what I want, and I'm telling you. No curative treatment. I want palliative care.”

“I have an extra room in my house. Small as it is. Maybe I should get a bigger place,” Scarpetta says.

“Don't be so selfless it makes you selfish. And it's selfish if you make me feel guilty and just plain horrible because I'm hurting everyone around me.”

Scarpetta hesitates, then says, “Can I tell Benton?”

“You can tell him. But not Marino. I don't want you telling him.” Rose sits up, places her feet on the floor. She takes both of Scarpetta's hands. “I'm no forensic pathologist,” she says. “But why are there fresh bruises on your wrists?”

 

The basset hound is still right where they left him, sitting in the sand near the
No Trespassing
sign.

“See, now, this just isn't normal,” Madelisa exclaims. “Been sitting here for more than an hour, waiting for us to come back. Here, Droopy. You sweet little thing.”

“Honey, that's not his name. Now, don't be naming him. Look at his tag,” Ashley says. “See what his real name is and where he lives.”

She stoops down, and the basset hound ambles over to her, presses against her, licks her hands. She squints at the tag, doesn't have her reading glasses. Ashley doesn't have his, either.

“I can't see it,” she says. “What little I can make out. Nope, doesn't look like there's a phone number. I didn't bring my phone, anyhow.”

“I didn't, either.”

“Now, that's dumb. What if I twisted my ankle out here or something? Somebody's barbecuing,” she says, sniffing, looking around, noticing a wisp of smoke rising from the back of the huge white house with the balconies and red roof—one of the few houses she's seen with a
No Trespassing
sign. “Now, why aren't you running off to see what's cooking?” she says to the basset hound, stroking his floppy ears. “Maybe we could go out and buy us one of those little grills and cook out tonight.”

She tries to read the dog's tags again, but it's hopeless without her glasses, and she imagines rich people, imagines some millionaire grilling on the patio of that huge white house set back from the dune, partially hidden by tall pines.

“Say hello to your old-maid sister,” Ashley says, filming. “Tell her how luxurious our town house is here on Millionaire Row in Hilton Head. Tell her next time we're staying in a mansion like that one where they're barbecuing.”

Madelisa looks down the beach in the direction of their town house, unable to see it through thick trees. She returns her attention to the dog and says, “I bet he lives in the house right there.” Pointing to the white European-looking mansion where someone is barbecuing. “I'll just go on over there and ask.”

“Go right on. I'll wander a little bit, filming. Saw a few porpoises a minute ago.”

“Come on, Droopy. Let's go find your family,” Madelisa says to the dog.

He sits in the sand and won't come. She tugs his collar, but he's not going anywhere. “Okay, then,” she says. “You stay put and I'll find out if that big house is where you're from. Maybe you got out and they don't know it. But one thing's for sure. Someone's missing you something awful!”

She hugs and kisses him. She heads off across the hard sand, gets to the soft sand, walks right through sea oats, even though she hears it's illegal to walk on the dunes. She hesitates at the
No Trespassing
sign, bravely steps up on the wooden boardwalk, heading to the huge white house where some rich person, maybe a celebrity, is cooking on the grill. Lunch, she supposes, as she keeps looking back, hoping the basset hound doesn't run off. She can't see him on the other side of the dune. She doesn't see him on the beach, either, just Ashley, a small figure, filming several dolphins rolling through the water, their fins cutting through the waves, then dipping out of sight again. At the end of the boardwalk is a wooden gate, and she's surprised it isn't locked. It isn't completely shut.

She walks through the backyard, looking everywhere, calling out “Hello!” She's never seen such a big pool, what they call a black-bottom pool, trimmed with fancy tile that looks like it came from Italy or Spain or some other exotic faraway place. She looks around, calling out “hello,” pauses curiously at the smoking gas grill where a slab of raggedly cut meat is charred on one side, bloody-raw on top. It occurs to her that the meat is strange, doesn't look like steak or pork, certainly not like chicken.

“Hello!” she calls out. “Anybody home?”

She bangs on the sun porch door. No answer. She walks around to the side of the house, supposing whoever is cooking might be somewhere over there, but the side yard is empty and overgrown. She peers through a space between the blinds and the edge of a big window and sees an empty kitchen, all stone and stainless steel. She's never seen a kitchen like that except in magazines. She notices two big dog bowls on a mat near the butcher block.

