Cruel & Unusual

  'What you're describing is consistent with her position in the car," I said. "Originally, she had to have been slumped forward in order for the assailant to have shot her in the nape of the neck. But when she was found, she was leaning back in the seat.”

  "Stevens moved her.”

  "When he first approached the car, he wouldn't have immediately known what was wrong with her. Ht couldn't see her face if she were slumped forward against the steering wheel. He leaned her back in the seat.”

  "And then ran like hell.”

  "And if he'd just splashed on some of his cologne before heading out to meet her, then he would have cologne on his hands. When he leaned her back in the seat; his hands would have been in contact with her coat probably in the area of her shoulders. That's what I smelled at the scene.”

  "We'll break him eventually.”

  "There are more important things to do, Benton," I said, and I told him about my visit with Helen Grimes and what she had said about Mrs. Waddell's last visit with her son.

  "My theory," I went on, "is that Ronnie Waddell wanted the picture of Jesus buried with him, and that this may have been his last request. He puts it in an envelope and writes on it 'Urgent, extremely confidential,' and so on.”

  "He couldn't have done this without Donahue's permission," Wesley said. "According to protocol, the inmate's last request must be communicated to the warden.”

  “Right, and no matter what Donahue's been told, he's going to be too paranoid to let Waddell's body be carried off with a sealed envelope in a pocket. So he grants Waddell's request, then devises away to see what's inside the envelope without a hassle or a stink. He decides to switch envelopes after Wadded is dead, and instructs one of his thugs to take care of it. And this is where the receipts come in.”

  "I was hoping you'd get around to that," Wesley said.

  "I think the person made a little mistake Let's say he's got a white envelope on his desk, and inside it are receipts from a recent trip to Petersburg. Let's say he gets a similar white envelope, tucks something innocuous inside it, and then writes the same thing on the front that Waddell had written on the envelope he wanted buried with him.”

  “Only the guard writes this on the wrong envelope.”

  "Yes. He writes it on the one containing the receipts.”

  "And he's going to discover this later when he looks for his receipts and finds the innocuous something inside the envelope instead.

  "Precisely," I said. "And that's where Susan fits in. If I were the guard who made this mistake, I'd be very worried. The burning question for me would be whether one of the medical examiners opened that envelope in the morgue, or if the envelope was left sealed. If I, this guard, also happened to be the contact for Ben Stevens, the person forking over cash in exchange for making sure Waddell's body wasn't printed at the morgue, for example, then I'd know exactly where to turn.”

  "You'd contact Stevens and tell him to find out if the envelope was opened. And if so, whether its contents made anybody suspicious or inclined to go around asking questions: It's called tripping over your paranoia and ending up with many more problems than you would have had if you'd just been cool. But it would seem Stevens could have answered that question easily.”

  "Not so," I said. "He could ask Susan, but she didn't witness the opening of the envelope. Fielding opened it upstairs, photocopied the contents, and sent the original out with Waddell’s other personal effects.”

  "Stevens couldn't have just pulled the case and looked at the photocopy?”

  'Not unless he broke the lock on my credenza," I said.

  "Then, in his mind, the only other alternative was the computer.”

  "Unless he asked Fielding or me. He would know better than that. Neither of us would have divulged a confidential detail like that to him or Susan or anyone else.”

  "Does he know enough about computers to break into your directory?”

  "Not to my knowledge, but Susan had taken several courses and had UNIX books in her office.”

  The telephone rang and I let Lucy answer it. When she came into the kitchen, her eyes were uneasy.

  "It's your lawyer, Aunt Kay.”

  She moved the kitchen phone within reach, and 'I picked it up without moving from my chair. Nicholas Grueman wasted no words on a greeting but went straight to his point.

  "Dr. Scarpetta, on November twelfth you wrote a money market account check to the tune of ten thousand dollars cash. And I find no records in any of your bank statements that might indicate this money was deposited in any of your various accounts.”

  "I didn't deposit the money.”

  "You walked out of the bank with ten thousand dollars.”

  "No, I did not. I wrote the check at Signet Bank, downtown, and with it purchased a cashier's check in British sterling.”

  "To whom was the cashier's check made out?” My former professor asked as Benton Wesley stared tensely at me.

  "Mr. Grueman, the transaction was of a private nature and in no way has any bearing on my profession.”

  "Come now, Dr. Scarpetta. You know that's not good enough.”

  I took a deep breath.

  "Certainly, you know we're going to be asked about this. Certainly, you must realize it doesn't look good that "within weeks of your morgue assistant's depositing an unexplained amount of cash, you wrote a check for a large amount of cash.”

  I shut my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair as Wesley got up from the table and came around behind me.

