Point of Origin

  Whenever Marino was tired or half drunk, he said fuck a lot. In truth, it was a grand word that expressed what one felt by the very act of saying it. But I had explained to him many times before that not everyone could deal with its vulgarity, and for that matter, some perhaps took it all too literally. I personally never thought of fuck as sexual intercourse, but rather as wishing to make a point.

  “I can’t entertain the thought that people like her will win,” I quietly said as I sipped red burgundy. “I will never think that.”

  “Pie in the sky.”

  “No, Marino. Faith.”

  “Yo.” He swallowed more bourbon. “Fucking faith. You know how many guys I’ve known to drop dead of heart attacks or get killed on the job? How many of them do you think had faith? Probably every goddamn one of them. Nobody thinks they’re gonna die, Doc. You and me don’t think it, no matter how much we know. My health sucks, okay? You think I don’t know I’m taking a bite of a poison cookie everyday? Can I help it? Naw. I’m just an old slob who has to have his steak biscuits and whiskey and beer. I’ve given up giving a shit about what the doctors say. So soon enough, I’m gonna stoop over in the saddle and be outta here, you know?”

  His voice was getting husky and he was beginning to get maudlin.

  “So a bunch of cops will come to my funeral, and you’ll tell the next detective to come along how it wasn’t all that bad to work with me,” he went on.

  “Marino, go to sleep,” I said. “And you know that’s not how I feel at all. I can’t even think of something happening to you, you big idiot.”

  “You really mean that?” He brightened a bit.

  “You know damn well I do,” I said, and I was exhausted, too.

  He finished his bourbon and softly rattled the ice in the glass, but I didn’t respond, because he’d had enough.

  “Know what, Doc?” he thickly said. “I like you a lot, even if you are a pain in the fucking ass.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “It is morning.”

  He rattled ice some more.

  “Go to sleep,” I said.

  I did not turn off my bedside lamp until two A.M., and thank God it was Fielding’s turn to spend Saturday in the morgue. It was almost nine when I got motivated to put my feet on the floor, and birds were raucous in my garden, and the sun was bouncing light off the world like a manic child with a ball. My kitchen was so bright it was almost white, and stainless steel appliances were like mirrors. I made coffee and did what I could to clear my head as I thought of the files downloaded into my computer. I thought of opening sliders and windows to enjoy spring air, and then Carrie’s face was before me again.

  I went into the great room to check on Marino. He slept the way he lived, struggling against his physical existence as if it were the enemy, the blanket kicked practically to the middle of the floor, pillows beaten into shape, and sheets twisted around his legs.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Not yet,” he mumbled.

  He turned over and punched the pillow to submission under his head. He wore blue boxer shorts and an undershirt that stopped six inches short of covering his swollen belly, and I always marveled that men were not shy about fat the way women were. In my own way I very much cared about staying in shape, and when my clothes starting feeling tight around the waist, both my general disposition and libido turned much less agreeable.

  “You can sleep a few more minutes,” I said to him.

  I gathered up the blanket and spread it across him. He resumed snoring like a wounded wild boar, and I moved to the kitchen table and called Benton at his New York hotel.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.

  “Actually, I was almost out the door. How are you?”

  He was warm but distracted.

  “I’d be better if you were here and she were back behind bars.”

  “The problem is, I know her patterns and she knows I know them. So I may as well not know them, if you see what I mean,” he said in that controlled tone that meant he was angry. “Last night, several of us disguised ourselves as homeless people and went down into the tunnels in the Bowery. A lovely way to spend the evening, I might add. We revisited the spot where Gault was killed.”

  Benton was always very careful to say where Gault was killed instead of where you killed Gault.

  “I am convinced she’s gone back there and will again,” he went on. “And not because she misses him, but that any reminder of the violent crimes they committed together excites her. The thought of his blood excites her. For her it’s a sexual high, a power rush that she’s addicted to, and you and I both know what that means, Kay. She’ll need a fix soon, if she hasn’t already gotten one that we just haven’t found out about yet. I’m sorry to be a doomsayer, but I have a gut feeling that whatever she does is going to be far worse than what she did before.”

  “It’s hard to imagine anything could be worse than that,” I said, though I really did not mean it.

  Whenever I had thought that human beings could get no worse, they did. Or perhaps it was simply that primitive evil seemed more shocking in a civilization of highly evolved humans who traveled to Mars and communicated through cyberspace.

  “And so far no sign of her,” I said. “Not even a hint.”

  “We’ve gotten hundreds of leads going nowhere. NYPD’s set up a special task force, as you know, and there’s a command center with guys taking calls twenty-four hours a day.”

  “How much longer will you stay up there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m sure if she’s still in the area, she knows damn well where you are. The New York Athletic Club, where you always stay. Just two buildings from where she and Gault had a room back then.” I was upset again. “I guess that’s the Bureau’s idea of sticking you in a shark cage and waiting for her to come and get it.”

  “A good analogy,” he said. “Let’s hope it works.”

