Four Scarpetta Novels

  “I hear twins think like that, are real tuned-in to each other.” The word twin is a deliberate scorpion sting. “He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt me. You forget I’ve met him before. Why, I think he likes me because I can get beyond his looks.”

  “He doesn’t like anybody.” Jay gives up on the radio and angrily turns it off. “You don’t live in the real world. I’ve got to find him first before he does something stupid, sees some woman and does her, leaving his damn bite marks all over her and smashing her head.”

  “You ever watched him do it?” she casually asks.

  “Go get the boat ready, Bev.”

  She can’t remember the last time he said her name. It is rich, like melted butter.

  Then he spoils the moment by adding, “It’s your goddamn fault about the arm. Wouldn’t have happened if you’d brought me some pups.”

  Since she returned from her errand-running on the mainland, all he’s done is complain that she didn’t bring gator bait, not the least bit grateful for what she did bring him.

  She stares at the empty mattress by the wall.

  “You got plenty of gator bait,” she said the other day. “More than you know what to do with these days.”

  She convinced him that baiting a gator hook with human flesh would work just fine, maybe even better. Jay could have his fun with a reptile that was longer than he was tall. He’d watch it thrashing until he got bored, then shoot it in the head. Outlaw hunter that he is, he never keeps what he catches. He’d cut the nylon rope and watch the reptile slide into the water. Then he’d motor back to the shack.

  This time it didn’t work that way. All he vaguely remembers is baiting the hook and stringing it up over the thick branch of a cypress tree, and then hearing another boat not far away, someone else hunting gators or maybe gigging frogs. Jay got the hell out of there, the hook still baited and dangling from the yellow nylon line. He should have cut it down. He made a big mistake but won’t admit it. She suspects there was no other hunter out there. Jay was hearing things and he didn’t think straight. Had he, it would have entered his mind that when another hunter found the caught gator, the bait either would have been found hanging out of its jaws or discovered in its guts when the gator was field-dressed.

  “Do what I say, damn it. Get the boat ready,” he orders her. “So I can deal with him.”

  “And how do you think you’ll do that?” Bev asks calmly, placated and pleased by the craziness in front of her.

  “I already told you. He’ll find me,” Jay says, his head beginning to throb. “He can’t live without me. He can’t even die without me.”

  LATE AFTERNOON, SCARPETTA SITS fifteen rows back, her legs cramped.

  On her left, a young boy, blond and cute, with braces on his teeth, despondently draws Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from a stack on his tray. On her right, an obese man, probably in his fifties, drinks screwdrivers next to the window. He is constantly pushing up wire-rimmed glasses, the oversized curved frames that remind Scarpetta of Elvis. The obese man noisily flips through the Wall Street Journal and periodically glances at Scarpetta, obviously hoping to engage her in conversation. She continues to ignore him.

  The boy draws another Yu-Gi-Oh! card and places it faceup on the tray.

  “Who’s winning?” Scarpetta asks him with a smile.

  “I don’t have anybody to duel with,” the boy replies without looking up.

  He is probably ten and is dressed in jeans, a faded Spiderman shirt and tennis shoes. “You have to have at least forty cards to play,” he adds.

  “I’m afraid I’m disqualified, then.”

  He picks up a card, a colorful one with a menacing ax on it. “See,” he says, “this one’s my favorite. The Axe of Despair. It’s a good weapon for a monster to have, worth a thousand points.” He picks another card, this one called the Axe Raider. “A very strong monster with the ax,” he explains.

  She studies the cards and shakes her head. “Sorry. Too complicated for me.”

  “You want to learn how to play?”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” she replies. “What’s your name?”

  “Albert.” He draws more cards from the deck. “Not Al,” he lets her know. “Everybody thinks they can call me Al. But it’s Albert.”

  “Nice to meet you, Albert.” She does not offer her name.

  Scarpetta’s seatmate next to the window shifts around to face her, his shoulder pressing against her upper arm. “You don’t sound like you’re from Louisiana,” he says.

