Four Scarpetta Novels

  34

  Basil smiles again. “I can’t find anything about a murder,” Benton is saying to him, “but two and a half years ago, a woman and her daughter disappeared from a business called The Christmas Shop.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that?” Basil says, smiling.

  “You didn’t say anything about people disappearing or a daughter.”

  “They won’t give me my mail.”

  “I’m checking on it, Basil.”

  “You said you’d check on it a week ago. I want my mail. I want it today. They quit giving it to me right after I had the disagreement.”

  “When you got angry at Geoff and called him Uncle Remus.”

  “And for that I don’t get my mail. I think he spits in my food. I want all of it, all the old mail that’s been sitting around for a month. Then you can move me to a different cell.”

  “That I can’t do, Basil. It’s for your own good.”

  “I guess you don’t want to know,” Basil says.

  “How about I promise you’ll have all your mail by the end of the day.”

  “I better get it or that’s the end of our friendly conversation about The Christmas Shop. I’m getting rather bored with your little science project.”

  “The only Christmas shop I could find was in Las Olas on the beach,” Benton says. “July fourteenth, Florrie Quincy and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Helen, disappeared. Does that mean anything to you, Basil?”

  “I’m not good with names.”

  “Describe for me what you remember about The Christmas Shop, Basil.”

  “Trees with lights, little trains and ornaments everywhere,” he says, no longer smiling. “I already told you all that. I want to know what you found inside my brain. You see their pictures?” He points at his head. “You should see everything you want to know. Now you’re wasting my time. I want my damn mail!”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  “And there was a trunk in back, you know, a big foot-locker. It was stupid as shit. I made her open it and she had these collector’s ornaments made in Germany in painted wooden boxes. Stuff like Hansel and Gretel and Snoopy and Little Red Riding Hood. She kept them locked up because of how expensive they were, and I said, ‘What the fuck for? All someone has to do is steal the trunk. You really think locking them up in there is going to stop someone from stealing them?’”

  He falls silent, staring off at the cinder-block wall.

  “What else did you talk about with her before you killed her?”

  “I told her, ‘You’re going down, bitch.’”

  “At what point did you talk to her about the trunk in the back of the store?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I thought you said…”

  “I never said I talked to her about it,” Basil says impatiently. “I want to be put on something. Why can’t you give me something. I can’t sleep. I can’t sit still. I feel like fucking everything and then get depressed and can’t get out of bed. I want my mail.”

  “How many times a day are you masturbating?” Benton asks.

  “Six or seven. Maybe ten.”

  “More than usual.”

  “Then you and me had our little talk last night and that’s all I’ve done all day. Didn’t get out of bed except to pee, barely ate, haven’t bothered with a shower. I know where she is,” he then says. “Get me my mail.”

  “Mrs. Quincy?”

  “See, I’m in here.” Basil leans back in the chair. “What do I have to lose? What incentive do I have to do the right thing? Favors, a little special treatment, maybe cooperation. I want my fucking mail.”

  Benton gets up and opens the door. He tells Geoff to go to the mail room, find out about Basil’s mail. Benton can tell by the guard’s reaction that he knows all about Basil’s mail and isn’t happy about doing anything that might make his life more pleasant. So it’s probably true. He hasn’t been getting it.

  “I need you to do it,” Benton tells Geoff, meeting his eyes. “It’s important.”

  Geoff nods, walks off. Benton shuts the door again and sits back down at the table.

  Fifteen minutes later, Benton and Basil are finishing their conversation, a tangled mess of misinformation and convoluted games. Benton is annoyed. He doesn’t show it and is relieved to see Geoff.

  “Your mail will be waiting on your bed,” Geoff says from the doorway, his eyes flat and cold as they stare at Basil.

  “You better not have stolen my magazines.”

  “Nobody’s interested in your fucking fishing magazines. Excuse me, Dr. Wesley.” And to Basil, “There are four of them on your bed.”

