Four Scarpetta Novels

  “Can you give me any information about him at all?” Benton asks. “Any personal history? A physical description? I know he was in Iraq. That’s all I know.”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to, Benton. I don’t have my notes.”

  “Meaning there could be important information in them.”

  “Hypothetically,” Dr. Maroni says.

  “Don’t you think you should check?”

  “I don’t have them,” Dr. Maroni says.

  “You don’t have them?”

  “Not in Rome, is what I mean,” he says from his sinking city.

  Hours later, the Kick ’N Horse Saloon, twenty miles north of Charleston.

  Marino sits across the table from Shandy Snook, both of them eating chicken-fried steak with biscuits, gravy, and grits. His cell phone rings. He looks at the number on the display.

  “Who is it?” she says, sipping a bloody Mary through a straw.

  “Why can’t people leave me alone?”

  “Better not be what I think it is,” she says. “It’s seven-damn-o’clock, and we’re eating dinner.”

  “I ain’t here.” Marino pushes a button to silence the phone, acts like it doesn’t bother him.

  “Yeah.” She loudly slurps up the last of her drink, reminding him of Drano unclogging a sink. “Nobody home.”

  Inside the saloon’s Feed Troff, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s booming through the speakers, the Budweiser neon signs are lit up, ceiling fans slowly turn. Saddles and autographs fill the walls, and models of motorcycles and rodeo horses and ceramic snakes decorate windowsills. The wooden tables are packed with bikers. More bikers are outside on the porch, everybody eating and drinking and getting ready for the Hed Shop Boys concert.

  “Son of a bitch,” Marino mumbles, staring at the cell phone on the table, at the wireless Bluetooth earpiece next to it. Ignoring the call is impossible. It’s her. Even though the display says Restricted, he knows it’s her. By now she’s bound to have seen what’s on the desktop of his computer. He’s surprised and irritated it’s taken this long. At the same time, he feels the thrill of vindication. He imagines Dr. Self wanting him like Shandy does. Wearing him out like Shandy does. For a solid week, he’s gotten no sleep.

  “Like I always say, the person’s not going to get any deader, right?” Shandy reminds him. “Let the Big Chief take care of it for once.”

  It’s her. Shandy doesn’t know it. Assumes it’s some funeral home. Marino reaches for his bourbon and ginger, keeps glancing at his cell phone.

  “Let her take care of it for once,” Shandy rants on. “Fuck her.”

  Marino doesn’t answer, his tension growing as he swirls what’s left of his drink. Not answering Scarpetta’s calls or returning them makes his chest tight with anxiety. He thinks about what Dr. Self said and feels deceived and abused. His face heats up. For the better part of twenty years, Scarpetta has made him feel he’s not good enough, when maybe the problem is her. That’s right. It’s probably her. She doesn’t like men. Hell, no. And all these years she’s made him feel the problem is him.

  “Let the Big Chief take care of whoever the latest stiff is. She’s got nothing better to do,” Shandy says.

  “You don’t know a thing about her or what she’s doing, either.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know about her. Better watch it.” Shandy motions for another drink.

  “Better watch what?”

  “You sticking up for her. Because it sure is getting on my nerves. Like maybe you keep forgetting who I am in your life.”

  “After a whole week.”

  “Just remember, baby. It’s not on call. But at her beck and call,” she says. “Why should you? Why should you always jump when she says it? Jump! Jump!” She snaps her fingers and laughs.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Jump! Jump!” She leans forward so he can see what’s inside her silk vest.

  Marino reaches for his phone, reaches for his earpiece.

  “Truth is?” She’s not wearing a bra. “She treats you like you’re nothing more than an answering service, a flunky, a nobody. I’m not the first person who’s said it.”

  “I don’t let anybody treat me like that,” he says. “We’ll see who the nobody is.” He thinks of Dr. Self and imagines himself on international TV.

  Shandy reaches under the table, and he can see down her vest, see as much as he wants. She rubs him.

  “Don’t,” he says, waiting and getting anxious and angry.

