Four Scarpetta Novels

  They know that much from the Remington plastic four-petaled Power Piston wad that Scarpetta recovered from the inside of Daggie Simister’s devastated head. Beyond that fact, there are only a few more Scarpetta can state with certainty, such as the nature of the attack on Mrs. Simister, which the autopsy revealed to be different from what everyone presumed. Had she not been shot, there is a good chance she would have died anyway. Scarpetta is fairly certain Mrs. Simister was unconscious when her killer stuck the shotgun barrel into her mouth and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to determine.

  Examinations of massive gaping injuries to the head can mask wounds that may have occurred before the final mutilating trauma. Sometimes forensic pathology requires plastic surgery, and in the morgue, Scarpetta did what she could to repair Mrs. Simister’s head, fitting pieces of bone and scalp back together, then shaving off the hair. What she found was a laceration on the back of the head and a skull fracture. The point of impact correlated with a subdural hematoma in an underlying part of her brain that had been left relatively intact after the shotgun blast.

  If the stains on the carpet by the window in Mrs. Simister’s bedroom turn out to be her blood, then it’s likely this was where she was first attacked and would also explain the dirt and bluish fibers on the palms of her hands. She was struck hard from behind with a blunt object and went down. Then her assailant picked her up, all eighty-six pounds of her, and placed her on the bed.

  “I mean, you could easily carry a sawed-off shotgun in a knapsack,” Joe is saying.

  Scarpetta points the remote at the Hummer and unlocks the doors and replies wearily, “Not necessarily.”

  Joe makes her tired. He annoys her more each day.

  “Even if you sawed twelve or even eighteen inches off the barrel and six inches off the stock,” she remarks, “you’re still left with an eighteen-inch-long gun, at least. Assuming we’re talking about an autoloader.”

  She thinks of the big black bag the citrus inspector was carrying.

  “If we’re talking about a pump, you’re likely to have a longer gun than that,” she adds. “Neither scenario works with a knapsack, unless it’s a big one.”

  “A tote bag, then.”

  She thinks of the citrus inspector, of the long picker that he disassembled and packed inside his black bag. She’s seen citrus inspectors before and never noticed them using pickers. Usually, they look at what they can reach.

  “I bet he had a tote bag,” Joe says.

  “I’ve got no idea.” She’s about to snap at him.

  Throughout the entire autopsy, he prattled and divined and pontificated until she could scarcely think. He found it necessary to announce everything he was doing, everything he was writing on the protocol attached to his clipboard. He felt it necessary to tell her the weight of every organ and deduce when Mrs. Simister ate last based on the partially digested meat and vegetables in her stomach. He made sure Scarpetta heard the crunching sound of calcium deposits when he opened partially occluded coronaries with the scalpel and announced that maybe atherosclerosis killed her.

  Ha, ha.

  And, well, Mrs. Simister didn’t have much to look forward to, anyway. She had a bad heart. Her lungs had adhesions, probably from old pneumonia, and her brain was somewhat atrophied, so she probably had Alzheimer’s.

  If you have to be murdered, Joe said, you may as well be in bad health.

  “I’m thinking he hit her in the back of the head with the butt of the gun,” now he is saying. “You know, like this.”

  He rams an imaginary head with the imaginary stock of a shotgun.

  “She wasn’t even five feet tall,” he continues his scenario. “So for him to slam her head with the butt of a gun that weighs maybe six or seven pounds, assuming it wasn’t sawed off, he would need to be reasonably strong and taller than her.”

  “We can’t say that at all,” Scarpetta replies, driving out of the parking lot. “So much depends on his position in relation to her. So much depends on a lot of things. And we don’t know that she was struck with the gun. We don’t know that the killer was a he. Be careful, Joe.”

  “Of what?”

  “In your great enthusiasm to reconstruct exactly how and why she died, you run the risk of confusing the theoretical with the truth and turning fact into fiction. This isn’t a hell scene. This is a real human being who is really dead.”