  "Kay" - I felt Wesley's hands on my shoulders - "for God's sake, you've got to tell him.”

  13

  Had Grueman never been a practitioner of the law, I would not have entrusted my welfare to him. But before teaching he had been a litigator of renown, and he had done civil rights work and prosecuted mobsters for the Justice Department during the Robert Kennedy era. Now he represented clients who had no money and were condemned to die. I appreciated Grueman's seriousness and needed his cynicism.

  He was not interested in trying to negotiate or protest my innocence. He refused to present the slightest shred of evidence to Marino or anyone. He told no one of the ten-thousand-dollar check, which was, he said, the worst piece of evidence against me. I was reminded of what he had taught his students on the first day of criminal law. Just say no. Just say no. Just say no. My former professor, abided by these rules to the letter, and frustrated Roy Patterson's every effort.

  Then on Thursday, January 6, Patterson called me at home and requested that I come downtown to his office to talk.

  "I'm sure we can dear all this up," he said amicably. "I just need to ask you a few questions.”

  The implication was that if I cooperated, then something worse might be derailed, and I marveled that Patterson would consider, for even a moment, that such a shopworn maneuver would work with me. When the Commonwealth's Attorney wants to chat, he's on a fishing expedition that does not involve letting anything go. The same is true of the police. In good Gruemanian fashion, I told Patterson no, and the next morning was subpoenaed to appear before the special grand jury on January 20. This was followed by a subpoena duces tecum for my financial records. First Grueman claimed the Fifth, then filed a motion to quash the subpoena. A week later, we had no choice but to comply unless I wished to be held in contempt of court. About this same time, Governor Norring appointed Fielding acting chief medical examiner of Virginia.

  "There's another TV van I just saw it go by," Lucy said from the dining room, where she stood staring out the window.

  "Come on in and eat lunch," I called out to her from the kitchen. "Your soup is getting cold.”

  Silence.

  "Aunt Kay?”

  She sounded excited.

  "What is it?”

  'You'll never guess who just pulled up."

  From the window over the sink; I watched the white Ford LTD park in front. The driver's door opened, and Marino climbed out. He hitched up his trousers and adjusted his tie, his eyes takin
g in everything around him. As I watched him follow the sidewalk to my porch, I was so powerfully touched that it startled me.

  "I'm not sure if I should be glad to see you or not," I said when I opened the door.

  "Hey, don't worry. I'm not here to arrest you, Doc.’

  "Please come in.”

  "Hi, Pete," Lucy said cheerfully.

  "Aren't you supposed to be in school or something?”

  “No.?”

  “What? Down there in South America they give you January off?”

  "That's right. Because of the bad weather," my niece said. "When it drops below seventy degrees, everything shuts down.”

  Marino smiled. He looked about the worst I had ever seen him.

  Moments later I had built a fire in the living room, and Lucy had left to run errands.

  "How have you been?” I asked.

  "Are you going to make me smoke outside?”

  I slid an ashtray closer to him.

  "Marino, you have suitcases under your eyes, your face is flushed, and it's not warm enough in here for you to be perspiring.”

  "I can tell you've missed me.”

  He pulled a dingy handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow. Then he lit a cigarette and stated into the fire. "Patterson's being an asshole, Doc. He wants to scorch you.”

  "Let him try.”

  "He will, and you'd better be ready.”

  "He has no case against me, Marino.”

  "He has a fingerprint found on an envelope inside Susan's house.”

  “I can explain that:" "But you can't prove it, and then there's his little trump card. And I swear I shouldn't be telling you this, but I'm going to.

  “What trump card?”

  "You remember Tom Lucero?”

  "1 know who he is," I said. "I don't know him.”

  "Well, he can be a charmer and he's a pretty damn good cop, to be honest. Turns out he's been snooping around Signet Bank and talked up one of the tellers until she slipped him information about you. Now, he wasn't supposed to ask and she wasn't supposed to tell. But she told him she remembered you writing a big deck for cash sometime before Thanksgiving. According to her, it was for ten grand.”

  I stared stonily at him.

  "I mean, you can't really blame Lucero. He's just doing his job. But Patterson knows what to look for as he ages through your financial. He's going to hammer you hard when you get before the special grand jury.”

  I did not say a word.

  "Doc.” He leaned forward and met my eyes. "Don't you think you ought to tally about it?”

  "No.”

  Getting up, he went to the fireplace and nudged the curtain open far enough to flick the cigarette inside.

  "Shit, Doc, “ he said quietly. "I don't want you indicted.”

  "I shouldn't drink coffee and I know you shouldn't, but I feel like having something. Do you like hot chocolate?”

  “I'll drink some coffee.”