  Pretty soon, other bikers will find excuses to walk past so they can take in the sight of her leaning against the table just right. He watches her do it, and her breasts swell and her cleavage deepens. She knows how to lean into a conversation so anybody interested can imagine a mouthful of her. A big guy with a big gut and a chain attached to his wallet slowly gets up from the bar. He takes his time walking to the men’s room, taking in the view, and Marino feels violent.

  “You don’t like it?” Shandy rubs him. “’Cause it sure feels to me like you do. Remember last night, baby? Like a damn teenager.”

  “Don’t,” he says.

  “Why? Am I giving you a hard time?” says Shandy, who prides herself on her way with words.

  He moves her hand. “Not now.”

  He returns Scarpetta’s call. “Marino here,” he says curtly, as if he’s talking to a stranger, so Shandy won’t know who it is.

  “I need to see you,” Scarpetta says to him.

  “Yeah. What time?” Marino acts like he doesn’t know her, and he’s aroused and jealous as bikers wander past the table, looking at his dark, exotic girlfriend exposing herself.

  “As soon as you can get here. To my house,” Scarpetta’s voice says in his earpiece, and her tone is one he’s not accustomed to, and he senses her fury like an approaching storm. She’s seen the e-mails, he’s sure of it.

  Shandy gives him a who are you talking to? look.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Marino feigns irritation, glancing at his watch. “Be there in a half-hour.” He hangs up, says to Shandy, “A body coming in.”

  She looks at him as if trying to read the truth in his eyes, as if for some reason she knows he’s lying. “Which funeral home?” She leans back in her chair.

  “Meddicks’. Again. What a squirrel. Must do nothing but drive that damn hearse morning, noon, and night. What we call an ambulance chaser.”

  “Oh,” she says. “That sucks.” Her attention wanders to a man in a flame-pattern do-rag, his boots low in the heel. He pays no attention to them as he walks past their table to the ATM.

  Marino noticed him when they got here earlier, has never seen him before. He watches him get a pitiful five bucks out of the ATM while his mutt of a dog sleeps curled up in a chair at the bar. The man hasn’t petted him once or even asked the bartender for a treat for him—not so much as a bowl of water.

  “I don’t know why it’s got to be you,” Shandy starts in again, but her voice is different. Quieter, colder, the way she gets with the first frost of spite. “When you think of all you know and all you’ve done. The big-shot homicide detective. You ought to be the boss, not her. Not her dyke niece, either.” She drags the last of a biscuit through white gravy smeared on her paper plate. “The Big Chief’s kind of turned you into the Invisible Man.”

  “I told you. Don’t talk about Lucy like that. You don’t know shit.”

  “Truth is truth. I don’t need you to tell me. Everyone in this bar knows what kind of saddle she rides.”

  “You can shut up about her.” Marino angrily finishes his drink. “You keep your mouth shut about Lucy. Me and her go back to when she was a kid. I taught her how to drive, taught her how to shoot, and I don’t want to hear another word. You got it?” He wants another drink, knows he shouldn’t, has already had three bourbons, strong ones. He lights two cigarettes, one for Shandy, one for him. “We’ll see who’s invisible.”

  “Truth is truth. You had a real career before the Big Chief started dragging you around
everywhere. And why’d you tag along as usual? I know why.” She gives him one of her accusatory looks, blows out a stream of smoke. “You thought she might want you.”

  “Maybe we should move,” Marino says. “Go to a big city.”

  “Me move with you?” She blows out more smoke.

  “What about New York?”

  “We can’t ride our bikes in New Damn York. No way I’m moving to a place swarming like a beehive with all those stuck-up damn Yankees.”

  He gives her his sexiest look and reaches under the table. He rubs her thigh because he’s terrified of losing her. Every man in this bar wants her, and he’s the one she’s picked. He rubs her thigh and thinks about Scarpetta and what she’ll say. She’s read Dr. Self’s e-mails. Maybe she’s realizing who he is and what other women think of him.

  “Let’s go to your place,” Shandy says.

  “How come we never go to your place? You afraid to be seen with me or something? Like maybe you live around rich people and I’m not good enough?”