  “I’m not,” she replies, leaning away from him, her sinuses assaulted by the overpowering cologne he must have splashed on when he uprooted her to go to the restroom.

  “Don’t have to tell me that. One or two spoken words and I know.” He sips his vodka and orange juice. “Let me guess. Not Texas, either. You don’t exactly look Mexican.” He grins.

  She resumes reading a structural biology article in Science magazine and wonders when the man will get the not-so-subtle message to leave her alone.

  Rarely is Scarpetta accessible to strangers. If she is, then usually within two minutes they ask where she’s going and why and wander into the restricted airspace of her profession. Telling them she’s a doctor doesn’t stop the quizzing, nor does saying that she’s a lawyer, and should she let on that she is both, the consequences are bad enough. But to go on and explain that she is a forensic pathologist will mean the ruination of her trip.

  Next, JonBenet Ramsey, O. J. Simpson and other mysterious cases and miscarriages of justice bubble up, and Scarpetta is trapped, buckled in her seat at an altitude of some thirty thousand feet. Then there are those strangers who don’t care if she works but would rather see her later for dinner, or preferably for a drink in a hotel bar that might lead to a hotel room. They, like the tipsy slob sitting to her right, would rather stare at her body than hear about her résumé.

  “Looks like a mighty complicated article you’re reading,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re some sort of schoolteacher.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “You see, I’m good at this.” He squints his eyes and snaps his thick fingers, pointing at her face. “A biology teacher. Kids are worthless these days.” He lifts his drink from his tray and rattles the ice in the plastic cup. “I don’t know how you stand being around them, to tell the truth,” he goes on, apparently having decided she is a teacher. “Plus, they don’t think twice about bringing a gun to school.”

  She feels his puffy eyes on her as she continues to read.

  “You got children? I got three. Teenagers, all of them. Obviously, I got married when I was twelve.” He laughs, and flecks of spittle spray through the air. “How ’bout I get your card from you—in case I need a little tutoring while both of us are in Baton Rouge? You changing planes or going there? I live in the downtown area, the name’s Weldon Winn—with two n’s. Good name for a politician, huh? Guess you can imagine the campaign slogans if I ever run for office.”

  “When are we landing?” Albert asks her.

  She looks at her watch and forces a smile as the name Weldon Winn shocks her. “Not too much longer,” she says to the boy.

  “Yes, ma’am, I can just imagine signs all over Louisiana: It’s Win-Win with Winn. Get it? And Go with the Winner. Maybe I’ll be lucky and have an opponent named Miracle. So Winn Needs No Miracle. How ’bout that? And when Mr. Miracle slides hopelessly downhill in the polls, he’ll be called Miracle-Whipped.” He winks again.

  “I suppose there’s no chance you might run against a she,” Scarpetta comments without looking up from her magazine, pretending she doesn’t have a clue that Weldon Winn is the Middle District U.S. Attorney for Louisiana that Nic Robillard complained about.

  “Hell. No woman would take me on.”

  “I see. So what kind of politician are you?” Scarpetta finally asks him.

  “One in spirit only at the moment, pretty lady. I’m the U.S. Attorney for Baton Rouge.”

  He pauses to let the importance
of his position sink in, finishing his screwdriver and craning his neck in search of a flight attendant. Spotting one, he holds up an arm and snaps his fingers at her.

  It can’t be chance that Weldon Winn just happens to be sitting next to her on a plane when she just happens to be on her way to assist in a suspicious death that, according to Dr. Lanier, just happens to have captured Weldon Winn’s interest, after she just happens to have left Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.

  She tries to figure out how Winn would have had time to intercept her in Houston. Maybe he was already there. She has no doubt whatsoever that he knows who she is and why she’s on this flight.

  “Got a getaway in New Orleans, quite a cozy little palace in the French Quarter. Maybe you can visit while you’re in the area. I’ll be around for just a couple nights, got business with the governor and a few of the boys. I’d be more than happy to give you a personal tour of the capital, show you the bullethole in a pillar where Huey Long was shot.”