  “And what if it does?” I said as fear cut through my blood and made me angrier. “I wish you’d come home and let the FBI do its job. I can’t get over it, you retire and they don’t give you the time of day until they want to use you for bait . . . !”

  “Kay . . .”

  “How can you let them use you . . .”

  “It’s not like that. This is my choice, a job I have to finish. She was my case from the start, and as far as I’m concerned, she still is. I can’t just relax at the beach knowing she’s loose and going to kill again. How can I just look the other way when you, Lucy, Marino—when all of us are very possibly in danger?”

  “Benton, don’t turn into a Captain Ahab, okay? Don’t let this become your obsession. Please.”

  He laughed.

  “Take me seriously, goddamn it.”

  “I promise I’ll stay away from white whales.”

  “You’re already chasing the hell out of one.”

  “I love you, Kay.”

  As I followed the hallway to my office, I wondered why I bothered saying the same old words to him. I knew his behavior almost as well as I knew my own, and the idea that he wouldn’t be doing exactly what he was right now was about as unthinkable as my letting another forensic pathologist take over the Warrenton case because it was my right to take it easy at this stage in my life.

  I turned on the light in my spacious paneled office, and opened the blinds to let the morning in. My work space adjoined my bedroom, and not even my housekeeper knew that all of the windows in my private quarters, like those in my downtown office, were bulletproof glass. It wasn’t just the Carries of the world who worried me. Unfortunately, there were the countless convicted killers who blamed me for their convictions, and most of them did not stay locked up forever. I had gotten my share of letters from violent offenders who promised to come see me when they got out. They liked the way I looked or talked or dressed. They would do something about it.

  The depressing truth, though, was that
one did not have to be a detective or profiler or chief medical examiner to be a potential target of predators. Most victims were vulnerable. They were in their cars or carrying groceries into their homes or walking through a parking lot, simply, as the saying goes, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I logged onto America Online and found Lucy’s ATF repository research files in my mailbox. I executed a print command and returned to the kitchen for more coffee.

  Marino walked in as I was contemplating something to eat. He was dressed, his shirttail hanging out, his face dirty with stubble.

  “I’m outta here,” he said, yawning.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “Nope. Something on the road. Probably stop at Liberty Valance,” he said as if we’d never had our discussion about his eating habits.

  “Thanks for staying over,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  He waved at me as he walked out, and I set the alarm after him. I returned to my study, and the growing stack of paper was rather disheartening. After five hundred pages, I had to refill the paper tray, and the printer ran another thirty minutes. The information included the expected names, dates, and locations, and narratives from investigators. In addition, there were scene drawings and laboratory results, and in some instances, photographs that had been scanned in. I knew it would take me the rest of the day, at the very least, to get through the stack. I was already feeling that this had probably been a Pollyanna idea that would prove a waste of time.

  I had gone through no more than a dozen cases when I was startled by my doorbell. I was not expecting anyone, and I almost never had unannounced visitors in my private, gated neighborhood. I suspected it might be one of the local children selling raffle tickets or magazine subscriptions or candy, but when I looked into the video screen of my camera system, I was stunned to see Kenneth Sparkes standing outside my door.

  “Kenneth?” I said into the Aiphone, and I could not keep the surprise out of my voice.

  “Dr. Scarpetta, I apologize,” he said into the camera. “But I really need to speak to you.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I hurried across the house, and opened the front door. Sparkes looked weary in wrinkled khaki slacks and a green polo shirt spotted with sweat. He wore a portable phone and a pager on his belt, and carried a zip-up alligator portfolio.

  “Please come in,” I said.

  “I know most of your neighbors,” he said. “In case you’re wondering how I got past the guard booth.”

  “I’ve got coffee made.”

  I caught the scent of his cologne as we entered the kitchen.

  “Again, I hope you’ll forgive me for just showing up like this,” he said, and his concern seemed genuine. “I just don’t know who else to talk to, Dr. Scarpetta, and I was afraid if I asked you first, you would say no.”

  “I probably would have.”

  I got a mug out of a cabinet.

  “How do you take it?”

  “The way it comes out of the pot,” he said.

  “Would you like some toast or anything?”

  “Oh no. But thank you.”

  We sat at the table before the window, and I opened the door leading outside because my house suddenly seemed warm and stuffy. Misgivings raced through my mind as I was reminded that Sparkes was a suspect in a homicide, and that I was deeply involved in the case, and here I was alone with him in my house on a Saturday morning. He set the portfolio on the table and unzipped it.

  “I suppose you know everything about what goes on in an investigation,” he said.

  “I never know everything about anything, really.”

  I sipped my coffee.

  “I’m not naive, Kenneth,” I said. “For example, if you didn’t have clout, you wouldn’t have gotten inside my neighborhood, and you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

  He withdrew a manila envelope from the portfolio and slid it across the table to me.

  “Photographs,” he quietly said. “Of Claire.”

  I hesitated.

  “I spent the last few nights in my beach house,” he went on to explain.

