Four Scarpetta Novels

  “Impossible,” Rose says. “Marino’s still in a coma at eight. At least these days.”

  “I went to Starbucks, then headed back to her house around nine, and guess what? I pass his potato-chip girlfriend in her BMW.”

  “You sure it was her?”

  “Want her plate number? Her DOB? What’s in her bank account—not much, by the way. Looks like she’s gone through most of her money. Not from her dead rich daddy, either. Tells you something he left her nothing. But she makes a lot of deposits that don’t make sense, spends it as fast as she gets it.”

  “This is bad. Did she see you when you were coming back from Starbucks?”

  “I was in my Ferrari. So unless she’s blind in addition to being a vapid twat. Sorry…”

  “Don’t be. I know what a twat is, and no doubt she fits the bill. Marino has a special homing device that leads him directly to twats.”

  “You don’t sound good. Like you can hardly breathe,” Lucy says. “How about I come over a little later and move the couch?”

  “I’ll be right here,” Rose says, coughing as she hangs up.

  She turns on the television in time to see a tennis ball kick up a puff of red dust off the line, Drew Martin’s serve so fast and out of reach, her opponent doesn’t even try. CNN plays footage from last year’s French Open, the news about Drew going on and on. Replays of tennis and her life and death. Over and over again. More footage. Rome. The ancient city, then the small cordoned-off construction site surrounded by police and yellow tape. Emergency lights pulsing.

  “What else do we know at this time? Are there any new developments?”

  “Rome officials continue to be tight-lipped. It would appear there are no leads and no suspects, and this terrible crime continues to be shrouded in mystery. People here ask why. You can see them laying flowers at the edge of the construction site where her body was found.”

  More replays. Rose tries not to watch. She’s seen all of it so many times, but she continues to be mesmerized by it.

  Drew slicing a backhand.

  Drew charging the net and slamming a lob so hard it bounces into the stands. The crowd jumping to its feet and wildly cheering.

  Drew’s pretty face on Dr. Self’s show. Talking fast, her mind jumping from one subject to the next, excited because she’d just won the U.S. Open, called the Tiger Woods of tennis. Dr. Self leaning into the interview, asking questions she shouldn’t ask.

  “Are you a virgin, Drew?”

  Laughing, blushing, hiding her face with her hands.

  “Come on.” Dr. Self smiling, so damn full of herself. “This is what I’m talking about, everyone.” To her audience. “Shame. Why do we feel shame when we talk about sex?”

  “I lost my virginity when I was ten,” Drew says. “To my brother’s bicycle.”

  The crowd going crazy.

  “Drew Martin dead at sweet sixteen,” an anchor says.

  Rose manages to push the couch across the living room and shove it against the wall. She sits on it and cries. She gets up and paces and weeps, and moans that death is wrong and violence is unbearable and she hates it. Hates it all. In the bathroom, she retrieves a prescription bottle. In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of wine. She takes a tablet and washes it down with wine, and moments later, coughing and barely able to breathe, she washes down a second tablet. The telephone rings and she is unsteady when she reaches for it, dropping the receiver, fumbling to pick it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Rose?” Scarpetta says.

  “I shouldn’t watch the news.”

  “Are you crying?”

  The room’s spinning. She’s seeing double. “It’s just the flu.”

  “I’m coming over,” Scarpetta says.

  Marino rests his head against the back of the seat, his eyes masked by dark glasses, his big hands on his thighs.

  He’s dressed in the same clothes he had on last night. He slept in them, and it looks like it. His face is a deep red hue, and he has the stale stench of a drunk who hasn’t bathed in a while. The sight and smell of him brings back memories that are too awful to describe, and she feels the rawness, the soreness of flesh he should never have seen or touched. She wears layers of silk and cotton, fabrics gentle to her skin, her shirt buttoned at the collar, her jacket zipped up. To hide her injuries. To hide her humiliation. Around him, she feels powerless and naked.

  Another awful silence as she drives. The car is filled with the aromas of garlic and sharp cheese, and he has his window open.

  He says, “The light hurts my eyes. I can’t believe how much the light’s killing my eyes.”