  “Nothing wrong with creativity,” he says, staring straight ahead, his thin mouth and long, pointed chin set the way they always are when he gets petulant.

  “Creativity is good,” she replies. “It should suggest where to look and for what, but not necessarily choreograph the sort of reenactments you see in movies and on TV.”

  32

  The small guesthouse is tucked behind a Spanish-tile swimming pool amid fruit trees and flowering shrubs. It is not a normal place to see patients, probably not the best place to see them, but the setting is poetic and full of symbols. When it rains, Dr. Marilyn Self feels as creative as the warm, wet earth.

  She tends to interpret the weather as a manifestation of what happens when patients walk through her door. Repressed emotions, some of them torrential, are released in the safety of her therapeutic environment. Weather volatilities happen all around her and are unique to her and intended for her. They are full of meaning and instruction.

  Welcome to my storm. Now let’s talk about yours.

  It’s a good line, and she uses it often in her practice and on her radio show and now her new television show. Human emotions are internal weather systems, she explains to her patients, to her multitude of listeners. Every storm front is caused by something. Nothing comes from nothing. Talking about the weather is neither idle nor mundane.

  “I see the look on your face,” she says from her leather chair in her cozy living-room setting. “You got the look again when the rain stopped.”

  “I keep telling you I don’t have a look.”

  “It’s interesting that you get the look when the rain stops. Not when it starts or is even at its worst, but when it suddenly stops as it did just now,” she says.

  “I don’t have a look.”

  “Just now the rain stopped and you got that look on your face,” Dr. Self says again. “It’s the same look you get when our time is up.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “I promise it is.”

  “I don’t pay three hundred dollars a damn hour to talk about storms. I don’t have a look.”

  “Pete, I’m telling you what I see.”

  “I don’t have a look,” Pete Marino replies from the reclining chair across from hers. “That’s crap. Why would I care about a storm? I’ve seen storms all my life. I didn’t grow up in a desert.”

  She studies his face. He is rather handsome in a very rough, masculine way. She probes the dusky gray eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses. His balding head reminds her of a newborn’s bottom, pale and naked in the soft lamplight. His fleshy, rounded pate is a tender buttock waiting to be spanked.

  “I think we’re having a trust issue,” she says.

  He glowers at her from his chair.

  “Why don’t you tell me why you care about rain-storms, about them ending, Pete. Because I believe you do. And you have the look even as we speak. I promise. You still have it,” she says to him.

  He touches his face as if it is a mask, as if it is something that doesn’t belong to him.

  “My face is normal. There’s nothing about it. Nothing.”

  He taps his massive jaw. He taps his big forehead.

  “If I had a look, I could tell. I don’t have a look.”

  For the past few minutes they have driven in silence, heading back to the Hollywood Police Department parking lot, where Joe can retrieve his red Corvette and get out of her way for the rest of the day.

  Then he suddenly says, “Did I tell you I got my scuba-diving license?”

  “Good for you,” Scarpetta says, not pretending to care.

/>   “I’m buying a condo in the Cayman Islands. Well, not exactly. My girlfriend and I are buying it. She makes more money than me,” he says. “How about that. I’m a doctor and she’s a paralegal, not even a real lawyer, and she earns more than me.”

  “I never assumed you chose forensic pathology for the money.”

  “I didn’t go into it intending to be poor.”

  “Then maybe you should consider doing something else, Joe.”

  “Doesn’t look to me like you’re wanting for much.”

  He turns toward her as they stop at a red light. She feels his stare.

  “I guess it doesn’t hurt to have a niece who’s as rich as Bill Gates,” he adds. “And a boyfriend from some rich New England family.”

  “What exactly is it that you’re implying?” she says, and she thinks of Marino.

  She thinks of his hell scenes.

  “That it’s easy to not care about money if you’ve got plenty. And maybe that you didn’t exactly earn it yourself.”

  “Not that my finances are any of your business, but if you work as many years as I have and are smart, you can manage just fine.”

