Postmortem

“Right here,” she said to Lucy. “Help me, if you can.”

  Lucy lifted her hand and helped her find the perforation, and Scarpetta worked the bullet out, and Lucy complained loudly. It was medium- to large-caliber, semi-jacketed, and deformed, and she handed it to Berger and pressed a towel firmly against the wound to stop the bleeding.

  Scarpetta’s sweater was soaked with blood, the floor around her slippery with it. She didn’t think the bullet had penetrated the skull. She suspected it had struck at an angle and expended most of its kinetic energy within a relatively small space within milliseconds. There are so many blood vessels close to the surface of the scalp, it bleeds alarmingly, always looks worse than it is. Scarpetta pressed the towel very firmly against the wound, her right hand on Lucy’s forehead, holding her.

  Lucy leaned heavily against her and shut her eyes. Scarpetta felt the side of her neck and checked her pulse, and it was rapid but not alarmingly so, and she was breathing fine. She wasn’t restless and didn’t seem confused. There were no signs she was going into shock. Scarpetta held her forehead again, pressing hard against the wound to stop the bleeding.

  “Lucy, I need you to open your eyes and stay awake. You listening? Can you tell us what happened?” Scarpetta said. “He ran upstairs and we heard a gunshot. Do you remember what happened?”

  “You saved everybody’s life,” Berger said. “You’re going to be fine. All of us are fine.”

  She was stroking Lucy’s arm.

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I remember being in the shower. Then I was on the floor and my head felt as if someone hit me with an anvil. Like I got hit with a car in the back of my head. For a minute I was blind. I thought I was permanently blind, and suddenly I saw light, and images. I heard him downstairs, and I couldn’t walk. I was dizzy, so I crawled over to the chair, kind of slid myself over the wood to where my coat was and got the gun out of it. And I started to see again.”

  The bloody Glock was on the bloody floor near the railing of the gallery, and Scarpetta remembered it was one Marino had given to Lucy for Christmas. It was Lucy’s favorite gun. She’d said it was the nicest thing he’d ever given to her, a pocket-size forty-caliber pistol with a laser sight and boxes of high-velocity hollowpoints to go with it. He knew what she liked. He was the one who’d taught her to shoot when she was a child, when the two of them would disappear in his pickup truck, and later Lucy’s mother—Scarpetta’s sister, Dorothy—would call and curse, usually after several drinks, and scream at Scarpetta for ruining Lucy, threatening to never let Lucy see her again.

  Dorothy probably never would have allowed Lucy to visit were it not for the minor problem that she didn’t want a child, because Dorothy was a child who would always want a daddy to take care of her, to dote on her, to adore her the way their father had doted and depended on Scarpetta.

  She pushed Lucy’s forehead with one hand and held the cloth against the back of her head with the other, and her hands felt hot and swollen now, her pulse pounding in them. The bleeding had slowed considerably, but she resisted looking. She continued the pressure.

  “Looks like a thirty-eight,” Lucy said, shutting her eyes again.

  She must have noticed the bullet when Scarpetta had handed it to Berger.

  “I want you to keep your eyes open and stay awake,” Scarpetta said. “You’re fine, but let’s just stay awake. I think I hear something. I think the rescue squad’s here. We’re going to the ER and we’ll do all those fun tests you like so much. X-rays. MRI. Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “I hurt like shit. I’m okay. Did you see his gun? I’m wondering what it was. I don’t remember seeing it. I don’t remember him.”

  Scarpetta heard the door open downstairs, and the clatter and confusion of tense voices as the squad came in, and Marino hurried them up the stairs, all of them talking loudly. He stepped out of the way, looking at Lucy in her bloody bath sheets, then at the Glock on the floor, and he leaned over and picked it up. He did the one thing you never do at a crime scene. He held it in his bare hands and walked off with it, disappeared into the bathroom with it.

  Two paramedics were talking to Lucy and asking her questions, and she was answering as they buckled her into the stretcher, and Scarpetta was so busy with that, she didn’t notice Marino had somehow ended up back downstairs, and was there with three uniformed officers. Other EMTs were lifting Morales’s body onto yet another stretcher, nobody bothering with CPR because he had been dead for a while.