  “In Wrightsville Beach?” I said.

  “Yes. And I remembered these were in a filing cabinet drawer. I hadn’t looked at them or even thought of them since we broke up. They were from some photo shoot. I don’t recall the details, but she gave me copies when we first started seeing each other. I guess I told you she did some photographic modeling.”

  I slid what must have been about twenty eight-by-ten color prints from the envelope, and the one on top was startling. It was true what Sparkes had said to me at Hootowl Farm. Claire Rawley was physically magnificent. Her hair was to the middle of her back, perfectly straight, and seemed spun of gold as she stood on the beach in running shorts and a skimpy tank top that barely covered her breasts. On her right wrist she wore what appeared to be a large diving watch with a black plastic band and an orange face. Claire Rawley looked like a Nordic goddess, her features striking and sharp, her tan body athletic and sensual. Behind her on the sand was a yellow surfboard, and in the distance a sparkling ocean.

  Other photographs had been taken in other dramatic settings. In some she was sitting on the porch of a decaying Gothic southern mansion, or on a stone bench in an overgrown cemetery or garden, or playing the part of a hard-working mate surrounded by weathered fishermen on one of Wilmington’s trawlers. Some of the poses were rather slick and contrived, but it made no difference. In all, Claire Rawley was a masterpiece of human flesh, a work of art whose eyes revealed fathomless sadness.

  “I didn’t know if these might be of any use to you,” Sparkes said after a long silence. “After all, I don’t know what you saw, I mean what was . . . Well.”

  He nervously tapped the table with his index finger.

  “In cases such as these,” I calmly told him, “a visual identification simply isn’t possible. But you never know when something like this might help. At the very least, there’s nothing in these photos that might tell me the body isn’t Claire Rawley.”

  I scanned the photographs again, to see if I noted any jewelry.

  “She’s wearing an interesting watch,” I said, shuffling through the photographs again.

  He smiled and stared. Then he sighed.

  “I gave that to her. One of these trendy sports watches that’s very popular with surfers. It had an off-the-wall name. Animal? Does that sound right?”

  “My niece may have had one of those once,” I recalled. “Relatively inexpensive? Eighty, ninety dollars?”

  “I don’t remember what I paid. But I bought it at the surf shop where she liked to hang out. Sweetwater Surf Shop on South Lumina, where Vito’s, Reddog’s, and Buddy’s Crab are. She lived near there with several other women. An old not-so-nice condo on Stone Street.”

  I was writing this down.

  “But it was on the water. And that’s where she wanted to be.”

  “And what about jewelry? Do you remember her wearing anything unusual?”

  He had to think.

  “Maybe a bracelet?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Her keychain?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about a ring?” I then asked.

  “She wore funky ones now and then. You know, silver ones that didn’t cost much.”

  “What about a platinum band?”

  He hesitated, knocked off balance.

  “You said platinum?” he asked.

  “Yes. And a fairly large size, too.”

  I stared at his hands.

  “In fact, it might fit you.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  “My God,” he said. “She must have taken it. I have a simple platinum band I used to wear when Claire and I were together. She used to joke that it meant I was married to myself.”

  “So she took it from your bedroom?”

  “From a leather box. She must have.”

  “Are
you aware of anything else missing from the house?” I then asked.

  “One gun from my collection is unaccounted for. ATF recovered all the rest. Of course, they’re ruined.”

  He was getting more depressed.

  “What kind of gun?”

  “A Calico.”

  “I hope that’s not out on the street somewhere,” I said with feeling.

  A Calico was an especially nasty submachine gun that looked rather much like an Uzi with a large cylinder attached to the top of it. It was nine-millimeter and capable of firing as many as a hundred rounds.

  “You need to report all this to the police, to ATF,” I told him.

  “Some of it I already have.”

  “Not some. All of it, Kenneth.”

  “I understand,” he said. “And I will. But I want to know if it’s her, Dr. Scarpetta. Please understand that I don’t care about much else at the moment. I will confess to you that I have called her condo. Neither of her roommates have seen her for over a week. Last she spent the night in her place was the Friday night before the fire, the day before it, in other words. The young lady I talked to said Claire seemed distracted and depressed when they ran into each other in the kitchen. She made no mention of going out of town.”

  “I see that you are quite an investigator,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t you be if you were me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Our eyes met and I read his pain. Tiny beads of sweat followed the line of his hair, and he talked as if his mouth were dry.

  “Let’s get back to the photos,” I said. “Exactly why were these photos taken? Modeling for whom? Do you know?”

  “Something local, as I vaguely recall it,” he said, staring past me out the window. “I think she told me it might have been a Chamber of Commerce thing, something to help advertise the beach.”

  “And she gave you all these for what reason?”

  I continued slowly going through the pictures.

  “Just because she liked you? Perhaps she wanted to impress you?”

  He laughed ruefully.

  “I wish those were the only reasons,” he replied. “She knows I have influence, that I know people in the film industry and so on. And I’d like you to hang on to these photos, please.”