“To have it as often as possible!” She reloaded and snapped back the slide while rolling between stacks of tires before firing five rounds at a pop-up target thirty feet away. The cluster of head shots was so tight, it looked like a small flower.
“Oh yeah?” Two bullets loudly clinked a pop-up thug holding a machine gun. “Me and the guys got bets on it.” Rudy’s voice came closer as he crawled on his belly across the filthy concrete floor.
He pounced through towers of sooty tires and grabbed an unsuspecting Lucy by her steel-reinforced Red Wing boots.
“Gotcha!” He laughed, setting his pistol on top of a tire.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Lucy cleared a round from the chamber of her pistol, the ejected cartridge bouncing off the floor. “We’re using live ammo, you fucking idiot!”
“Let me see that thing.” Rudy got serious. “It doesn’t sound right.”
He took the pistol from her, dropped out the magazine. “Loose spring.” He shook the pistol before setting it next to his gun on the tire. “Aha. Rule number one: Never lose your weapon.”
He got on top of her, laughing as he wrestled with her, somehow believing this was what she had been waiting for, and that she was excited and didn’t mean it when she continued screaming, “Get off of me, asshole!”
Finally, he restrained both her wrists in one of his powerful hands. He plunged the other inside her shirt and shoved his tongue inside her mouth as he pushed up her bra. “The guys only say,” he panted, “you’re a dyke ’cause”—he fumbled with her belt buckle—“they can’t have you . . .”
Lucy bit through Rudy’s bottom lip and knocked her forehead hard against the bridge of his nose. He spent the rest of the day in the emergency room.
FBI attorneys reminded her that litigation benefitted no one, especially since Rudy believed that she “wanted it” and had probable cause to believe it. Lucy told Rudy she wanted it “as often as possible,” he reluctantly stated in the forms he was forced to complete for Internal Affairs.
“It’s true,” Lucy calmly agreed during a sworn statement before a panel of five lawyers, not one of whom represented her. “I said that, but I didn’t say I wanted it with him or with anyone right then in the middle of live fire in the middle of the Tire House in the middle of a maneuver in the middle of my period.”
“But you’d led him on in the past. You’d given Agent Musil reason to think you were attracted to him.”
“What reason?” Lucy was baffled under oath. “Offering him a stick of gum now and then, helping him clean his guns, hanging with him to run the Yellow Brick Road and other obstacle courses, the worst one at the Marine Corps base, joking around, that sort of thing?”
“Quite a bit of togetherness,” the lawyers agreed with one another.
“He’s my partner. Partners have quite a bit of togetherness.”
“Nonetheless, you seemed to devote quite a lot of your time and attention to Agent Musil, including personal attention, such as asking him about his weekends and holidays, and calling him at home when he was out sick.”
“Perhaps joking around, as you put it, might have been interpreted as flirting. Some people joke around when they flirt.”
The lawyers agreed once again, and what was worse, two of them were women—women in masculine skirt suits and high-heel shoes, women whose eyes reflected an identification with the aggressor, as if their irises were glued on to their eyeballs backward and were dull instead of bright, and blind to what was in front of them. The women lawyers had the dead eyes of people who kill themselves off to get what they want or to become what they fear.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said as her attention sharpened and she avoided the dead eyes. “You stepped on me. Please repeat,” she muttered aviation jargon.
“I’m sorry? Who stepped on you?” Frowns.
“You interfered with my transmission to the tower. Oops, there is no tower. This is uncontrolled air space and you get to do whatever you want. Right?”
More frowns. The lawyers glanced at one another as if Lucy was very weird.
“Never mind,” she added.
“You’re an attractive single woman. Can you see how Agent Musil might have misinterpreted joking around, phone calls at home, et cetera, as your being sexually interested in him, Agent Farinelli?”
“It has also been stated that you often referred to Agent Musil and yourself as ‘yin and ylang.’ ”
“I’ve told Rudy a hundred times that ylang is a Malayan tree. Ylang-ylang, to be more precise. A tree with yellow flowers that perfume is distilled from . . . but he doesn’t always tune his ears to the right frequency.” Lucy fought a smile.
