Unnatural Exposure (23 page)

I was feeling chills again.

'Here's the idea.' Janet tucked the printouts back inside the file. 'I could get you in a private chat room with him. If we can keep you online long enough, we can trace him from telephone trunk to telephone trunk, until we get a town, then a location.'

'I don't believe for a moment that this person is going to participate,' I said. 'He's too smart for that.'

'Benton Wesley thinks he might.'

I was silent.

'He thinks deadoc is sufficiently fixated on you that he might get into a chat room. It's more than his wanting to know what you think. He wants you to know what he thinks, or at least this is Wesley's theory. I've got a laptop here, everything you need.'

'No.' I shook my head. 'I don't want to get into this, Janet.'

'You've got nothing else to do for the next few days.'

It irritated me when anyone ever accused me of not having enough to do. 'I don't want to communicate with the monster. It's far too risky. I could say the wrong thing and more people die.'

Janet's eyes were intense on mine. 'They're dying, anyway. Maybe others are, too, even as we speak, that we don't know about yet.'

I thought of Lila Pruitt alone in her house, wandering, demented with disease. I saw her in her mirror, shrieking.

'All you need to do is get him talking, a little bit at a time,' Janet went on. 'You know, act reluctant, as if he's caught you unaware, otherwise he'll get suspicious. Build it up for a few days, while we try to find out where he is. Get on AOL. Go into the chat rooms and find one called M. E., okay? Just hang out in there.'

'Then what?' I wanted to know.

'The hope is he'll come looking for you, thinking this is where you do consultations with other doctors, scientists. He won't be able to resist. That's Wesley's theory and I agree with it.'

'Does he know I'm here?'

The question was ambiguous but she knew who I meant.

'Yes,' she said. 'Marino asked me to call him.'

'What did he say?' I asked into the phone.

'He wanted to know if you were okay.' She was getting evasive. 'He has this old case in Georgia. Something about two people stabbed to death in a liquor store, and organized crime is involved. In a little town near St Simons Island.'

'Oh, so he's on the road.'

'I guess so.'

'Where will you be?'

'With the squad. I'll actually be staying in Baltimore, on the harbor.'

'And Lucy?' I asked again, this time in a way she couldn't evade. 'Do you want to tell me what's really going on, Janet?'

I breathed my filtered air, looking through glass at someone I knew could never lie to me.

'Everything okay?' I pressed harder.

'Dr Scarpetta, I'm here by myself for two reasons,' she finally said. 'First, Lucy and I got into a huge fight about your going online with this guy. So everyone involved thought it would be better if she wasn't the one to talk to you about it.'

'I can understand that,' I said. 'And I agree.'

'My second reason is a far more unpleasant one,' she went on. 'It's about Carrie Grethen.'

I was astonished and enraged at the mere mention of her name. Years ago, when Lucy was developing CAIN, she had worked with Carrie. Then ERF had been broken into, and Carrie had seen to it that my niece was blamed. There were murders, too, sadistic and terrible, that Carrie had been accomplice to with a psychopathic man.

'She's still in prison,' I said.

'I know. But her trial is scheduled for the spring,' Janet said.

'I'm well aware of that.' I didn't understand what she was getting at.

'You're the key witness. Without you, the Commonwealth doesn't have much of a case. At least not when you're talking about a jury trial.'

'Janet, I am most confused,' I said, and my headache was back with fury.

She took a deep breath. 'I'm sure you must be aware that there was a time when Lucy and Carrie were close.' She hesitated. 'Very close.'

'Of course,' I impatiently said. 'Lucy was a teenager and Carrie seduced her. Yes, yes, I know all about it.'

'So does Percy Ring.'

I looked at her, shocked.

'It seems that yesterday, Ring went to see the C. A. who's prosecuting the case, uh, Rob Schurmer. Ring tells him, one buddy to another, that he's got a major problem since the star witness's niece had an affair with the defendant.'

'My God in heaven.' I could not believe this. 'That fucking bastard.'

I was a lawyer. I knew what this meant. Lucy would have to take the stand and be questioned about her affair with another woman. The only way to avoid this was for me to be struck as a witness, allowing Carrie to get away with murder.

'What she did has nothing to do with Carrie's crimes,' I said, so angry with Ring I felt capable of violence.

Janet switched the phone to her other ear, trying to be smooth. But I could see her fear.

'I don't need to tell you how it is out there,' she said. 'Don't ask, don't tell. It's not tolerated, no matter what anybody says. Lucy and I are so careful. People may suspect, but they don't really know, and it's not like we walk around in leather and chains.'

'Not hardly.'

'I think this would ruin her,' she matter-of-factly stated. 'The publicity, and I can't imagine HRT when she shows up after that. All those big guys. Ring's just doing this to do her in, and maybe you, too. And maybe me. This won't exactly help my career, either.'

She didn't need to go on. I understood.

'Does anyone know what Schurmer's response was when Ring told him?'

'He freaked, called Marino and said he didn't know what he was going to do, that when the defense found out, he was cooked. Then Marino called me.'

'Marino has said nothing to me.'

'He didn't want to upset you right now,' she said. 'And he didn't think it was his place.'

'I see,' I said. 'Does Lucy know?'

'I told her.'

'And?'

'She kicked a hole in the bedroom wall,' Janet answered. 'Then she said if she had to, she'd take the stand.'

Janet pressed her palm against the glass, spreading her fingers, waiting for me to do the same. It was as close as we could get to touching, and my eyes teared up.