  He has said this numerous times, offering an answer to an unasked question of why he won’t look at her or take off his dark glasses despite the overcast sky and rain. When she made coffee and dry toast barely an hour ago and brought it to him in bed, he groaned as he sat up and held his head. Unconvincingly, he asked, “Where am I?”

  “You were very drunk last night.” She set the coffee and toast on the bedside table. “Do you remember?”

  “If I eat anything, I’ll puke.”

  “Do you remember last night?”

  He says he doesn’t remember anything after riding his motorcycle to her house. His demeanor says he remembers all of it. He continues to complain about feeling sick.

  “I wish you didn’t have food back there. Now’s not a good time for me to smell food.”

  “Too bad. Rose has the flu.”

  She parks in the lot next to Rose’s building.

  “I sure as shit don’t want to get the flu,” he says.

  “Then stay in the car.”

  “I want to know what you did with my gun.” He has said this several times as well.

  “As I’ve told you, it’s in a safe place.”

  She parks. On the backseat is a box filled with covered dishes. She stayed up all night cooking. She cooked enough tagliolini with fontina sauce, lasagna Bolognese, and vegetable soup to feed twenty people.

  “Last night you were in no condition to have a loaded gun,” she adds.

  “I want to know where it is. What did you do with it?”

  He walks slightly ahead of her, not bothering to ask if he can carry the box.

  “I’ll tell you again. I took it from you last night. I took your motorcycle key. Do you remember my taking your key away from you because you insisted on riding your motorcycle when you could barely stand up?”

  “That bourbon in your house,” he says as they walk toward the whitewashed building in the rain. “Booker’s.” As if it’s her fault. “I can’t afford good bourbon like that. It goes down so smooth, I forget it’s a-hundred-and-twenty-something proof.”

  “So I’m to blame.”

  “Don’t know why you got something that strong in your house.”

  “Because you brought it over New Year’s Eve.”

  “Someone may as well have hit me over the head with a tire iron,” he says as they climb steps and the doorman lets them in.

  “Good morning, Ed,” Scarpetta says, aware of the sound of a TV inside his office off the lobby. She hears the news, more coverage of Drew Martin’s murder.

  Ed looks toward his office, shakes his head, and says, “Terrible, terrible. She was a nice girl, a real nice girl. Saw her just here right before she got killed, tipped me twenty dollars every time she came through the door. Terrible. Such a nice girl. Acted like a normal person, you know.”

  “She was staying here?” Scarpetta says. “I thought she always stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel. At least that’s what’s been in the news whenever she’s in this area.”

  “Her tennis coach has an apartment here, hardly ever in it, but he’s got one,” Ed says.

  Scarpetta wonders why she’s never heard about that. Now isn’t the time to ask. She’s worried about Rose. Ed pushes the elevator button and taps the button for Rose’s floor.

  The doors shut. Marino’s dark glasses stare straight ahead.

&n
bsp; “I think I got a migraine,” he says. “You got anything for a migraine?”

  “You’ve already taken eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. Nothing else for at least five hours.”

  “That don’t help a migraine. I wish you hadn’t had that stuff in the house. It’s like someone slipped me something, like I was drugged.”

  “The only person who slipped you something is yourself.”

  “I can’t believe you called Bull. What if he’s dangerous?”

  She can’t believe he’d say such a thing after what happened last night.

  “I sure as hell hope you don’t ask him to help in the office next,” he says. “What the hell does he know? He’ll just get in the way.”

  “I can’t think about this right now. I’m thinking about Rose right now. And maybe this would be a good time for you to worry about somebody besides yourself.” Anger begins to rise, and Scarpetta walks quickly along a hallway of old white plaster walls and worn blue carpet.

  She rings the bell to Rose’s apartment. No answer, no sound inside except the TV. She sets the box on the floor and tries the bell again. Then again. She calls her cell phone, her landline. She hears them ringing inside, then voicemail.

  “Rose!” Scarpetta pounds on the door. “Rose!”

  She hears the TV. Nothing but the TV.

  “We’ve got to get a key,” she says to Marino. “Ed has one. Rose!”