The lawyers were taking notes.
“I never called Rudy ‘ylang.’ Now and then I did call him ‘yang’ and he called me ‘ying,’ no matter how many times I told him the word was yin,” Lucy explained further.
Silence, pens poised.
“It has to do with Chinese philosophy.” Lucy might as well have been talking to a chalkboard. “Balance, counterparts.”
“Why did you call each other . . . whatever?”
“Because we’re two peas in a pod. Do you know that expression?”
“I think we’re familiar with the term two peas in a pod. Again, such nicknames suggest a relationship . . .”
“Not the kind you’re talking about,” Lucy replied without rancor, because she did not hate Rudy in the least. “He and I are two peas in a pod because neither of us fit in. He’s Austrian and the other guys call him Musili because he’s, quote, full of shit, which he doesn’t think is the least bit funny. And I’m a lesbian, a man-hater, because no normal woman who likes men would want to be HRT and make the cut. According to the laws of machismo.”
Lucy scanned the women’s dead eyes and decided the male attorneys’ eyes were dead, too. The only sign of life in them was the glint of small, miserable creatures who hated someone like Lucy because she dared to resist being overpowered and frightened by them.
“This interview, deposition, inquisition, whatever the hell it is, is bullshit,” Lucy told them. “I have no interest in suing the Fucking Bureau of Investigation. I took care of myself in the Tire House. I didn’t report the incident. Rudy did. He had to explain his injuries. He claimed responsibility. He could have lied. But he didn’t, and the two of us are eye to eye.” She used the word eye to remind the lawyers of their dead eyes, as if somehow the lawyers knew their eyes were dead and incapable of seeing a reality that flexed with truth and possibilities and begged humans to partake of it and war against the dead-eyed people who were ruining the world.
“Rudy and I have acted as our own mediator,” Lucy went on, calmly. “We have reestablished that we are partners, and one partner doesn’t do what the other doesn’t want or commit any act that might betray the other partner or place him or her in harm’s way. And he told me he was sorry. And he meant it. He was crying.”
“Spies say they are sorry. They also cry.” A flush was climbing up the throat of a hostile woman attorney in pinstripes and skinny high heels that reminded Lucy of bound feet. “And your accepting his apology isn’t an option, Agent Farinelli. He attempted to rape you.” She emphasized the point, assuming it would humiliate and victimize Lucy again by inviting the male attorneys to envision her naked and sexually assaulted on the sooty concrete floor of the Tire House.
“I didn’t know Rudy was accused of being a spy,” Lucy replied.
She resigned from the FBI and was hired by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which the FBI unfairly considers a collection of backwoods boys who bust up moonshine stills and wear tool belts and guns.
She became an expert fire investigator in Philadelphia, where she helped stage Benton Wesley’s murder, which included procuring the body of an anatomical donation bound for dissection at a medical school. The dead man was elderly, with thick silver hair, and after he was incinerated inside a torched building, a visual identification was unreliable if not i
mpossible. All a shocked Scarpetta saw at the filthy, water-soaked, smoking scene was a charred body and a faceless skull with silver hair and a titanium wristwatch that had belonged to Benton Wesley. Under secret orders from Washington, the chief medical examiner in Philadelphia was ordered to falsify all reports. On paper, Benton was dead, just one more homicide added to the FBI’s crime statistics for 1997.
After he vanished into the black hole of the witness protection program, ATF immediately transferred Lucy to the Miami Field Office where she volunteered for dangerous undercover work and talked her way into it, despite reservations on the part of the Special Agent in Charge. Lucy had an attitude. She was volatile. No one close to her except Pete Marino understood why. Scarpetta didn’t know or remotely suspect the truth. She assumed Lucy was going through a terrible phase because she couldn’t cope with Benton being dead, when the truth was that Lucy couldn’t cope with Benton being alive. Within a year of her new post in Miami, she shot and killed two drug dealers in a takedown that went bad.