  Marino was dropping the magazine out of the Glock—Lucy’s Glock—it seemed, and clearing the chamber while an officer held a paper bag open. Marino was telling them about Berger remotely unlocking the apartment door and letting him in without Morales knowing. Marino was making up a story about him creeping as close as he could, then deliberately making a sound so Morales would look up.

  “Giving me just enough chance to get off a round before he shot someone,” Marino lied to the cops. “He was behind the Doc with his revolver pointed at her.”

  Berger was with them, and she said, “We were right here on the couch.”

  “A hammerless thirty-eight,” Marino said.

  He was pointing all this out, taking the blame, not the credit, for killing someone, and Berger was going along with it flawlessly. It seemed her new role in life was keeping Lucy out of trouble.

  Legally, Lucy absolutely couldn’t have a handgun in New York City, not even inside a residence, not even for self-defense. Legally, the handgun still belonged to Marino because he’d never gotten around to the paperwork, to transferring his gift over to Lucy’s ownership, because so much had gone on after that Christmas a year ago in Charleston. Nobody had been happy with one another, and then Rose wasn’t herself and no one knew why for a while, and Scarpetta wasn’t capable of fixing their world as it seemed to fly apart, like an old golf ball that’s lost its skin. It had been the beginning of what she’d decided, not all that long ago, was the end of them.

  Her bloody hand held Lucy’s bloody hand as the paramedics clattered the stretcher toward the elevator, one of them talking on the radio to the ambulance in front of the building. The doors opened and Benton was stepping out in his pinstripe suit, looking just like he did on CNN when she’d watched him on her BlackBerry as she’d walked to Berger’s apartment.

  He took Lucy’s other hand and looked into Scarpetta’s eyes, and the sadness and relief on his face was as deep as anything could possibly be.

  35

  JANUARY 13

  Scarpetta’s well-known name was not what got her a table at Elaine’s, where it wasn’t possible for anyone to be important enough to earn indulgences or sovereign immunity if the legendary restaurateur didn’t like the person.

  When Elaine took up residence every night at one of her tables, an expectation drifted up like cigarette smoke from an earlier day when art was adored, criticized, redefined—anything but ignored—and anybody in any condition might walk through the door. Contained within these walls were echoes of a past that Scarpetta mourned but didn’t miss, having first set foot in here decades earlier, on a weekend getaway with a man she’d fallen in love with at Georgetown Law.

  He was gone, and she had Benton, and the décor at Elaine’s hadn’t changed: black except for the red-tile floor, and there were hooks for hanging coats, and pay phones that as far as Scarpetta knew weren’t used anymore. Shelves displayed autographed books that patrons knew not to touch, and photographs of the literati and film stars filled every spare inch of wall all the way to the ceiling.

  Scarpetta and Benton paused at Elaine’s table to say hello—a kiss on each cheek, and I haven’t seen you in a while, where have you been? Scarpetta learned she had just missed a former Secretary of State, and last week it was a former Giants quarterback she didn’t like, and tonight, a talk show host she liked even less. Elaine said she had other guests coming, but that wasn’t news, because the grande dame knew everybody expected in her salon on any given night.

  Scarpetta
’s favorite waiter, Louie, found just the right table.

  He said to her as he pulled out her chair, “I shouldn’t bring it up, but I’ve heard everything that’s gone on.” Shaking his head. “I shouldn’t say it—to you of all people. Gambino, Bonanno? It was better back then. You know? They did what they did, but they had their reasons, know what I mean? They didn’t go around whacking people for the hell of it. Especially doing some poor lady like that. A dwarf. And that elderly widow. Then the other woman and the kid. What chance did they have?”

  “They didn’t,” Benton said.

  “Me? I believe in cement shoes. There’s special situations. You don’t mind me asking, how’s the little . . . you know, the other dwarf doing? I feel like I shouldn’t use that word because a lot of people say it in the pejorative.”