  I got up to fix it. My thoughts buzzed sluggishly like a housefly in the fall. My rage had nowhere to go. I made a pot of decaf and hoped Marino would not know the difference.

  "How is your blood pressure?” I asked him.

  "You want to know the truth? Some days if I was a kettle I’d be whistling.”

  "I don't know what I'm going to do with you.”

  He perched on the edge of the hearth. The fire sounded like the wind, and reflected flames danced in brass.

  "For one thing," I went on, "you probably shouldn't even be here. I don't want you having any problems.”

  "Hey, fuck the CA, the city, the governor, and all of them, " he said with sudden anger.

  "Marino; we can't give in. Someone knows who this killer is. Have you talked to the officer who showed us around the penitentiary? Officer Roberts?”

  "Yo. The conversation went exactly nowhere.”

  "Well, I didn't fare a whole lot better with your friend Helen Grimes.”

  "That must've been a treat.”

  "Are you aware that she no longer works for the pen?”

  "She never did any work there that I know of. Helen the Hun was lazy as hell unless she was patting down one of the lady guests. Then she got industrious. Donahue liked her, don't ask me why. After he got whacked, she got reassigned to guard tower duty in Greensville and suddenly developed a knee problem or something.

  “I have a feeling she knows a lot more than she let m" I said "Especially if she and Donahue were friendly with each other.”

  Marino sipped his coffee and looked out the sliding glass doors. The ground was frosted white, and snowflakes seemed to be falling faster. I thought of the snowy night I was summoned to Jennifer Deighton's house, and images flashed in my mind of an overweight woman in curlers sitting in a chair in tie middle of her living room. If the killer had interrogated her, he had done so for a reason. What was it he had been sent to find?

  “Do you think the killer was after letters when' he appeared at Jennifer Deighton's house?” I asked Marino.

  "I think he was after something that had to do with Waddell. Letters, poems. Things he may have mailed to her over the years.”

  "Do you think this person found what he was looking for?”

  "Let's just put it this way, he may have looked around, but he was so tidy we couldn't tell.”

  "Well, I don't think he found a thing," T said.

  Marino looked skeptically at me as he lit another cigarette. "Based on what?”

  "Based on the scene. She was in her nightgown and curlers. It appears she had been reading in bed. That doesn't sound like someone who is expecting company," "I'll go along with that.”

  "Then someone appears at her door and she must have let him in, because there was no sign of forcible entry and no sign of a struggle. I think what may have happened next is this person demanded that she turn over to him whatever it was he was looking for, and she wouldn't. He gets angry, gets a chair from the dining room, and sets it in the middle of her living room. He sits her in it and basically tortures her. He asks questions, and when she doesn't tell him what he wants to hear he tightens the choke hold. This goes on until it goes too far. He carries her out and puts her in her car.”

  "If he was going in and out of the kitchen, that might explain why that door was unlocked when we arrived," Marino considered.

  "It might. In summary, I don't think he intended for her to die when she did, and after he tried to disguise her death. He probably didn't hang around very long. Maybe he got scared, or maybe he simply lost interest in his assignment. I doubt he rummaged through her house at all, and I also doubt that he would have found anything if he had.”

  "We sure as hell didn't," Marino said.

  "Jennifer Deighton was paranoid," I said. "She indicated to Grueman in the fax she sent him that there was something wrong about what was being done to Waddell. Apparently, she'd seen me on the news and had even tried to contact me, but continued to hang up when she got my machine.”

  "Are you thinking she might have had papers or something that would tell us what the hell this is all about?”

  "If she had," I said, "then she was probably sufficiently frightened to get them out of her house.”

  "And stash them where?”

  "I don't, know, but maybe her ex-husband would. Didn't she visit him for two weeks the end of November?”

  “Yeah.” Marino looked interested. "As n matter of fact, she did.”

  'Willie Travers had an energetic, pleasant voice over the phone when I finally reached him at the Pink Shell resort in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. But he was vague and noncommittal when I began to ask questions.

  "Mr. Travers, what can I do to make you trust me?” I finally asked in despair.

  "Come down here.”

  "That's going to be very difficult at moment."

  "I'd have to see you.”

  "Excuse me?’

  "That's the way I am. If I can see you, I can read you and know if you're okay. Jenny was the same way.”


  "So if I come down to Fort Myers Beach and let you read me, you will help me?”

  "Depends on what I pick up.”

  I made airline reservations for six-fifty the following morning. Lucy and I would fly to Miami. I would leave her with Dorothy and drive to Fort Myers Beach, where there was a very good chance I would spend a night wondering if I'd lost my mind. Chances were overwhelming that Jennifer Deighton's holistic health nut of an ex would turn out to be a great big waste of time.