Four Scarpetta Novels

  “No, pumpkin, he’s shaking like he’s scared. Maybe he’s thirsty. I told you to bring a bottle of water. The man who started Wal-Mart’s dead,” she adds, as she pets the basset hound and scans the beach, doesn’t notice anybody nearby, just a few people in the distance, fishing. “I think he’s lost,” she says. “I don’t see anybody around who might be his owner.”

  “We’ll look for it, get some footage.”

  “Look for what?” she asks, the dog pressed against her legs, panting, shaking. She checks him, noting he needs a bath and his claws need clipping. Then something else. “Oh, my goodness. I think he’s hurt.” She touches the top of the dog’s neck, looks at blood on her finger, begins parting his fur, looking for a wound, not finding one. “Now, that’s strange. How’d he get blood on him? There’s some more of it, too. But it doesn’t look like he’s hurt. Now that’s just yucky.”

  She wipes her fingers on her shorts.

  “Maybe there’s a carcass of a chewed-up cat somewhere.” Ashley hates cats. “Let’s keep walking. We’ve got our tennis clinic at two and I’m gonna need some lunch first. We got any of that honey-baked ham left?”

  She looks back. The basset hound sits in the sand, panting, staring at them.

  “I know you have a spare key in that little box you bury in your garden under that pile of bricks behind the bushes,” Rose says.

  “He’s hung over as hell, and I don’t want him riding his motorcycle with a damn forty-caliber pistol jammed in the back of his jeans,” Scarpetta says.

  “How did it end up at your house to begin with? How did he end up there, for that matter?”

  “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you.”

  “Why don’t you get off the couch and pull up a chair. It’s hard for me to talk when you’re practically sitting on top of me,” Rose says.

  Scarpetta carries over a dining room chair, sets it down, and says, “Your medication.”

  “I haven’t been stealing pills from the morgue, if that’s what you’re implying. All those pitiful people who come in with dozens of prescription bottles, because why? Because they don’t take them. Pills don’t fix a damn thing. If they did, those people wouldn’t end up in the morgue.”

  “Your bottle has your name on it and the name of your physician. Now, I can look him up or you can tell me what kind of doctor he is and why you’re seeing him.”

  “An oncologist.”

  Scarpetta feels as if she’s been kicked in the chest.

  “Please. Don’t make this harder for me,” Rose says. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out until it was time to pick out an acceptable urn for my ashes. I know I did something I shouldn’t.” She catches her breath. “Was in such a state, got so upset, and was aching all over.”

  Scarpetta takes her hand. “Funny how we get ambushed by our feelings. You’ve been stoical. Or dare I use the word stubborn? Now today you have to reckon with it.”

  “I’m going to die,” Rose says. “I hate doing this to everyone.”

  “What kind of cancer?” Holding Rose’s hand.

  “Lung. Before you start thinking it’s from all that secondary smoke I was exposed to in the early days when you puffed away in your office…” Rose starts to say.

  “I wish I hadn’t. I can’t tell you how much I wish that.”

  “What’s killing me has nothing to do with you,” Rose says. “I promise. I come by it honestly.”

  “Non–small cell or small cell?”

  “Non–small.”

  “Adenocarcinoma, squamous?”

  “Adenocarcinoma. Same thing my aunt died from. Like me, she never smoked. Her grandfather died of squamous. He did smoke. I never in a million years imagined I’d get lung cancer. But then it’s never occurred to me I’d die. Isn’t it ridiculous.” She sighs, the color slowly returning to her face, the light to her eyes. “We look at death every day and it doesn’t change our denial about it. You’re right, Dr. Scarpetta. I guess today it hit me from behind. I never saw it coming.”

  “Maybe it’s about time you call me Kay.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Why not? Aren’t we friends?”

  Rose says, “We’ve always believed in boundaries, and they’ve served us well. I work for someone I’m honored to know. Her name is Dr. Scarpetta. Or Chief.” She smiles. “I could never call her Kay.”