  Oscar had contacted the FBI and was fine. A GPS microchip had been removed from his left buttock, and he was taking a rest, as Benton put it, at the private and posh psychiatric unit at McLean called the Pavilion. He was getting therapy and, most of all, was being given the gift of feeling safe until he could sort himself out. Scarpetta and Benton would head back to Belmont in the morning.

  “He’s doing okay,” Benton said. “I’ll tell him you asked.”

  Louie said, “What can I bring you? Drinks? Calamari?”

  “Kay?” Benton said.

  “Scotch. Your best single-malt.”

  “Make that two.”

  Louie said with a wink, “For you? My special stash. A couple new ones for you to try. Anybody driving?”

  “Strong,” Scarpetta said, and Louie headed to the bar.

  Behind her, at a table by a window overlooking Second Avenue, a big man wearing a white Stetson sat alone, working on what looked like straight vodka or gin with a twist. Now and then he craned his neck to check the score of a basketball game playing silently on the TV above his head, and Scarpetta got a glimpse of his big jaw and thick lips, and long white sideburns. Then he stared at nothing, slowly turning his glass in small circles on the white tablecloth. Something about him was familiar, and she envisioned footage she’d seen on TV and was seized by the shock that she was looking at Jake Loudin.

  But it wasn’t possible. He was in custody. This man was small, rather thin. She realized he was an actor, one who wasn’t busy anymore.

  Benton studied the menu, his face obscured by a plastic laminated menu with Elaine on the cover.

  Scarpetta said to him, “You look like the Pink Panther on a stakeout.”

  He closed the menu and placed it on the table, and said, “Anything in particular you want to say to everyone? Since you’ve orchestrated this little gathering for reasons beyond being sociable. I just thought I’d mention it before they show up.”

  “Nothing in particular,” Scarpetta said. “Just wanted to air out. I feel everyone should air out before we go home. I wish we weren’t going. It doesn’t seem like we should be there and everyone else is here.”

  “Lucy will be absolutely fine.”

  Tears touched Scarpetta’s eyes. She couldn’t get over it. A sense of dread held her heart like unwelcome hands, and she was conscious of her near loss, even in her sleep.

  “She’s not meant to go anywhere.” Benton pulled his chair closer and took her hand. “If she were, she would have checked out a hell of a long time ago.”

  Scarpetta held her napkin to her eyes, then stared up at the silent TV, as if she cared about whoever was playing basketball.

  She cleared her throat and said, “But it’s almost impossible.”

  “It’s not. Those revolvers? The ones I’m always telling you are such a terrible idea because they’re so lightweight? Well, you see why, only in this case the luck was in our favor. The recoil is unbelievable. Like having your hand kicked by a horse. I think he jerked when he pulled the trigger, and probably Lucy moved, and small-caliber, low-velocity. Plus, she’s meant to be with us. She’s not meant to go anywhere. All of us are fine. We’re more than fine,” Benton said, pressing his lips against her hand, then kissing her on the mouth tenderly.

  He didn’t used to be so openly affectionate in public. He didn’t seem to care anymore. If Gotham Gotcha still existed, they would probably be an item in it tomorrow—Scarpetta’s entire dinner party would be.

  She had never visited the apartment where the anonymous author wrote her cruel and vindictive columns, and now that she was sure who it was, she felt pity for her. She completely understood why Terri Bridges turned on her. Terri was receiving heartless and belittling e-mails from her hero, or thought she was, and when she’d had enough, she gave her alter ego the assignment to eviscerate Scarpetta publicly. Terri had pulled her own trigger, firing several rounds at a woman whose perceived mistreatments were the last straw in a lifetime of mistreatment.

  Lucy had determined that Terri had written the two New Year’s Day columns on December 30, and they had been in a queue and had been automatically sent to Eva Peebles after Terri was already dead. Lucy also discovered that on the afternoon of December 31, just hours before Terri was murdered, she deleted all her e-mails from Scarpetta612, not because she sensed she was about to die, for sure, in Benton’s opinion, but because she had just committed her own crime, anonymously, against a medical examiner whom she would finally meet, in the morgue.