  Scarpetta knows all about the notorious Huey Long’s assassination. When the case was reopened in the early nineties, the results of the new investigation were discussed at various forensic science academy meetings. She’s had enough of the pompous Weldon Winn.

  “For your own edification,” she tells him, “the so-called bullethole in the marble pillar was not caused by a bullet intended for Huey Long or anyone else, but more likely from an imperfection in the stone or a chiseled facsimile of a bullethole to attract tourism. As a matter of fact,” she adds, as Winn’s eyes flatten and his smile freezes, “since the assassination, the Capitol was restored, and that particular pillar’s marble panels were removed and never returned to their original location. I’m surprised you spend a lot of time at the state capital and don’t know all this,” she concludes.

  “My aunt’s supposed to pick me up and if I’m late, what if she isn’t there?” Albert asks Scarpetta, as if the two of them are traveling together.

  He has lost interest in his trading cards, which are neatly stacked next to a blue cell phone. “Do you know what time it is?” he says.

  “Almost six,” Scarpetta says. “If you’re sleepy, take a little nap and I’ll let you know when we’re about to land.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  She recalls noticing him at the gate in Houston, playing with his cards. Because he was sitting next to other adults, she assumed he was accompanied and that his family or whoever he is traveling with were seated elsewhere on the plane. It never occurred to her that any parent or relative would allow a young child to travel alone, especially these days.

  “Now isn’t that something. Not too many people are experts on bulletholes,” the U.S. Attorney comments as the flight attendant serves him another drink.

  “No, I don’t suppose too many people are.” Scarpetta’s attention is focused on the lost little boy next to her. “You aren’t by yourself, are you?” she asks him. “And why aren’t you in school?”

  “It’s spring break. Uncle Walt dropped me off, and a lady at the airport met me. I’m not tired. Sometimes I get to stay up really late, watching movies. We get a thousand channels.” He pauses and shrugs. “Well, maybe not that many, but a lot. Do you have any pets? I used to have a dog named Nestlé because it was brown like chocolate chips.”

  “Let’s see,” Scarpetta says. “I don’t have a dog the color of chocolate, but I have an English bulldog who’s white and brown with very big lower teeth. His name is Billy. Do you know what an English bulldog is?”

  “Like a pit bull?”

  “Not anything like a pit bull.”

  Weldon Winn butts into the conversation. “Might I ask where you’re staying while you’re in town?”

  “Nestlé used to miss me when I wasn’t home,” Albert wistfully says.

  “I’m sure he did,” Scarpetta replies. “I think Billy misses me, too. But my secretary takes good care of him.”

  “Nestlé was a girl.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My, my, if you aren’t a mysterious little lady,” the U.S. Attorney says, staring at her.

  Scarpetta turns to him, catching a cold glint in his eyes.

  She leans close to him and whispers in his ear, “I’ve had enough of your bullshit.”

  THE LEARJET 35 BELONGS TO Homeland Security, and Benton is the only passenger on it.

  Landing at Louisiana Air in Baton Rouge, he hurries down the steps, carrying a soft-sided bag, not looking at all like the Benton his people once knew: facial hair, a black Super Bowl baseball cap and tinted glasses. His black suit is off the rack from Saks, where he blitzed through the men’s department yesterday. Shoes are Prada, black, rubber soles. His belt is also Prada, and he wears a black T-shirt. None of the clothes, except the shoes and T-shirt, are a perfect fit. But he hasn’t owned a suit in years, and it did cross his mind in the dressing room that he missed the soft new wools, cashmere and polished cotton of the past, when tailors made chalk marks on sleeves and cuffs that needed to be hemmed.

  He wonders who Scarpetta gave his expensive clothes to after his alleged death. Knowing her as well as he does, aware of her great powers of denial, he suspects that either she didn’t clean out his closets at all and had someone else do it, or she was assisted, possibly by Lucy, who would have had an easier time disposing of his personal effects since she knew he wasn’t dead. Then again, it depends on how much of an actress Lucy felt she should or could be at the time. Pain crushes him as for an instant he feels Scarpetta’s pain, imagines the unimaginable, her grief and how poorly she probably handled it.