  “So now you’re depersonalizing me. Unless you’re talking about someone else.”

  “She’s someone else. Someone you really don’t know. I think you have a much lower opinion of her than I do. Especially these days.”

  “Sorry, I’m not this heroic woman you just described, but let me help what little I can—get you to the best cancer center in the country. Stanford Cancer Center. Where Lucy goes. I’ll take you. We’ll get you any treatment you…”

  “No, no, no.” Rose shakes her head again slowly, side to side. “Now be quiet and listen to me. I’ve consulted all sorts of specialists. Do you remember last summer I went on a three-week cruise? A lie. The only cruise I went on was from one specialist to another, and then Lucy took me to Stanford, which is where I got my doctor. The prognosis is the same. My only choice was chemo and radiation, and I refused.”

  “We should try anything we possibly can.”

  “I’m already in stage three-B.”

  “It’s spread to the lymph nodes?”

  “Lymph nodes. And bone. Well on its way to being stage four. Surgery’s impossible.”

  “Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or even just radiation therapy by itself. We’ve got to try. We can’t just give up like this.”

  “In the first place, there’s no we. It’s me. And no. I won’t put myself through it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to have all my hair fall out and be sick and miserable when I know this disease is going to kill me. Sooner rather than later. Lucy even said she would get me marijuana so the chemo wouldn’t make me as sick. Imagine me smoking pot.”

  “Obviously, she’s known about this for as long as you have,” Scarpetta says.

  Rose nods.

  “You should have told me.”

  “I told Lucy, and she’s a master of secrets, has so many I’m not sure any of us know what’s really true. What I didn’t want is this very thing. To make you feel bad.”

  “Just tell me what I can do.” As grief tightens its grip.

  “Change what you can. Don’t ever think you can’t.”

  “Tell me. I’ll do anything you want,” Scarpetta says.

  “It’s not until you’re dying that you begin to realize all the things in life you could have changed. This I can’t change.” Rose taps her chest. “You have the power to change almost anything you want.”

  Images from last night, and for an instant, Scarpetta imagines she smells him, feels him, and she struggles not to show how devastated she is.

  “What is it?” Rose squeezes her hand.

  “How can I not feel terrible?”

  “You were just thinking about something, and it wasn’t me,” Rose says. “Marino. He looks awful and is acting odd.”

  “Because he got shit-face drunk,” Scarpetta says, anger in her voice.

  “‘Shit-face.’ Now, that’s a term I haven’t heard you use. But then I’m getting rather vulgar myself these days. I actually used the word twat this morning when I was talking to Lucy on the phone—referring to Marino’s latest. Who Lucy happened to pass in your neighborhood around eight. When Marino’s motorcycle was still parked in front of your house.”

  “I have a box of food for you. It’s still in the hall. Let me get it and I’ll put it away.”

  A coughing fit, and when Rose removes the tissue from her mouth, it is spotted with bright red blood.

  “Please let me take you back to Stanford,” Scarpetta says.

  “Tell me what happened last night.”

  “We talked.” Scarpetta feels her face turn red. “Until he was too drunk.”

  “I don’t believ
e I’ve ever seen you blush.”

  “A hot flash.”

  “Yes, and I have the flu.”

  “Tell me what to do for you.”

  “Let me go about my business as usual. I don’t want to be resuscitated. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”

  “Why don’t you move in with me?”

  “That’s not going about my business as usual,” Rose says.

  “Will you at least give me permission to talk to your doctor?”

  “There’s nothing else for you to know. You asked what I want, and I’m telling you. No curative treatment. I want palliative care.”

  “I have an extra room in my house. Small as it is. Maybe I should get a bigger place,” Scarpetta says.

  “Don’t be so selfless it makes you selfish. And it’s selfish if you make me feel guilty and just plain horrible because I’m hurting everyone around me.”

  Scarpetta hesitates, then says, “Can I tell Benton?”