  “I have to decide whether I’m going to keep you. See, I don’t like slavery,” she says. “She’s gonna work you to death like a slave, and I know all about slaves. My great-grandfather was a slave, but not my daddy. Nobody told him what the hell to do.”

  Marino holds up his empty plastic cup, smiles at Jess, who’s looking mighty fine this evening in tight jeans and a tube top. She appears with another Maker’s Mark and ginger, sets it in front of him. She says, “You riding home?”

  “Not a problem.” He winks at her.

  “Maybe you should stay in the campground. I got an empty camper back there.” She has several in the woods behind the bar, in case patrons aren’t safe to ride.

  “I couldn’t be better.”

  “Bring me another.” Shandy has a bad habit of barking orders at people who don’t have her status in life.

  “I’m still waiting on you to win the bike build-off, Pete.” Jess ignores Shandy, talks mechanically, slowly, her eyes on Marino’s lips.

  It took a while for him to get used to it. He’s learned to look at Jess when he talks, is never too loud, never exaggerates his speech. He’s hardly aware of her deafness anymore and feels a special closeness to her, maybe because they can’t communicate without looking at each other.

  “One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars cash for first place.” Jess draws out the staggering amount.

  “I’m betting River Rats is going to get it this year,” Marino says to Jess, knowing she’s just messing with him, maybe flirting a little. He’s never built a bike or entered any contest, and never will.

  “And I’m betting on Thunder Cycle.” Shandy inserts herself in that snotty way Marino hates. “Eddie Trotta’s so damn hot. He can trotta into my bed anytime he wants.”

  “Tell you what,” Marino says to Jess, putting his arm around her waist, looking up at her so she can see him talking. “One of these days, I’ll have big bucks. I won’t need to win a bike build-off or work a shit job.”

  “He ought to quit his shit job, doesn’t earn enough to make it worth his while—or worth my while,” Shandy says. “He’s nothing but a squaw to the Big Chief. Besides, he doesn’t need to work. He’s got me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Marino knows he shouldn’t say it, but he’s drunk and hateful. “What if I told you I got an offer to go on TV in New York?”

  “As what? A commercial for Rogaine?” Shandy laughs as Jess tries to read what’s being said.

  “As a consultant for Dr. Self. She’s been asking me.” He can’t stop himself, should change the subject.

  Shandy looks genuinely startled, blurts, “You’re lying. Why would she care a shit about you?”

  “We got a history. She wants me to go to work for her. I’ve been thinking about it, maybe would have accepted right away, but that would mean moving to New York and leaving you, babe.” He puts his arm around her.

  She pulls away. “Well, looks like her show’s on its way to being a comedy.”

  “Put our guest over there on my tab,” Marino says with loud largesse, nodding and pointing at the man in the flame do-rag sitting next to his dog at the bar. “He’s having a rough night. Got five lousy bucks to his name.”

  The man turns around and Marino gets a good look at a face pitted with acne scars. He has the snake eyes that Marino associates with people who have done time.

  “I can pay for my own damn beer,” the man in the flame do-rag says.

  Shandy continues complaining to Jess, not bothering to look at her face, so she may as well be talking to herself.

  “Don’t appear to me like you can pay for much of anything, and I apologize for my southern hospitality,” Marino says, loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear.

  “I don’t think you should go anywhere.” Jess looks at Marino, at his drink.

  “There’s room for only one woman in his life, and one of these days he’s gonna figure that out,” Shandy says to Jess and anybody else listening. “Without me, what’s he got, anyway? Who do you think gave him that fancy necklace he’s wearing?”

  “Fuck you,” the man in the do-rag says to Marino. “Fuck your mother.”

  Jess walks over to the bar, crosses her arms. She says to the man in the do-rag, “We talk polite in here. I think you better leave.”

  “What?” he says loudly, cupping a hand behind his ear, mocking her.

  Marino’s chair scrapes back and in three long strides he is between them. “You say you’re sorry, asshole,” Marino says to him.

  The man’s eyes touch his like needles. He crumples the five-dollar bill he got out of the ATM, drops it on the floor, crushes it beneath his boot as if he’s putting out a cigarette. He smacks the dog’s butt, heads to the door as he says to Marino, “Why don’t you come out here like a man? I got something to say to you.”

