Her two-story yellow stucco house is modest by her standards, just an old place with wobbly white railings, failing plumbing and wiring, and air-conditioning that seems to have a mean-spirited will of its own. Tiles sometimes fall out of the backsplash behind the electric stove, and yesterday the bathtub’s cold-water handle pulled loose from the wall. For the sake of survival, she has read home-repair books and manages to keep her surroundings from falling on her head as she tries not to remember what days were like before she relocated hundreds of miles south of her former career, and barely an hour’s drive north of Miami, where she was born. The past is dead, and death is just one more phase of existence. This is her creed. Most of the time she believes it.
Time on Earth is an opportunity to become more highly evolved, and then people move on or cross over—a concept that by no means is original to her, but she is not one to accept what isn’t obvious without dissecting it first. After much contemplation, her findings about eternity are simple: No one good or evil ceases to exist; life is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed; it is recycled. Therefore, it is possible that the pure of heart and the purely evil have been here before and will be here again. Scarpetta doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, and she no longer goes to Mass, not even on religious holidays.
“What happened to your Catholic guilt?” Lucy asked her several Christmases ago when they were mixing a strong batch of eggnog and church was not on the agenda.
“I can’t participate in something I no longer believe in,” Scarpetta replied, reaching for freshly ground nutmeg. “Especially if I am at odds with it, which is worse than having a complete loss of faith in it.”
“The question is, what is it? Are you talking about Catholicism or God?”
“Politics and power. They have an unmistakable stench, rather much like the inside of the morgue fridge. I can close my eyes and know what’s there. Nothing alive.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Lucy said. “Maybe I’ll just drink a little straight rum on the rocks. Raw eggs suddenly don’t seem very appealing.”
“You’re not the least bit squeamish.” Scarpetta poured Lucy a glass of eggnog, adding a sprinkle of nutmeg. “Drink up before Marino gets here and there’s none left.”
Lucy smiled. The only thing that makes her gag is walking into a ladies’ room and finding someone in the middle of changing a baby’s diaper. To Lucy, that stench is worse than a decomposing body buzzing with blow flies, and she has experienced her share of offensive horrors because of her and her aunt’s unusual occupations.
“This mean you no longer believe in eternity?” Lucy challenged her.
“I believe in it more than ever.”
Scarpetta has made the dead speak most of her life, but always through the silent language of injuries, trace evidence, diseases and investigative details that can be interpreted with medicine, science, experience and deduction that borders on the intuitive, a gift that cannot be learned or taught. But people change. She is no longer entirely clinical. She has come to accept that the dead continue to exist and intervene in the lives of their earthbound loved ones and enemies. It is a conviction that she conceals from her detractors and certainly never mentions in professional presentations or in journal articles or in court.
“I’ve seen psychics on TV talking about people dying and crossing over—I believe that’s the term,” Lucy observed, sipping her eggnog. “I don’t know. It’s pretty interesting. The older I get, the less certain I am of most things.”
“I’ve noticed your advanced aging process,” Scarpetta replied. “When you turn thirty, you will begin to have visions and see auras. Let’s hope you don’t get arthritis.”
This conversation took place in Scarpetta’s former home in Richmond, a fortress of stone she designed with love and an abandonment of financial reason, sparing no expense in her insistence on old woods, exposed beams, solid doors and plaster walls, and a kitchen and office that were perfect for her precise way of going about her business, whether it was over a microscope or a Viking gas stove.
Life was good. Then it wasn’t and never would be again. So much went wrong. So much was spoiled and lost and could never be restored. Three years ago, she was well along her journey to disaster. She had resigned as president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. The governor of Virginia was about to fire her. One day, she cleared her office walls of scores of commendations, certifications and degrees that are now packed up somewhere in cardboard boxes. The pre-crash Scarpetta was impeccably, if not rigidly, intellectual, completely confident of her knowledge, her truthfulness and her ability to excavate for answers. She was a legend in law enforcement and criminal justice, and to some people unapproachable and cold. Now she has no staff except her secretary, Rose, who followed her to Florida with the excuse that it would be nice to “retire” near West Palm Beach.
Scarpetta can’t get over Benton Wesley. She has tried. Several times she has dated perfectly acceptable men, only to recoil at their touch. A simple touch, and it isn’t Benton’s, and then she is reminded. Then she reviews her last images of him, burned, mutilated. She still regrets reading his autopsy report, and yet she doesn’t. She regrets touching his ashes and scattering them, and yet she doesn’t. It was crucial, it really was, she constantly tells herself when she remembers the feel of the silky, lumpy cremains, when she remembers returning him to the pure air and sea he loved.
She wanders out of the kitchen, clutching the same mug of coffee she has warmed up in the microwave at least four times since noon.
“Dr. Scarpetta, can I get you anything?” Rose calls out from a spare bedroom that serves as her office.
“Nothing would help,” Scarpetta replies, halfway joking, as she heads in the direction of Rose’s voice.
“Nonsense.” It is her secretary’s favorite rebuttal. “I told you if you went to work for yourself, you’d only be busier, if that was possible. And worn-out and overextended.”
“And what did I tell you about retirement?”