  “You can tell him. But not Marino. I don’t want you telling him.” Rose sits up, places her feet on the floor. She takes both of Scarpetta’s hands. “I’m no forensic pathologist,” she says. “But why are there fresh bruises on your wrists?”

  The basset hound is still right where they left him, sitting in the sand near the No Trespassing sign.

  “See, now, this just isn’t normal,” Madelisa exclaims. “Been sitting here for more than an hour, waiting for us to come back. Here, Droopy. You sweet little thing.”

  “Honey, that’s not his name. Now, don’t be naming him. Look at his tag,” Ashley says. “See what his real name is and where he lives.”

  She stoops down, and the basset hound ambles over to her, presses against her, licks her hands. She squints at the tag, doesn’t have her reading glasses. Ashley doesn’t have his, either.

  “I can’t see it,” she says. “What little I can make out. Nope, doesn’t look like there’s a phone number. I didn’t bring my phone, anyhow.”

  “I didn’t, either.”

  “Now, that’s dumb. What if I twisted my ankle out here or something? Somebody’s barbecuing,” she says, sniffing, looking around, noticing a wisp of smoke rising from the back of the huge white house with the balconies and red roof—one of the few houses she’s seen with a No Trespassing sign. “Now, why aren’t you running off to see what’s cooking?” she says to the basset hound, stroking his floppy ears. “Maybe we could go out and buy us one of those little grills and cook out tonight.”

  She tries to read the dog’s tags again, but it’s hopeless without her glasses, and she imagines rich people, imagines some millionaire grilling on the patio of that huge white house set back from the dune, partially hidden by tall pines.

  “Say hello to your old-maid sister,” Ashley says, filming. “Tell her how luxurious our town house is here on Millionaire Row in Hilton Head. Tell her next time we’re staying in a mansion like that one where they’re barbecuing.”

  Madelisa looks down the beach in the direction of their town house, unable to see it through thick trees. She returns her attention to the dog and says, “I bet he lives in the house right there.” Pointing to the white European-looking mansion where someone is barbecuing. “I’ll just go on over there and ask.”

  “Go right on. I’ll wander a little bit, filming. Saw a few porpoises a minute ago.”

  “Come on, Droopy. Let’s go find your family,” Madelisa says to the dog.

  He sits in the sand and won’t come. She tugs his collar, but he’s not going anywhere. “Okay, then,” she says. “You stay put and I’ll find out if that big house is where you’re from. Maybe you got out and they don’t know it. But one thing’s for sure. Someone’s missing you something awful!”

  She hugs and kisses him. She heads off across the hard sand, gets to the soft sand, walks right through sea oats, even though she hears it’s illegal to walk on the dunes. She hesitates at the No Trespassing sign, bravely steps up on the wooden boardwalk, heading to the huge white house where some rich person, maybe a celebrity, is cooking on the grill. Lunch, she supposes, as she keeps looking back, hoping the basset hound doesn’t run off. She can’t see him on the other side of the dune. She doesn’t see him on the beach, either, just Ashley, a small figure, filming several dolphins rolling through the water, their fins cutting through the waves, then dipping out of sight again. At the end of the boardwalk is a wooden gate, and she’s surprised it isn’t locked. It isn’t completely shut.

  She walks through the backyard, looking everywhere, calling out “Hello!” She’s never seen such a big pool, what they call a black-bottom pool, trimmed with fancy tile that looks like it came from Italy or Spain or some other exotic faraway place. She looks around, calling out “hello,” pauses curiously at the smoking gas grill where a slab of raggedly cut meat is charred on one side, bloody-raw on top. It occurs to her that the meat is strange, doesn’t look like steak or pork, certainly not like chicken.

  “Hello!” she calls out. “Anybody home?”

  She bangs on the sun porch door. No answer. She walks around to the side of the house, supposing whoever is cooking might be somewhere over there, but the side yard is empty and overgrown. She peers through a space between the blinds and the edge of a big window and sees an empty kitchen, all stone and stainless steel. She’s never seen a kitchen like that except in magazines. She notices two big dog bowls on a mat near the butcher block.