  Basil casts an imaginary fly rod. “The one that got away,” he says. “It’s always the biggest one. My father used to take me fishing when I was a little boy. When he wasn’t beating my mother.”

  “I’m telling you,” Geoff says. “I’m telling you right in front of Dr. Wesley. You mess with me again, Jenrette, and your mail and fishing magazines won’t be your only problem.”

  “See, this is what I mean,” Basil tells Benton. “This is how I’m treated around here.”

  35

  In the storage area, Scarpetta opens a crime-scene case that she carried in from the Hummer. She removes vials of sodium perborate, sodium carbonate and luminol, mixes them with distilled water in a container, shakes it and transfers the solution into a black pump spray bottle.

  “Not exactly how you thought you’d spend your week off,” Lucy says as she attaches a thirty-five-millimeter camera to a tripod.

  “Nothing like a little quality time,” Scarpetta says. “At least we get to see each other.”

  Both of them are shrouded in disposable white coveralls, shoe covers, safety glasses, face masks and caps, the door to the storage room shut. It is almost eight p.m., and Beach Bums is once again locked up before closing time.

  “Give me just a minute to get the context,” Lucy says, screwing a cable release on the camera’s power switch. “Remember the days when you had to use a sock?”

  It is important that the spray bottle stay out of the photograph, and that’s not possible unless the bottle and nozzle are black or covered with something black. If nothing else is available, a black sock works fine.

  “Nice to have a bigger budget, isn’t it,” Lucy adds, the shutter opening as she presses the cable-release button. “We haven’t done something together like this in a while. Anyway, money problems are no fun.”

  She captures an area of shelving and concrete flooring, the camera fixed in place.

  “I don’t know,” Scarpetta says. “We always managed. In many ways, it was better, because defense attorneys didn’t have an endless list of no questions: Did you use a Mini-Crime scope? Did you use super sticks? Did you use laser trajectory? Did you use ampules of sterile water? What? You used bottled distilled water and you bought it where? A 7-Eleven? You bought evidence-collecting items at a convenience store?”

  Lucy takes another photograph.

  “Did you test the DNA of the trees, birds and squirrels in the yard?” Scarpetta goes on, pulling a black rubber glove over the cotton examination glove covering her left hand. “What about vacuuming the entire neighborhood for trace evidence?”

  “I think you’re in a really bad mood.”

  “I think I’m tired of your avoiding me. The only time you call is at times like this.”

  “No one better.”

  “That’s all I am to you? A member of your staff?”

  “I can’t believe you’d even ask that. You ready for me to cut the lights?”

  “Go.”

  Lucy pulls a string, clicking off the overhead lightbulb, casting them into total darkness. Scarpetta starts by spraying luminol on a control sample of blood, a single dried drop on a square of cardboard, and it glows greenish-blue and fades. She begins spraying in sweeps, misting areas of the floor and they begin to glow vividly as if the entire floor is on fire, a neon greenish-blue fire.

  “Good God,?
?? Lucy says, and the shutter clicks again and Scarpetta sprays. “I’ve never seen that.”

  The bright greenish-blue luminescence glows and fades to the slow, eerie rhythm of the spraying and when the spraying stops, the glow vanishes in the dark and Lucy turns on the light. She and Scarpetta look closely at the concrete floor.

  “I don’t see anything except dirt,” Lucy says, getting frustrated.

  “Let’s sweep it up before we walk on it any more than we have.”

  “Shit!” Lucy says. “I wish we’d tried the Mini-Crime scope first.”

  “Not now, but we can,” Scarpetta says.

  With a clean paintbrush, Lucy sweeps dirt from the floor into a plastic evidence bag, then repositions the camera and tripod. She takes more context photographs, these of wooden shelving, cuts the lights and this time the luminol reacts differently. Splotchy areas light up an electric blue and dance like popping sparks, and the shutter clicks and clicks and Scarpetta sprays, and the blueness pulses rapidly, fading in and out much more quickly than is typical of blood and most other substances that react to chemiluminescence.