  Benton believed Terri had a conscience, a sizable one, and that’s why she’d deleted the hundred-some e-mails she’d thought were between Scarpetta and her. Terri’s anxiety had dictated she should eradicate any evidence that there might be a connection between Gotham Gotcha and Terri Bridges. By deleting the correspondence, she’d also expunged her fallen hero from her life.

  That was Benton’s theory. Scarpetta didn’t have a theory except that there would always be theories.

  “I wrote Oscar a letter,” she said as she opened her handbag and pulled out an envelope. “I’m thinking everyone should read it, that I’ll show it to them. But I want to read it to you first. Not an e-mail but a real letter on real paper, my personal stationery, which I haven’t used since God knows when. I didn’t write it in longhand, though. My penmanship gets only worse with time. Since there will never be a court case, Jaime said it’s perfectly fine to tell Oscar whatever I want, and I have. I’ve done my best to explain to him that Terri was dealt hardships by her family, and it was this early programming that compelled her to control everything within her reach. She was angry because she’d been hurt, and hurt people often hurt back, but beneath it all she was a good person. I’m giving you a bit of a summary, because it’s long.”

  She slipped four folded pages of heavy, creamy paper out of the envelope and carefully smoothed them open. She skimmed until she found the part she wanted Benton to hear.

  She quietly read to him:

  . . . In the secret room upstairs where she wrote her columns were the yellow roses you gave her. She saved every one of them, and I’m betting she never told you. No one would do something like that if the feelings weren’t profoundly important, Oscar. I want you to remember that, and if you forget, re-read this letter. That’s why I wrote it. Something for you to keep.

  I also took the liberty to write her family and express my condolences and tell them what I could, because they have many, many questions. Dr. Lester, I fear, hasn’t been as helpful as they’d like, so I’ve filled in the blanks, most of those conversations over the phone, with a few exchanges by e-mail.

  I’ve talked about you, and maybe by now you’ve heard from them. If you haven’t, I feel sure you will. They said they wanted me to tell you what Terri did in her will, and they intend to write you about it. Maybe they have.

  I won’t divulge the fine points of her wishes, because it isn’t my place to do that. But in keeping with her family’s request to me, I’ll pass along this much. She left a considerable sum to the Little People of America, to start a foundation that offers assistance in medical care for those who want and need procedures (such as corrective surgeries) that medical insurance won??
?t cover. As you know, much of what can and should be done is unfairly deemed elective: orthodontic care, for example, and in some instances, bone lengthening.

  Suffice it to say, Terri had a very kind heart. . . .

  Scarpetta had read as much as she could, because the wave of sadness was rolling over her again. She folded the pages and tucked them back into their envelope.

  Louie appeared with their drinks and just as unobtrusively was gone, and she took a sip and it warmed her on its way down and its vapors lifted her brain as if it had retreated into a cloistered place and needed courage.

  “If you think it won’t interfere with your patient’s treatment”—she handed Benton the envelope—“would you see that he gets this?”

  “It will mean more to him than you imagine,” Benton said, sliding it into the inside pocket of his jacket, a buttery black leather jacket.

  It was new, as was the belt with its Winston eagle-head buckle, and the handmade boots he had on. Lucy’s way of celebrating when she, quote, dodged another bullet, was to buy people gifts. Not inexpensive ones. She’d gotten Scarpetta another watch she really didn’t need—a titanium Breguet with a carbon-fiber face—to go with the black Ferrari F43O Spider that she said she’d also gotten Scarpetta. It was a joke, thank God. Scarpetta would rather ride a bicycle than drive one of those things. Marino had a new motorcycle, a racing red Ducati 1098 that Lucy was keeping for him in her hangar in White Plains, because she said he wasn’t allowed to ride anything with fewer than four wheels in the city. She’d rather rudely added that he had to maintain his weight or he wouldn’t fit on a Superbike no matter how super it was.

  Scarpetta had no idea what Lucy might have given Berger. She didn’t ask questions unless Lucy wanted her to ask them. Scarpetta was being patient as Lucy continued to wait for judgment that Scarpetta had no intention of rendering because it wasn’t what she felt. Not remotely. After getting over the initial shock of it, although there was no justification for shock, not really, Scarpetta couldn’t be more pleased.