  “Hello!” she yells. “I think I have your dog! Hello!” She moves along the side of the house, calling out. She climbs up steps to a door, next to it a window missing a pane of glass. Another pane is broken. She thinks about hurrying back to the beach, but inside the laundry room is a big dog crate that’s empty.

  “Hello!” Her heart beats hard. She’s trespassing, but she’s found the basset hound’s home and she’s got to help. How would she feel if it were Frisbee and someone didn’t bring him back?

  “Hello!” She tries the door and it opens.

  Chapter 12

  Water drips from live oaks.

  In the deep shadows of yew and tea olive trees, Scarpetta arranges broken pieces of pottery in the bottoms of pots to help with drainage so the plants don’t rot. The warm air is steamy from a hard rain that suddenly started and just as suddenly stopped.

  Bull carries a ladder over to an oak tree that spreads its canopy over most of Scarpetta’s garden. She begins tamping potting soil into the pots and tucks in petunias, then parsley, dill, and fennel, because they attract butterflies. She relocates fuzzy silver lamb’s ears and artemisia into better spots where they will catch the sun. The scent of wet, loamy earth mingles with the pungency of old brick and moss as she moves rather stiffly—from years of unforgiving tile floors in the morgue—to a brick post overgrown with hollyfern. She starts diagnosing the problem.

  “If I pull this fern out, Bull, I might damage the brick. What do you think?”

  “That’s Charleston brick, probably two hundred years old, my guess.” From the top of the ladder. “I’d pull a little, see what happens.”

  The fern peels off without complaint. She fills a watering can and tries not to think about Marino. She feels sick when she thinks about Rose.

  Bull says, “Some man came through the alley on a chopper right before you got here.”

  Scarpetta stops what she’s doing, stares up at him. “Was it Marino?”

  When she got home from Rose’s apartment, his motorcycle was gone. He must have driven her car to his house and gotten a spare key.

  “No, ma’am, it wasn’t him. I was up on the ladder limbing the loquats, could see the man on the chopper over the fence. He didn’t see me. Maybe nothing.” The clippers snap, and side shoots called suckers fall to the ground. “Anybody been bothering you, ’cause I’d like to know about it.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Turned in and rode real slow about halfway, then turned around and went back. Looked to me like he had on a do-rag, maybe orange and yellow. Hard to tell from w
here I was. His chopper had bad pipes, rattled and spit like something about to quit. You should tell me if I should know something. I’ll be looking.”

  “You ever seen him before around here?”

  “I’d recognize that chopper.”

  She thinks about what Marino told her last night. A biker threatened him in the parking lot, said something bad would happen to her if she didn’t leave town. Who would want her gone so badly as to pass on a message like that? The local coroner sticks in her mind.

  She asks Bull, “You know much about the coroner here? Henry Hollings?”

  “Only his funeral home business been in the family since the War, that huge place behind a high wall over there on Calhoun, not too far from here. I don’t like the thought of someone bothering you. Your neighbor sure is curious.”

  Mrs. Grimball is looking out the window again.

  “She watches me like a hawk,” Bull says. “If I might say so, she’s got an unkindness about her and don’t mind hurting people.”

  Scarpetta goes back to work. Something’s eating the pansies. She tells Bull.

  “There’s a bad rat problem around here,” he replies. It seems prophetic.

  She examines more damaged pansies. “Slugs,” she decides.

  “You could try beer,” Bull says with snaps of the pole cutter. “Put out saucers of it after dark. They crawl in it, get drunk, and drown.”

  “And the beer attracts more slugs than you had before. I couldn’t drown anything.”

  More suckers rain down from the oak tree. “Saw some raccoon droppings over there.” He points with the pole clipper. “Could be them eating the pansies.”

  “Raccoons, squirrels. Nothing I can do about it.”

  “There is, but you won’t. You sure don’t like to kill nothing. Kind of interesting when I think what you do. Would assume nothing much would bother you.” He talks from up in the tree.