'I feel as if I've committed a crime,' I said, clearing my throat.

THE NURSE CARRIED the computer equipment into my room and wordlessly handed it to me before walking right back out. For a moment, I stared at the laptop as if it were something that might hurt me. I was sitting up in bed, where I continued to perspire profusely while I was cold at the same time.

I didn't know if the way I felt was due to a microbe or if I were having some sort of emotional attack because of what Janet had just told me. Lucy had wanted to be an FBI agent since she was a child, and she was already one of the best ones they'd ever had. This was so unfair. She had done nothing but make the mistake of being drawn in by someone evil when she was only nineteen. I was desperate to get out of this room and find her. I wanted to go home. I was about to ring for the nurse when one walked in. She was new.

'Do you suppose I could have a fresh set of scrubs?' I asked her.

'I can get you a gown.'

'Scrubs, please.'

'Well, it's a little out of the ordinary.' She frowned.

'I know.'

I plugged the computer into the telephone jack, and pushed a button to turn it on.

'If they don't get beyond this budget impasse soon, there won't be anybody to autoclave scrubs or anything else.' The nurse kept talking in her blue suit, arranging covers over my legs. 'On the news this morning, the president said Meals on Wheels is going broke, EPA isn't cleaning up toxic waste dumps, federal courts may close and forget getting a tour of the White House. You ready for lunch?'

'Thank you,' I said as she continued her litany of bad news.

'Not to mention Medicaid, air pollution and tracking the winter flu epidemic or screening water supplies for the Cryptosporidium parasite. You're just lucky you're here now. Next week we might not be open.'

I didn't even want to think about budget feuds, since I devoted most of my time to them, haggling with department heads and firing at legislators during General Assembly. I worried that when the federal crisis slammed down to the state level, my new building would never be finished, my meager current funding further ruthlessly slashed. There were no lobbyists for the dead. My patients had no party and did not vote.

'You got two choices,' she was saying.

'I'm sorry.' I tuned her in again.

'Chicken or ham.'

'Chicken.' I wasn't the least bit hungry. 'And hot tea.'

She unplugged her air line and left me to the quiet. I set the laptop on the tray and logged onto America Online. I went straight to my mailbox. There was plenty, but nothing from deadoc that Squad 19 hadn't already opened. I followed menus to the chat rooms, pulled up a list of the member rooms and checked to see how many people were in the one called M. E.

No one was there, so I went in alone and leaned back against my pillows, staring at the blank screen with its row of icons across the top. Literally, there was no one to chat with, and I thought of how ridiculous this must seem to deadoc, were he somehow watching. Wasn't it obvious if I were alone in a room? Wouldn't it seem that I was waiting? I had no sooner entertained this thought when a sentence was written across my screen, and I began to answer.

QUINCY:

Hi. What are we talking about today?

SCARPETTA:

The budget impasse. How is it affecting you?

QUINCY:

I work out of the D. C. office. A nightmare.

SCARPETTA:

Are you a medical examiner?

QUINCY:

Right. We've met at meetings. We know some of the same people. Not much of a crowd today, but it could always get better if one is patient.

That's when I knew Quincy was one of the undercover agents from Squad 19. We continued our session until lunch arrived, then resumed it afterwards for the better part of an hour. Quincy and I chatted about our problems, asking questions about solutions, anything we could think of that might seem like normal conversation between medical examiners or people they might confer with. But deadoc did not bite.

I took a nap and woke up a little past four. For a moment, I lay very still, forgetting where I was, then it came back to me with depressing alacrity. I sat up, cramped beneath my tray, the computer still open on top of it. I logged onto AOL again and went back into the chat room. This time I was joined by someone who called himself MEDEX, and we talked about the type of computer database I used in Virginia for capturing case information and doing statistical retrievals.

At exactly five minutes past five, a bell sounded off-key inside my computer, and the Instant Message window suddenly dominated my screen. I stared in disbelief as a communication from deadoc appeared, words that I knew no one else in the chat room could see.

DEADOC:

you think you re so smart SCARPETTA:

Who are you?

DEADOC:

you know who I am I am what you do SCARPETTA:

What do I do?

DEADOC:

death doctor death you are me SCARPETTA:

I am not you.

DEADOC:

you think you re so smart He abruptly got quiet, and when I clicked on the Available button, it showed that he had logged off. My heart was racing as I sent another message to MEDEX, saying I had been tied up with a visitor. I got no response, finding myself alone in the chat room again.

'Damn,' I exclaimed, under my breath.

I tried again as late as ten P. M., but no one appeared except QUINCY again, to tell me we should try another meeting in the morning. All of the other docs, he said, had gone home. The same nurse checked on me, and she was sweet. I felt sorry for her long hours, and her inconvenience of having to wear a blue suit every time she came into my room.

'Where is the new shift?' I asked, as she took my temperature.

'I'm it. We're all just doing the best we can.'

I nodded as she alluded to the furlough yet one more time this day.

'There's hardly a lab worker here,' she went on. 'You could wake up tomorrow, the only person in the building.'

'Now I'm sure to have nightmares,' I said as she wrapped the BP cuff around my arm.

'Well, you're feeling okay, and that's the important thing. Ever since I started coming down here, I started imagining I was getting one thing or another. The slightest ache or pain or sniffle, and it's, oh my God. So what kind of doctor are you?'

I told her.

'I was going to be a pediatrician. Then I got married.'

'We'd be in a lot of trouble were it not for good nurses like you,' I smiled and said.