  Stop! A waste of time and mental energy to speculate. Idle thoughts. Focus.

  As he walks briskly across the tarmac, he notices a Bell 407 helicopter, dark blue or black with pop-out floats, a wire strike, and bold, bright stripes. He notes the tail number: 407TLP.

  The Last Precinct.

  A flight from New York to Baton Rouge is about a thousand miles. Depending on the winds and fuel stops, she could have made it here in ten hours if she was unlucky with a headwind, and much less time than that with a tailwind. In either scenario, if she left early this morning, she should have gotten here by late afternoon. He contemplates what she’s been doing since and wonders whether Marino is with her.

  Benton’s car is a dark red Jaguar, rented in New Orleans and delivered here to the parking lot, one of the privileges for those who fly private. At the front desk of the FBO, or fixed base operation, as small private airports with only a unicom are called, he speaks to a young lady. Behind her is a monitor showing the status of other incoming flights. There are few, his listed with the update that it has just landed. Lucy’s helicopter isn’t on the screen, indicating she arrived some time ago.

  “I have a rental car that should be here.” Benton knows it will be.

  The senator will have made sure that all details have been handled.

  The clerk looks through rental car folders. Benton catches the news and turns around to observe pilots watching CNN in a small corner lounge. On the screen is an old photograph of Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Benton isn’t surprised. Chandonne escaped early this afternoon after disguising himself as one of the two corrections officers he killed.

  “God, talk about an ugly bastard,” one of the pilots comments.

  “You gotta be kidding me! No human being looks like that.”

  The photograph is a mug shot taken in Richmond, Virginia, where Chandonne was arrested three years ago. He was not clean-shaven at the time, and his face, even his forehead, was horrifically covered with baby-fine hair. Showing the old photograph is a shame. Chandonne could not have escaped from prison unless he is clean-shaven. When he is hairy, he is a conspicuous freak. For the public to see this old mug shot isn’t helpful, especially if he wears caps or sunglasses, or employs other means of disguising his grotesquely deformed face.

  The clerk is frozen behind the desk, staring with her mouth open at the TV across the room.

/>   “If I saw him, I’d die of a heart attack!” she exclaims. “Is he for real, or is that weirdo hair fake and everything?”

  Benton glances at his watch, the successful businessman in a hurry. His protective law-enforcement instincts, however, are impossible to suppress.

  “He’s real, I’m afraid,” he tells the clerk. “I remember hearing about his murders a few years back. I guess we’d better be on the lookout with him on the loose.”

  “You can say that again!” She hands him the rental envelope. “I guess I need to run your charge card.”

  He pulls a platinum American Express card out of his wallet, which also holds two thousand dollars, mostly in hundred-dollar bills. More cash is tucked into various pockets. Not knowing how long he’ll be here, he has come prepared. He initials the rental car form and signs it.

  “Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Drive carefully,” the clerk says with a bright smile that goes with the job. “And I hope you enjoy your stay in Baton Rouge.”

  SCARPETTA’S TENSION MOUNTS AS SHE and Albert watch baggage go by on the carousel inside Baton Rouge’s main terminal.

  The time is almost seven p.m., and she is beginning to entertain real worries that no one has come to meet him. He collects one suitcase and clings to Scarpetta’s side as she reclaims her own bag.

  “Looks like you found yourself a new friend.” Weldon Winn is suddenly behind her.

  “Come on,” she says to Albert. They walk through automatic glass doors. “I’m sure your aunt will drive up any minute. She’s probably having to circle because cars aren’t allowed to park at the curb.”

  Armed soldiers in camouflage patrol inside the baggage area and outside on the sidewalk. Albert seems oblivious to the unsmiling military presence, to their fingers resting on the trigger guards of assault rifles. His face is bright red.

  “You and me are going to talk, Dr. Scarpetta,” U.S. Attorney Winn finally says her name and dares to wrap an arm around her shoulder.