“Hello!” she yells. “I think I have your dog! Hello!” She moves along the side of the house, calling out. She climbs up steps to a door, next to it a window missing a pane of glass. Another pane is broken. She thinks about hurrying back to the beach, but inside the laundry room is a big dog crate that's empty.

“Hello!” Her heart beats hard. She's trespassing, but she's found the basset hound's home and she's got to help. How would she feel if it were Frisbee and someone didn't bring him back?

“Hello!” She tries the door and it opens.

W
ater drips from live oaks.

In the deep shadows of yew and tea olive trees, Scarpetta arranges broken pieces of pottery in the bottoms of pots to help with drainage so the plants don't rot. The warm air is steamy from a hard rain that suddenly started and just as suddenly stopped.

Bull carries a ladder over to an oak tree that spreads its canopy over most of Scarpetta's garden. She begins tamping potting soil into the pots and tucks in petunias, then parsley, dill, and fennel, because they attract butterflies. She relocates fuzzy silver lamb's ears and artemisia into better spots where they will catch the sun. The scent of wet, loamy earth mingles with the pungency of old brick and moss as she moves rather stiffly—from years of unforgiving tile floors in the morgue—to a brick post overgrown with hollyfern. She starts diagnosing the problem.

“If I pull this fern out, Bull, I might damage the brick. What do you think?”

“That's Charleston brick, probably two hundred years old, my guess.” From the top of the ladder. “I'd pull a little, see what happens.”

The fern peels off without complaint. She fills a watering can and tries not to think about Marino. She feels sick when she thinks about Rose.

Bull says, “Some man came through the alley on a chopper right before you got here.”

Scarpetta stops what she's doing, stares up at him. “Was it Marino?”

When she got home from Rose's apartment, his motorcycle was gone. He must have driven her car to his house and gotten a spare key.

“No, ma'am, it wasn't him. I was up on the ladder limbing the loquats, could see the man on the chopper over the fence. He didn't see me. Maybe nothing.” The clippers snap, and side shoots called suckers fall to the ground. “Anybody been bothering you, 'cause I'd like to know about it.”

“What was he doing?”

“Turned in and rode real slow about halfway, then turned around and went back. Looked to me like he had on a do-rag, maybe orange and yellow. Hard to tell from where I was. His chopper had bad pipes, rattled and spit like something about to quit. You should tell me if I should know something. I'll be looking.”

“You ever seen him before around here?”

“I'd recognize that chopper.”

She thinks about what Marino told her last night. A biker threatened him in the parking lot, said something bad would happen to her if she didn't leave town. Who would want her gone so badly as to pass on a message like that? The local coroner sticks in her mind.

She asks Bull, “You know much about the coroner here? Henry Hollings?”

“Only his funeral home business been in the family since the War, that huge place behind a high wall over there on Calhoun, not too far from here. I don't like the thought of someone bothering you. Your neighbor sure is curious.”

Mrs. Grimball is looking out the window again.

“She watches me like a hawk,” Bull says. “If I might say so, she's got an unkindness about her and don't mind hurting people.”

Scarpetta goes back to work. Something's eating the pansies. She tells Bull.

“There's a bad rat problem around here,” he replies. It seems prophetic.

She examines more damaged pansies. “Slugs,” she decides.

“You could try beer,” Bull says with snaps of the pole cutter. “Put out saucers of it after dark. They crawl in it, get drunk, and drown.”

“And the beer attracts more slugs than you had before. I couldn't drown anything.”

More suckers rain down from the oak tree. “Saw some raccoon droppings over there.” He points with the pole clipper. “Could be them eating the pansies.”

“Raccoons, squirrels. Nothing I can do about it.”

“There is, but you won't. You sure don't like to kill nothing. Kind of interesting when I think what you do. Would assume nothing much would bother you.” He talks from up in the tree.

“It seems what I do causes everything to bother me.”

“Uh-huh. That's what happens when you know too much. Those hydrangeas over where you are. Put some rusty nails around them and they'll turn a pretty blue.”

“Epsom salts will work, too.”