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘manage.’”

  She thinks of how impressive Joe was on paper. When he applied for the Academy’s fellowship, she thought he just might be the most promising fellow she had ever had. She doesn’t understand how she could have been so wrong.

  “Nobody I’m watching in your camp is merely managing,” he says, his voice turning more snide. “Even Marino makes more than I do.”

  “How would you know how much he makes?”

  The Hollywood Police Department is just ahead on the left, a four-story precast building so close to a public golf course it’s not uncommon for misguided balls to fly over the fence and pelt police cars. She spots Joe’s precious red Corvette in a distant spot, tucked out of the path of anything that might so much as ding it.

  “Everybody sort of knows what everybody makes,” Joe is saying. “It’s public knowledge.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You can’t keep secrets in a place so small.”

  “The Academy’s not that small, and there should be plenty that’s confidential. Such as salaries.”

  “I should be paid more. Marino’s not a damn doctor. He barely finished high school and he makes more than I do. All Lucy does is run around playing secret agent in her Ferraris, helicopters, jets, motorcycles. I want to know what the hell she does to have all that. Big shot, superwoman, what arrogance, what an attitude. It’s no wonder the students dislike her so much.”

  Scarpetta stops behind his Corvette and turns to him, her face as serious as he has probably ever seen it.

  “Joe?” she says. “You have one month left. Let’s get through it.”

  In Dr. Self’s professional opinion, the cause of Marino’s biggest difficulties in life is the look he has on his face just now.

  It is the subtlety of this negative facial expression, as opposed to the facial expression itself, that makes matters worse for him, as if he needs anything to make matters worse. If only he weren’t subtle about his secret fears, loathing, abandonments, sexual insecurities, bigotries and other repressed negativities. While she recognizes the tension in his mouth and eyes, other people probably don’t, not consciously. But unconsciously, they pick up on it and react.

  Marino frequently is the victim of verbal abuse, rude behavior, dishonesty, rejection and betrayal. He gets into his share of fights. He claims to have killed several people during his demanding and dangerous career. Clearly, whoever is unwise enough to go after him gets quite a lot more than he bargains for, but Marino doesn’t look at it that way. People pick on him for no good reason, according to him. Some of the hostility is related to his job, according to him. Most of his problems stem from prejudice because he grew up poor in New Jersey. He doesn’t understand why people have been shitty to him all of his life, he frequently says.

  The last few weeks he has been much worse. This afternoon, he is worse yet.

  “Let’s talk about New Jersey for the few minutes we have left.” Dr. Self deliberately reminds him that the session is about to end. “Last week, you mentioned New Jersey several times. Why do you think New Jersey still matters?”

  “If you grew up in New Jersey, you’d know why,” he says, and the look on his face intensifies.

  “That’s not an answer, Pete.”

  “My father was a drunk. We was on the wrong side of the tracks. People still look at me like I’m from New Jersey and that starts it.”

  “Maybe it’s the look on your face, Pete, and not theirs,” she says again. “Maybe you’re the one who starts it.”

  The answering machine clicks from the table next to Dr. Self’s leather chair and Marino gets the look on his face, very intense now. He doesn’t like it when a call interrupts their session, even if she doesn’t answer it. He doesn’t understand why she still relies on old technology instead of voicemail that is silent, that doesn’t click when someone leaves a message, that isn’t annoying and intrusive. He reminds her of this often. Discreetly, she glances at her watch, a large, gold watch with Roman numerals that she can see without her reading glasses.

  In twelve minutes, the session will end. Pete Marino has difficulties with endings, with codas, with anything that is over, finished, spent or dead. It isn’t coincidental that Dr. Self schedules his appointments for late afternoons, preferably around five, when it is beginning to get dark or afternoon thundershowers stop. He is an intriguing case. She wouldn’t see him if he wasn’t. It is just a matter of time before she coaxes him to be a guest patient on her nationally broadcast radio show or maybe her new television show. He would be impressive in front of the camera, so much better than that unattractive and foolish Dr. Amos.