  “Bleach,” Lucy says, because a number of substances result in false positives, and bleach is a common one, and the way it looks is distinctive.

  “Something with a different spectra, certainly reminiscent of bleach,” Scarpetta replies. “Could be any cleanser containing a hypochlorite-based bleach. Clorox, Drano, Fantastic, The Works, Babo Cleanser, to name a few. I wouldn’t be surprised to find something like that back here.”

  “You got it?”

  “Next.”

  The lights go on and both of them squint in the harsh glare of the overhead bulb.

  “Basil told Benton he cleaned up with bleach,” Lucy says. “But luminol’s not going to react to bleach after two and a half years, is it?”

  “Maybe if it soaked into wood and was left alone. I say maybe because I don’t know one way or the other, don’t know of anyone who’s ever done tests like that,” Scarpetta says, reaching into her scene bag for a lighted magnifier.

  She moves it over the edges of plyboard shelving stacked with snorkel equipment and T-shirts.

  “If you look closely,” she adds, “you can barely make out a lightening of the wood here and here. Possibly a splash pattern.”

  Lucy gets next to her and takes the magnifier.

  “I think I see it,” she says.

  Today, he has been in and out and has ignored her except to bring a grilled cheese sandwich and more water. He doesn’t live here. He is never here at night, or if he is, he is as quiet as the dead.

  It is late, but she doesn’t know how late, and the moon is trapped behind clouds on the other side of the broken window. She hears him move about the house. Her pulse quickens as his feet sound in her direction, and she tucks the small, pink tennis shoe behind her back because he will take it from her if it means anything to her, and then he is a dark shadow with a long finger of light. He has the spider with him. It covers his hand. It is the biggest spider she has ever seen.

  She listens for Kristin and the boys as the light probes her raw, swollen ankles and wrists. He probes the filthy mattress and the soiled bright-green robe draped over her lower legs. She draws up her knees and arms, trying to cover herself as the light touches private parts of her body. She recoils as she feels him staring at her. She can’t see his face. She has no idea what he looks like. He always wears black. During daylight, he covers his face with the hood and wears black, everything black, and at night she can’t see him at all, just a shape. He took her glasses.

  That was the first thing he did when he forced his way into the house.

  Give me your glasses, he said. Now.

  She stood paralyzed in the kitchen. Her terror and disbelief were numbing. She couldn’t think, felt as if the blood was completely draining from her body, and then olive oil in the pan on the stove began to smoke and the boys began to cry and he pointed the shotgun at them. He pointed it at Kristin. He had on the hood, the black clothing, when Tony opened the back door and then he was inside and it happened fast.

  Give me your glasses.

  Give them to him, Kristin said. Please don’t hurt us. Take whatever you want.

  Shut up or I’ll kill every one of you right now.

  He ordered the boys to lie facedown on the living-room floor and hit them in the back of the head, hit them hard with the butt of the gun so they wouldn’t try to run. He turned out all the lights and ordered Kristin and Ev to carry and drag the boys’ limp bodies down the hall and out the master-bedroom slider, and blood dripped and smeared along the floor and she keeps thinking that someone should have seen the blood. By now somebody should have been to the house, trying to figure out what happened to them, and they should have seen the blood. Where are the police?

  The boys didn’t move on the grass by the pool, and he tied them up with phone cords and gagged them with dish towels even though they weren’t moving or making a sound, and he forced Kristin and Ev to walk through the dark to the station wagon.

  Ev drove.

  Kristin sat in the front seat and he was in the back with the barrel of the gun pointed at her head.

  His cold, quiet voice told Ev where to go.

  I’m taking you somewhere, then I’ll go back for them, his cold, quiet voice said as she drove.

  Just call someone, Kristin begged. They need to get to the hospital. Please don’t leave them there to die. They’re children.