Despite video surveillance tapes that clearly showed she had saved herself and the life of her undercover partner, there was talk. There was ugly gossip and disinformation, and one administrative investigation after another. Lucy quit ATF. She quit the feds. She cashed in her dot-com stocks before the economy destabilized and crashed after 9-11. She invested a portion of her wealth, along with her law enforcement experience and talent, into creating a private investigative agency she calls The Last Precinct. It’s where you go when there’s no place left. It isn’t advertised or listed in any directory.
BENTON GETS UP from the chair and slips his hands into his pockets.
“People from the past,” he says. “We live many lives, Pete, and the past is a death. Something over. Something that can’t come back. We move on and reinvent ourselves.”
“What a load of crap. You’ve been spending too much time alone,” Marino says in disgust as fear chills his heart. “You’re making me sick. I’m glad as hell Scarpetta ain’t here to see this. Or maybe she ought to, so she’d finally get over you like you’ve obviously gotten over her. Goddamn it, can’t you turn up the air conditioner in this joint?”
Marino strides over to the window unit and turns it on high.
“You know what she’s doing these days, or don’t you give a flying fuck? Nothing. She’s a goddamn consultant. Got fired as the Chief. Can you believe it? The fucking governor of Virginia got rid of her because of political shit.
“And getting fired in the middle of a scandal don’t help you get much business,” he rants on. “When it comes to her, no one’s hiring, unless it’s some pissant case in some place that can’t afford anyone, so she does it for nothing. Like some stupid drug overdose in Baton Rouge. A stupid-ass drug OD . . .”
“Louisiana?” Benton wanders toward a window and looks out.
“Yeah, the coroner from there called me this morning before I left Richmond. Some guy named Lanier. An old drug OD. I knew nothing about it, so then he wanted to know if the Doc’s doing private work and basically wanted me to vouch for her character. I was pretty fucking pissed. But that’s what it’s come down to. She needs fucking references.”
“Louisiana?” Benton says again, as if there must be some mistake.
“You know any other state with a city named Baton Rouge?” Marino snidely asks above the noise of the air conditioner.
“Not a good place for her,” Benton says oddly.
“Yeah, well, New York, D.C., L.A. ain’t calling. It’s just a damn good thing the Doc’s got her own money, otherwise she’d be . . .”
“There are serial murders going on down there . . .” Benton starts to say.
“Well, the task force working them ain’t the one calling her. This hasn’t got nothing to do with those ladies disappearing. This is chicken shit. A cold case. And I’m just guessing the coroner will call her. And knowing her, she’ll help him out.”
“An area where ten women have vanished, and the coroner calls about a cold case? Why now?”
“I don’t know. A tip.”
“What tip?”
“I don’t know!”
“I want to know why that drug OD’s so important all of a sudden,” Benton persists.
“Are your antennas in a knot?” Marino exclaims. “You’re missing the fucking point. The Doc’s life has turned to shit. She’s gone from being Babe Ruth to playing Little League.”
“Louisiana’s not a good place for her.” Benton says it again. “Why did the coroner call you? Just for a reference?”
Marino shakes his head, as if trying to wake up. He rubs his face. Benton’s losing his grip.
“The coroner called wanting my help with the case,” he says.
“Your help?”
“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? You don’t think I could help somebody with a case? I could help any goddamn . . .”
“Of course you could. So why aren’t you helping the Baton Rouge coroner?”
“Because I don’t know anything about that case! Jesus, you’re making me crazy!”
“The Last Precinct could help down there.”
“Would you fucking give it a rest? The coroner didn’t seem all that hot and bothered by it, just indicated he might want the Doc’s medical opinion . . .”
“Their legal system is based on the Napoleonic Code.”
Marino has no idea what he’s talking about. “What’s Napoleon got to do with anything!”
“The French legal system,” Benton says. “The only state in America that has a legal system based on the French legal system instead of the English. Baton Rouge has more unsolved homicides of women per capita than any other city in America.”
“All right, already. So it ain’t a nice place.”
“She should not go down there. Especially alone. Not under any circumstances. Make sure of it, Pete.” Benton is still looking out the window. “Trust me on this one.”