  She hasn’t had a cop yet. When she was the guest lecturer at the National Forensic Academy’s summer session and sat next to Marino one night at a dinner in her honor, it entered her mind then that he would be a fascinating guest on her show, possibly a frequent guest. Certainly, he needed therapy. He drank too much. He did so right in front of her, had four bourbons. He smoked. She could smell it on his breath. He was a compulsive eater, helped himself to three desserts. When she met him, he was brimming with self-destructiveness and self-hate.

  I can help you, she said to him that night.

  With what? He reacted as if she had grabbed him under the table.

  With your storms, Pete. Your internal storms. Tell me about your storms. I’ll say the same thing to you I’ve been saying to all these bright young students. You can master your weather. You can make it what you want. You can have storms or sunshine. You can duck and hide or walk out in the open.

  In my line of work, you got to be careful about walking out in the open, he said.

  I don’t want you to die, Pete. You’re a big, smart, good-looking man. I want you around for a long time.

  You don’t even know me.

  I know you better than you think.

  He started seeing her. Within a month, he cut back on the booze and cigarettes and lost ten pounds.

  “I don’t have the look right now. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marino says, feeling his face with his fingertips like a blind person.

  “You have it. The instant the rain stopped, you got the look. Whatever you’re feeling is on your face, Pete,” she says with emphasis. “I’m wondering if the look doesn’t trace all the way back to New Jersey. What do you think?”

  “I think this is garbage. I came to see you originally because I couldn’t quit smoking and was eating and drinking a little bit too much. I didn’t come see you because I got some stupid look on my face. No one’s ever complained about some stupid look on my face. Now my wife, Doris, she complained about me being fat and smoking and drinking a little bit too much. She never complained about a look on my face. She didn’t walk out on me because of a look. None of my women did.”

  “What about Dr
. Scarpetta?”

  He tenses, a part of him always retreating when the subject of Scarpetta comes up. It isn’t accidental that Dr. Self has waited until the session is almost over before introducing the subject of Scarpetta.

  “I should be at the morgue right now,” he says.

  “As long as you’re not in the morgue,” she says lightly.

  “I ain’t got a sense of humor today. I work a case and get cut out of it. The story of my life these days.”

  “Did Scarpetta exclude you?”

  “She didn’t get a chance. I didn’t want a conflict of interest, so I stayed away from the autopsy in case somebody wants to accuse me of something. Besides, it’s pretty obvious what killed the lady.”

  “Accuse you of what?”

  “People are always accusing me of something.”

  “Next week, we’ll talk about your paranoia. It all goes back to the look on your face, it really does. You don’t think Scarpetta’s ever noticed the look on your face? Because I’m betting she has. You should ask her.”

  “This is fucking bullshit.”

  “Remember what we said about profanity. Remember our agreement. Profanity is acting out. I want you to tell me about your feelings, not act them out.”

  “I feel this is fucking bullshit.”

  Dr. Self smiles at him as if he is a naughty boy who needs to be spanked.

  “I didn’t come see you because of a look on my face, a look you think I have that I don’t.”

  “Why don’t you ask Scarpetta about it?”

  “I feel a fucking hell no coming over me.”

  “Let’s talk it out, don’t act it out.”

  It pleases her to hear herself say it. She thinks of the way her radio shows are promoted: Talk It Out with Dr. Self.

  “What really happened today?” she asks Marino.

  “Are you kidding me? I walked in on an old lady who had her head blown off. And guess who the detective is?”

  “I would assume it’s you, Pete.”

  “I’m not exactly in charge,” he retorts. “If it was the old days I sure as hell would be. I told you before. I can be the death investigator and help out the Doc. But I can’t be in charge of the entire case unless the jurisdiction involved hands it over to me and no way Reba’s going to do that. She don’t know shit but she’s got a thing about me.”