  “Fuck that.” Marino kicks the door as hard as he can, and wood splinters and the burglar chain breaks, brass links clinking to the floor as the door flies open and bangs against the wall.

  Inside, Rose is on the couch, motionless, her eyes shut, her face ashen, strands of long, snowy hair unpinned.

  “Call nine-one-one now!” Scarpetta puts pillows behind Rose to prop her up as Marino calls for an ambulance.

  She takes Rose’s pulse. Sixty-one.

  “They’re on their way,” Marino says.

  “Go to the car. My medical bag’s in the trunk.”

  He runs out of the apartment, and she notices a wineglass and a prescription bottle on the floor, almost hidden by the skirt of the couch. She’s stunned to see that Rose has been taking Roxicodone, a trade name for oxycodone hydrochloride, an opioid analgesic that’s notoriously habit-forming. The prescription of one hundred tablets was filled ten days ago. She takes the top off the bottle and counts the fifteen-milligram green tablets. There are seventeen left.

  “Rose!” Scarpetta shakes her. She’s warm and sweating. “Rose, wake up! Can you hear me! Rose!”

  Scarpetta goes to the bathroom and returns with a cool washcloth, places it on Rose’s forehead, and holds her hand, talking to her, trying to rouse her. Then Marino is back. He looks frantic and frightened as he hands Scarpetta the medical bag.

  “She moved the couch. I was supposed to do it,” he says, his dark glasses staring at the couch.

  Rose stirs as a siren sounds in the distance. Scarpetta takes a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope from her medical bag.

  “I promised to come over and move it,” Marino says. “She moved it by herself. It was over there.” His dark glasses look at an empty space near a window.

  Scarpetta pushes up Rose’s sleeve, slides the stethoscope on her arm, wraps the cuff just above the bend in the arm, tight enough to stop blood flow.

  The siren is very loud.

  She squeezes the bulb, inflates the cuff, then opens the valve to release the air slowly as she listens to the blood beating its way along the artery. Air hisses quietly as the cuff deflates.

  The siren stops. The ambulance is here.

  Systolic pressure eighty-six. Diastolic pressure fifty-eight. She moves the diaphragm over Rose’s chest and back. Respiration is depressed, and she’s hypotensive.

  Rose stirs, moves her head.

  “Rose?” Scarpetta says loudly. “Can you hear me?”

  Her eye lids flutter open.

  “I’m going to take your temperature.” She places a digital thermometer under Rose’s tongue and in seconds it beeps. Temperature ninety-nine-point-one. She holds up the bottle of pills. “How many did you take?” she asks. “How much wine did you drink?”

  “It’s just the flu.”

  “You move the couch yourself?” Marino asks her, as if it matters.

  She nods. “Overdid it. That’s all.”

  Rapid footsteps and the clatter of paramedics and a stretcher in the hallway.

  “No,” she protests. “Send them away.”

  Two EMTs in blue jumpsuits fill the doorway and push the stretcher inside. On top of it is a defibrillator and other equipment.

  Rose shakes her head. “No. I’m all right. I’m not going to the hospital.”

  Ed appears in the doorway, worried, looking in.

  “What’s the problem, ma’am?” One of the EMTs, blond with pale blue eyes, comes over to the couch and looks closely at Rose. He looks closely at Scarpetta.

  “No.” Rose is adamant, waving them off. “I mean it! Please go away. I fainted. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all,” Marino says to her, but his dark glasses are staring at the blond EMT. “I had to bust the damn door down.”

  “And you better fix it before you leave,” Rose mutters.

  Scarpetta introduces herself. She explains that it seems Rose mixed alcohol with oxycodone, was unconscious when they got here.

  “Ma’am?” The blond EMT leans closer to Rose. “How much alcohol and oxycodone did you have, and when did you take it?”

  “One more than usual. Three tablets. And just a little bit of wine. Half a glass.”

  “Ma’am, it’s very important you’re honest with me about this.”

  Scarpetta hands him the prescription bottle and says to Rose, “One tablet every four to six hours. You took two more than that. And you’re on a high dose already. I want you to go to the hospital just to make sure everything’s all right.”

  “No.”