“Hadn't heard that.”

Scarpetta looks through a jeweler's lens at the back of a camellia leaf, notes whitish scales. “We'll prune these, and because there are wound pathogens, we're going to have to disinfect before using the tools on anything else. I need to get the plant pathologist here.”

“Uh-huh. Plants has diseases just like people.”

Crows begin to fuss in the canopy of the live oak he's trimming. Several of them suddenly flap off.

 

Madelisa stands paralyzed like that lady in the Bible who didn't do what God said and He turned her into a pillar of salt. She's trespassing, breaking the law.

“Hello?” she calls out again.

She musters up the courage to walk out of the laundry room and into the grand kitchen of the grandest house she's ever seen, still calling out “Hello!” and not sure what to do. She's scared in a way she's never felt before and should get out of here as fast as she can. She begins to wander, gawking at everything, feeling like a burglar, worrying she's going to get caught—now or later—and go to jail.

She should leave, get out. Do it now. The hair pricks up on the back of her neck as she continues calling out “Hello!” and “Anybody home?” and wondering why in the world the house is unlocked with meat on the grill if no one's here. She begins to imagine she's being watched as she wanders, something warning her that she ought to run as fast as she can out of this house and get back to Ashley. She has no right to wander around being nosy but can't help it now that she's here. She's never seen a house like this and can't figure out why nobody is answering her, and she's too curious to turn back, or feels like she can't.

She passes through an arch into a tremendous living room. The floor is blue stone, looks like gemstone, and is arranged with gorgeous Oriental rugs, and there are huge exposed beams and a fireplace big enough to roast a pig. A movie screen is pulled down over an expanse of glass that faces the ocean. Dust drifts in the beam of light from the overhead projector, the screen lit up but blank, and there's no sound. She looks at the wraparound black leather sofa, puzzled by the neatly folded clothing on top of it: a dark T-shirt, dark pants, a pair of men's Jockey briefs. The big glass coffee table is cluttered with packs of cigarettes, prescription bottles, an almost empty fifth of Grey Goose vodka.

Madelisa imagines someone—probably a man—drunk and depressed or sick, maybe explaining why the dog got out. Someone was in here not long ago, drinking, she thinks, and whoever it was started cooking on the grill and seems to have vanished. Her heart pounds. She can't shake the feeling she's being watched, and she thinks,
My Lord, it's cold in here
.

“Hello? Anybody home?” she calls out hoarsely.

Her feet seem to move on their own as she explores in awe, and fear hums inside her like electricity. She should leave. She's trespassing like a burglar. Breaking and entering. She's going to get in trouble. She feels something looking at her. The police will be looking at her, all right, if and when they find out, and she's getting panicky, but her feet won't listen. They keep moving her from one place to the next.

“Hello?” she calls out, her voice cracking.

Beyond the living room, off to the left of the foyer, is another room, and she hears running water.

“Hello!”

She hesitantly follows the sound of running water, can't seem to stop her feet. They keep right on, and she finds herself in a large bedroom with fancy, formal furniture and drawn silk curtains and pictures all over the walls. A beautiful little girl with a very pretty, happy woman who must be her mother. The little girl joyous in a wading pool with a puppy—the basset hound. The same pretty woman crying, sitting on a couch talking to the famous talk-show psychiatrist Dr. Self, big cameras rolled in close. The same pretty lady posing with Drew Martin and a handsome man with olive skin and very dark hair. Drew and the man are in tennis clothes, holding racquets on a tennis court somewhere.

Drew Martin's dead. Murdered.

The pale blue duvet on the bed is messy. On the black marble floor near the head of the bed are clothes that seem to have been dropped there. A pink jogging suit, a pair of socks, a bra. The sound of running water gets louder as her feet move toward it, and Madelisa tells her feet to run the other way but they won't.
Run
, she tells them as they walk her into a bathroom of black onyx and copper.
RUN!
She slowly takes in the wet, bloody towels in the copper sink, the bloody saw-toothed knife and bloody box cutters on the back of the black toilet, the neat stack of clean, pale rose linens on top of the hamper.

Behind tiger-striped curtains drawn around the copper tub, water runs, splashing on something that doesn't sound like metal.