“Trust you. What a joke.”
“The least you can do is take care of her.”
Marino is incensed, staring at Benton’s back.
“She can’t go anywhere near him.”
“Who the hell are you talking about?” Marino asks, his frustration intensifying.
Benton is a stranger. Marino doesn’t know this man.
“Wolfieboy? Jesus. I thought we were talking about a drug overdose case in Cajun country,” Marino complains.
“Keep her out of there.”
“You got no right asking me anything, especially about her.”
“He’s fixated on her.”
“What the hell does he have to do with Louisiana?” Marino steps closer to him and scrutinizes his face, as if straining to read something he can’t quite see.
“This is a continuation of a power struggle he lost with her in the past. And he intends to win it now if it’s the last thing he does.”
“Don’t sound to me like he’s gonna win a goddamn thing when he gets pumped full of enough juice to kill a herd of horses.”
“I’m not talking about Jean-Baptiste. Have you forgotten the other Chandonne, his brother? The Last Precinct should help the coroner. She shouldn’t.”
Marino doesn’t listen. He feels as if he’s sitting in the backseat of a moving car that has no one at the wheel.
“The Doc knows what Wolfman wants of her.” Marino sticks with one subject—the one that interests him and makes sense. “She won’t mind giving him the needle, and I’ll be right there behind the smoky glass, smiling.”
“Have you asked her if she minds?” Benton looks out at another spring day dying gently. Tender, vivid greens are dipped in golden sunlight, and shadows deepen closer to the ground.
“I don’t need to ask.”
“I see. So you haven’t discussed it with her. I’m not surprised. It wouldn’t be like her to discuss it with you.”
The insult is subtle but stings Marino like a sea nettle. He has never been intimate with Kay Scarpetta. No one ha
s ever been as intimate with her, not the way Benton was. She hasn’t told Marino how she feels about being an executioner. She doesn’t discuss her feelings with him.
“I’ve depended on you to take care of her,” Benton says.
The air seems to heat up, both of them sweating and silent.
“I know how you feel, Pete,” Benton softly says. “I’ve always known.”
“You don’t know nothing.”
“Take care of her.”
“I came here so you could start doing that,” Marino says.
CARTHAGE BLUFF LANDING is a good popular stop for groceries and gas, but Bev Kiffin never docks there.
She doesn’t slow down as she motors past and approaches Tin Lizzy’s Landing, a restaurant that cost a million dollars to build from torn-down shacks and what Bev calls salvage shit. Rich people from the mainland can access Lizzy’s from the Springfield Bridge and eat all the Cajun steaks and seafood and drink all they want without having to go home after dark in a boat. Six months ago, Bev asked Jay to take her there for her birthday, and he just laughed, and then his face twisted in a snarl as he called her stupid and ugly and out of her mind to think he’d take her to a restaurant at all, much less an upper-class one accessible by a highway.
Jealousy smolders as Bev picks up speed, heading due west to Jack’s Boat Landing. She imagines Jay touching other women.
She remembers her father lifting other little girls on his lap, demanding that Bev bring home playmates just so he could cuddle with them and make her watch. He was a handsome, successful businessman and, during her teenage years, the object of her friends’ crushes. He touched them in ways that weren’t obvious or reportable, just what he considered innocent contact between his hard penis and their buttocks as they sat on his lap. He never exposed himself or talked in a vulgar manner, never even swore. Worst of all, when he accidentally brushed against their breasts, her friends liked it, and sometimes they brushed against him first.
Bev walked out on him one day and never went back, the same way her mother had when Bev was three, leaving her with him and his needs. Bev grew up addicted to men, going from one to the next. Leaving Jay is another matter entirely, and she isn’t sure why she hasn’t done it yet. She isn’t sure why she’ll do whatever he demands, despite her fears for her own safety. The thought of him going off in the boat one day and never returning sears her with terror. It would serve her right, since that’s what she did to her father, who was dropped by a heart attack in 1997. Bev didn’t go to his funeral.