Rose looks up from the autopsy report she is proofreading on her computer. She tabs to the space for brain and types 1, 200 grams. Within normal limits and corrects a typo.
Nails click across the wooden floor like Morse code as Scarpetta’s bulldog hears voices and walks rather lazily, then pauses, then walks some more toward them, then sits.
“Come here, Billy-Billy,” Scarpetta affectionately calls out.
He looks at her with drooping eyes.
“His name is Billy,” Rose reminds her, although there is no point in doing so. “If you keep calling him Billy-Billy, he’ll think he lives with an echo or has a split personality.”
“Come here, Billy-Billy.”
He gets up, takes his time. Click-click.
Rose is wearing a peach pantsuit. It is wool, as are all of Rose’s suits. The house is on the beach. It is bloody hot and humid, and Rose doesn’t hesitate to walk outside in a skirt and long-sleeved blouse and water the hibiscus, climb a ladder to pick bananas or key limes, or save baby frogs from drowning in the trap of the pool. It’s a wonder that moths haven’t carried off every bit of clothing Rose owns, but she is a proud woman, her dignity masking a fragile, gentle nature, and it is out of her respect for herself and her boss that she takes time each morning to make sure her choice of outfit for the day is pressed and clean.
If anything, she seems secretly pleased that her sense of style is dated, some of her suits so old that she was wearing them more than a decade ago when she first started working for Scarpetta. Rose hasn’t changed her hair, either, still pinning it up in a fussbudget French twist and refusing to get rid of the gray. Good structure makes the building, and her bones are exquisite. At the age of sixty-seven, men find her attractive, but she hasn’t dated since her husband died. The only man Scarpetta has ever seen her flirt with is Pete Marino, and she doesn’t mean it and he knows it, but they have tormented each other since Scarpetta was appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia, what now se
ems as though it were another incarnation.
Billy is panting as he appears at the desk. He is not quite a year old, white with a large brown spot on the middle of his back, and his underbite reminds Scarpetta of a backhoe. He sits at her feet, looking up.
“I don’t have any . . .”
“Don’t say that word!” Rose exclaims.
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to spell it.”
“He can spell now.”
Billy suffers no language barrier with the words bye-bye and treat. He also recognizes no and sit but pretends he doesn’t, stubbornness the right of his breed.
“You better not have been chewing on anything back there,” Scarpetta warns him.
In the last month, Billy has taken a fancy to gnawing and ripping molding off doorframes and around the base of the walls, especially in Scarpetta’s bedroom.
“This isn’t your house, and I will have to pay for all repairs when I move out.” She wags her finger at him.
“It would be worse if it was your house,” Rose remarks as the dog continues to stare up at Scarpetta and wag his tail, which looks like a croissant.
She picks up a slim stack of mail from her desk and offers it to her boss.
“I’ve dealt with the bills. There are a couple personal letters. And the usual journals and so forth. And this, from Lucy.”
She directs Scarpetta’s attention to a large manila envelope, her name and address neatly written in black Magic Marker, the return address Lucy’s New York office, also written in Magic Marker. The envelope is marked Personal in large letters and underlined twice. It is a die-hard habit for Scarpetta to look at postmarks, and this one is puzzling.
“The postal code isn’t for her part of the city,” Scarpetta says. “Lucy always mails things from her office, and as a matter of fact, she always overnights mail to me. I can’t remember a single time she’s ever sent me anything by regular mail, not since she was in college.”
Rose doesn’t seem concerned. “ ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’ ” she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson. In fact, it is her favorite quote.
Rose shakes the envelope. “Doesn’t sound like anything dangerous in there,” she teases. “If you’re feeling one of your bouts of paranoia coming on, I’ll open it for you, but it’s marked Personal . . .”
“Never mind.” Scarpetta takes it and her other mail from Rose.
“And Dr. Lanier from Baton Rouge left a message.” Rose pecks at the keyboard and corrects another typo. “It’s regarding the Charlotte Dard case. He says you’ll get it Monday, his reports and all that. He sounded stressed. He wants to know what you find, immediately.”
She gives her boss a look that always reminds Scarpetta of a schoolteacher about to single out some unsuspecting student and put him or her on the spot. “I think something’s going on in this case, something worse than a drug overdose.”
Scarpetta massages Billy’s soft, speckled ears. “Her cause of death isn’t straightforward. That’s plenty bad. What’s worse, the case is eight years old.”
“I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal right now, as if they don’t have enough unsolved murders and suspicious deaths down there. Those abducted women. Lord.”
“I don’t know why it’s suddenly become a priority, either,” Scarpetta replies. “But the fact is, it has, and I feel obliged to do what I can.”
“Because nobody else can be bothered.”
“I can be bothered, can’t I, Billy-Billy?”
“Well, let me tell you a thing or two, Dr. Echo. I think there’s something the coroner down there has no intention of telling you.”
“There had better not be,” Scarpetta remarks as she walks off.
LUCY DESPERATELY NEEDS a ladies’ room.