  Marino follows him and his dog across the dirt parking lot to an old chopper, probably put together in the seventies, a four-speed with a kick start, flame paint job, something funny-looking about the license tag.

  “Cardboard,” Marino realizes out loud. “Homemade. Now, ain’t that sweet. Tell me what you got to say.”

  “Reason I’m here tonight? Got a message for you,” the man in the dorag says. “Sit!” he yells at the dog, and it cowers, flattens on its belly.

  “Next time send a letter.” Marino grabs him by the front of his dirty denim jacket. “It’s cheaper than a funeral.”

  “You don’t let go of me, I’ll get you later in a way you won’t like. There’s a reason I’m here and you better listen.”

  Marino takes his hands off him, aware that everyone in the saloon has moved out on the porch, watching. The dog remains flat on his belly, cowering.

  “That bitch you work for ain’t welcome in these parts and would be smart to go back where she come from,” the man in the do-rag says. “Just passing along a word of advice from someone who can do something about it.”

  “What’d you call her?”

  “Say this much, that bitch’s got some set of tits.” He cups his hands and licks the air. “If she don’t leave town, I’ll find out just how nice.”

  Marino kicks the chopper hard and it thuds to the dirt. He grabs his forty-caliber Glock out of the back of his jeans and points it between the man’s eyes.

  “Don’t be stupid,” the man says, as bikers start yelling from the porch. “You shoot me, your worthless life’s over and you know it.”

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

  “Whoa, now!”

  “Pete!”

  Marino feels as if the top of his head is floating off as he stares at the spot between the man’s eyes. He racks back the slide, chambering a round.

  “You kill me, you may as well be dead, too,” the man in the do-rag says, but he’s scared.

  Bikers are on their feet, shouting. Marino is vaguely aware of people venturing into the parking lot.

  “Pick up your piece-of-shit bike,” Marino says, lowering the gun. “Leave the dog.
”

  “I ain’t leaving my damn dog!”

  “You’re leaving him. You treat him like shit. Now get out of here before I give you a third eye.”

  As the chopper roars away, Marino clears the chamber, tucks the pistol back into his waistband, unsure what just came over him and terrified by it. He pets the dog and it stays flat on its belly and licks his hand.

  “We’ll find someone nice to take care of you,” Marino says to him as fingers dig into his arm. He looks up at Jess.

  “I think it’s time you deal with this,” she says.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what. That woman. I warned you. She’s beating you down, making you feel like a nothing, and look what’s happening. In one short week you’ve turned into a wild man.”

  His hands are shaking badly. He looks at her so she can read his lips. “That was stupid, wasn’t it, Jess. Now what?” He pets the dog.

  “He’ll be the saloon dog, and if that man comes back, it won’t be good for him. But you better be careful now. You’ve started something.”

  “You ever seen him before?”

  She shakes her head.

  Marino notices Shandy on the porch, by the railing. He wonders why she hasn’t left the porch. He almost killed someone and she’s still on the porch.

  Chapter 10

  Somewhere a dog barks in the near dark, and the barking becomes more insistent.

  Scarpetta detects the distant carbureted potato-potato-potato rhythm of Marino’s Roadmaster. She can hear the damn thing blocks away on Meeting Street, heading south. Moments later it roars through the narrow alleyway behind her house. He’s been drinking. She could hear it in his voice when she talked to him on the phone. He’s being obnoxious.

  She needs him sober if they’re going to have a productive conversation—perhaps the most important one they’ve ever had. She begins making a pot of coffee as he turns left on King Street, then another left into the narrow driveway she shares with her unpleasant neighbor, Mrs. Grimball. Marino rolls the throttle a few times to announce himself and kills the engine.

  “You got something to drink in there?” he says as Scarpetta opens the front door. “A little bourbon would be nice. Wouldn’t it, Mrs. Grimball!” he shouts up at the yellow frame house, and a curtain moves. He locks the bike’s front fork, slips the key in his pocket.