  I said I’d go back for them.

  They need help. They’re just little boys. Orphans. Both their parents are dead.

  Good. Nobody to miss them, then.

  His voice was cold and flat and inhuman, a voice with no feeling or personality.

  She remembers seeing signs for Naples. They were heading west toward the Everglades.

  I can’t drive without my glasses, Ev said, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might break her ribs. She couldn’t catch her breath. When she ran off on the shoulder, he gave her the glasses, then took them away again when they reached the dark, hellish place where she has been since.

  Scarpetta sprays the cinder-block walls inside the bathroom, and they glow in a pattern of sweeps and swipes and spatters that aren’t visible when the lights are on.

  “Someone cleaned up,” Lucy says in the dark.

  “I’m going to stop, don’t want to risk destroying blood, if it is. You got it on film?”

  “Right.” She turns on the light.

  Scarpetta gets out a presumptive blood kit and swabs areas of the wall where she saw the luminol react, working the cotton tip into the porous concrete where blood might lurk, even after washing. With medicine droppers, she drips her chemical concoction on a swab and it turns bright pink, reaffirming that what is lighting up on the wall could be blood, possibly human blood. It will have to be verified in the lab.

  If it’s blood, it wouldn’t surprise her if it is old, two and a half years old. Luminol reacts to the hemoglobin in red blood cells, and the older the blood, the more it oxidizes and the stronger the reaction. She continues swabbing with sterile water, gathering samples and sealing them inside evidence boxes that she labels, tapes and initials.

  This has been going on for an hour, and she and Lucy are hot inside their protective clothing. They can hear Larry on the other side of the door, moving about his store. Several times, his phone rings.

  They return to the storage area, and Lucy opens a sturdy black carrying case and removes a Mini-Crime scope forensic light source, a portable boxy metal unit with side intakes, a high-intensity halide lamp with a flexible arm that looks like a shiny steel hose fitted with a light guide that allows her to change wavelengths. She plugs in the scope and turns on the power switch and a fan begins to whir. She adjusts the intensity knob, setting the wavelength at 455 nanometers. They put on orange-tinted goggles that improve contrast and protect their eyes.

  Lights out, and Scarpetta carries the unit by its handle and slowly sweeps t
he blue light over walls, shelving and the floor. Blood and other substances that react to luminol don’t necessarily react to an alternate light source, and the areas that luminesced earlier are dark. But several small smears on the floor pop up a bright, hot red. Lights on, and Lucy positions the tripod again and places an orange filter over the camera lens. Lights out, and she photographs the fluorescing red smears. Lights back on, and the smears are barely visible. They are nothing more than a dirty discoloration of a dirty, discolored floor, but under magnification, Scarpetta detects a very faint blush of red. Whatever the substance is, it doesn’t dissolve in sterile water, and she doesn’t want to use a solvent and run the risk of destroying whatever it is.

  “We need to get a sample.” Scarpetta studies the concrete.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Lucy opens the door and calls out for Larry. He is behind the counter again, talking on the phone, and when he looks up and sees her from head to toe in white plasticized paper, he is visibly startled.

  “Did someone just beam me to the Mir space station?” he says.

  “You got any tools around this joint so I don’t have to go out to the car?”

  “There’s a small toolbox in back. Up on the shelf against the wall.” He indicates which wall. “A small, red toolbox.”

  “I may have to mess up your floor. Just a little.”

  He starts to say something but changes his mind, shrugs, and she shuts the door. She retrieves a hammer and a screwdriver from the toolbox, and with a few blows, chips out small samples of the dirty red stains and seals them inside evidence bags.

  She and Scarpetta remove their white clothing and stuff it into a trash can. They pack up their equipment and leave.

  Why are you doing this?” Ev asks the same question she asks every time he comes in, asks it hoarsely as he points the light and it shoots through her eyes like knives. “Please get that light out of my face.”