Forget looking for a gas station or a rest stop. She pushes the Mercedes up to 160 kilometers per hour, despite Rudy’s warning about speeding. Focusing on the dark road, she tries hard to concentrate and ignore her bladder. The drive seems to take twice as long as it should, but she makes excellent time and is ahead of schedule by thirty-five minutes. She redials Rudy’s cell phone.
“On final,” she says. “Just got to land this thing somewhere.”
“Shut up,” Rudy orders someone in the room, as the TV plays loudly. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
ROCCO CAGGIANO’S FAVORITE form of relaxation is to sit for hours in beer gardens, drinking one Gross Bier after another.
The pale gold elixirs are served in tall, plain glasses, and he prefers clean-tasting lagers and will not touch wheat beers. Rocco has never understood how he can drink a gallon of beer in one sitting but not a gallon of water. He could not drink a gallon of water during an entire day, probably not even in three days, and he has always puzzled over how much beer, wine, champagne or mixed drinks he can put away when he can scarcely finish a single glass of water.
In fact, he hates water. Perhaps what a psychic once told him is true: He drowned in a former life. What a terrible way to die, and he often thinks of the killer in England who drowned one wife after another in the tub by grabbing her feet and yanking until her head was under water and she could do nothing but helplessly flop her arms like a fish on a dock. The scenario was a constant emotional itch when Caggiano began to hate his first wife, then his second. Alimony was cheaper than the price he would pay if some medical examiner discovered bruises or God knows what. But even if he did drown in a former life and thought drowning someone was a good way to commit murder, this, in his mind, would not explain the enigma—the purely biological phenomenon—of how much alcohol he can consume and why he cannot and will not finish even one glass of water.
No one has ever been able to settle his mind with an answer he accepts. Small conundrums have always worried him like a sandspur stuck to his sock.
“It must be ’cause you pee all the time when you drink beer,” Caggiano introduces the question at virtually every social gathering. “When you pee, you make room for more, right?”
“You drink a gallon of water, you will be pissing all the time, too,” a Dutch customs agent challenged him some months back when he, Rocco and several other friends of the Chandonne cartel were taking time out in a beer garden in Munich.
“I hate water,” Rocco said.
“Then how do you know this about whether you would pee water as fast as beer?” a German container ship’s captain asked.
“He doesn’t know.”
“Yes. You ought to test it out, Rocco.”
“We’ll drink beer, you drink water, and see who pees the most and the fastest.”
The men laughed and clanked glasses in a drunken toast, slopping beer all over the wooden table. It had been a good day. Before they caroused at the beer garden, they had wandered into the nudist park where a naked man on a bicycle pedaled past and the Dutchman yelled at him in Dutch that he’d better be careful which gear he shifted, while the ship’s captain yelled in German that his kickstand was very small. Rocco yelled in English that the man didn’t have to worry about his dick getting caught in the spokes because it didn’t even hang over the seat. The bicyclist pedaled on, ignoring them.
Women sunbathe in the nude in the park and do not seem to care if men stare at them. Rocco and his henchmen would get very brazen and hover right over a woman stretched out on her towel and make comments about her anatomical points of interest. Usually, the woman would turn over on her belly and go back to sleep or continue reading her magazine or book while the men went on to survey her buttocks, as if they were hills they might climb. Rocco’s intense arousal would make him mean, and he would fire vile, lewd aspersions at the woman until his companions had to usher him away. Rocco is especially vicious with the homosexuals minding their own business in the park. He believes all homosexuals should be castrated and executed, and he would like to be the one to do it and watch them pee and defecate out of fright.
“It’s a medical fact that when you’re tortured or about to be snuffed, you p
iss and shit in your pants,” he announced later in the beer garden.
“What medical fact? I thought you were a lawyer, not a doctor.”
“So you know this, Rocco? And how do you know this? You take off their pants to see? Maybe you take their pants off to check for shit and piss?” Loud laughter. “Then you can know it as a fact. If this is true, I must come around to my important question. Do you go around taking the pants off dead bodies? I think all of us have a right to hear this. Because at least for me, if I die, I need to know if you will take my pants off.”
“If you die,” Rocco replied, “you won’t know a fucking thing.”
It is irrational that Rocco should remember this boozy conversation and what his doctor has preached to him for years. Rocco has gastritis and cranky bowel syndrome due to stress, smoking and heavy drinking. All ills in life are blamed on acute stress, smoking and heavy drinking, Rocco always retorts on his way out of the examination room. He files for medical reimbursement and resumes his self-destructive life.
His bowels and bladder let loose as he sits in a chair inside his hotel room, a Colt .380 cocked and pointed at his head.
JACK’S BOAT LANDING IS a clutter of trailers, bateaux, bass and flat-bottom boats, and runabouts tied to pilings along a crisscross of rickety docks strung with old tires that serve as fenders.
Pulled up on the muddy shore are several pirogues—or Cajun canoes—and a rotting bow rider that won’t be pulling water-skiers anymore. The parking lot is dirt, and on the fuel dock are two pumps—one for regular gas, the other for diesel. Jack works from five a.m. until nine p.m. in his one-room office with its mounted fish hanging at random angles on the wall with peeling paint. The calendar above his old metal desk features glossy photos of glitter-painted bass boats—the very expensive kind that can go up to sixty miles an hour.