  “Did you crush them or chew them or swallow them whole?” Scarpetta asks, because when the tablets are crushed, they dissolve more quickly and the oxycodone is more rapidly released and absorbed.

  “I swallowed them whole, just like I always do. My knees were aching something awful.” She looks at Marino. “I shouldn’t have moved the couch.”

  “If you won’t go with these nice EMTs, I’ll take you,” Scarpetta says, aware of the blond EMT’s stare.

  “No.” Rose adamantly shakes her head.

  Marino watches the blond EMT watch Scarpetta. Marino doesn’t protectively move close to her as he would have done in the past. She doesn’t address the most disturbing question—why Rose is on Roxicodone.

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” Rose says. “I’m not. I mean it.”

  “It looks like we’re not going to need you,” Scarpetta says to the EMTs. “But thanks.”

  “I heard you lecture a few months back,” the blond EMT says to her. “The child fatality session at the National Forensic Academy. You lectured.”

  His name tag reads T. Turkington. She has no recollection of him.

  “What the hell were you doing there?” Marino asks him. “The NFA’s for cops.”

  “I’m an investigator for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department. They sent me to the NFA. I’m a graduate.”

  “Now, ain’t that strange,” Marino says. “Then what the hell are you doing here in Charleston, riding around in an ambulance?”

  “My days off, I work as an EMT.”

  “This ain’t Beaufort County.”

  “Can use the extra pay. Emergency medicine’s good supplemental training for my real job. I have a girlfriend here. Or did.” Turkington is easygoing about it. To Scarpetta, he says, “If you’re sure everything’s all right in here, we’ll be on our way.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep my eye on her,” Scarpetta replies.

  “Nice to see you again, by the way.” His blue eyes fix on her, and then he and his partner are gone.

  Scarpet
ta says to Rose, “I’m taking you to the hospital to make sure nothing else is wrong.”

  “You’re not taking me anywhere,” she says. “Would you please go find me a new door?” she says to Marino. “Or a new lock or whatever it takes to fix the mess you made.”

  “You can use my car,” Scarpetta says, tossing him the keys. “I’ll walk home.”

  “I need to get into your house.”

  “It will have to wait until later,” she says.

  The sun slips in and out of smoky clouds, and the sea heaves against the shore.

  Ashley Dooley, a South Carolinian born and bred, has taken off his Windbreaker and tied the sleeves around his big belly. He points his brand-new camcorder at his wife, Madelisa, then stops filming when a black-and-white basset hound appears from the sea oats on the dune. The dog trots to Madelisa, his droopy ears dragging in the sand. He presses against her legs, panting.

  “Oh, look, Ashley!” She squats and pets him. “Poor baby, he’s shaking. What’s the matter, honey? Don’t be scared. He’s still a puppy.”

  Dogs love her. They seek her out. She’s never had a single dog growl at her or do anything but love her. Last year, they had to put Frisbee to sleep when he got cancer. Madelisa hasn’t gotten over it, won’t forgive Ashley for refusing treatment because of the expense.

  “Move over there,” Ashley says. “You can have the dog in the film if you want. I’ll get all these fancy houses in the background. Holy shit, look at that one. Like something you’d see in Europe. Who the hell needs something that big?”

  “I wish we could go to Europe.”

  “I tell you, this camcorder’s something.”

  Madelisa can’t stand to hear about it. Somehow he could afford thirteen hundred dollars for a camcorder but couldn’t spare a dime for Frisbee.

  “Look at it. All those balconies and a red roof,” he’s saying. “Imagine living in something like that.”

  If we lived in something like that, she thinks, I wouldn’t mind you buying fancy camcorders and a plasma-screen TV, and we could have afforded Frisbee’s vet bills. “I can’t imagine,” she says, posing in front of the dune. The basset hound sits on her foot, panting.

  “I hear there’s a thirty-million-dollar one down that way.” He points. “Smile. That’s not a smile. A big smile. Think it’s owned by someone famous, maybe the man who started Wal-Mart. Why’s that dog panting so much? It’s not that hot out here. And he’s shivering, too. Maybe he’s sick, could have rabies.”