Cruel & Unusual

  "Yes.”

  "Are you a saint, Dr. Scarpetta?”

  "'No.”

  "Then. please explain Your motivation.”

  "Charles Hale tried to help Mark.”

  "Tried to help him?” Patterson was pacing. "Tried to help him buy a ticket or catch a train or find the men's room? Just what is it that you mean?”

  "Mark was conscious briefly, and Charles Hale was seriously injured on the ground next to him. He tried to move rubble off Mark. He talked to him, took off his jacket, and wrapped it around . . . He, uh, tried to stop the hemorrhaging. He did everything he could. There was nothing that would have saved him, but he wasn't alone. I am so grateful for that. Now there will be a new life in the world, and I am thankful I could do something in return. It helps. There is at least some meaning. No. I'm not a saint. The need was mine, too. When I helped the Hales, I was helping me.”

  The room was so quiet it was as if it were empty.

  The woman wearing red lipstick leaned forward a little to get Patterson's attention.

  "I expect Charlie Hale is way over there in England. But I wonder if we could subpoena Benton Wesley?”

  "It's not necessary to subpoena either one of them," I answered. "Both of them are here.”

  When the foreman informed Patterson that the special grand jury had refused to indict, I was not there to see it. Nor was I present when Grueman was told. As soon as I had finished testifying, I had begun frantically looking for Marino.

  "I saw him come out of the men's room maybe a half hour ago," said a uniformed officer I found smoking a by a water fountain. "Can you try him on your radio?” I asked.

  Shrugging, he unfastened his radio from his belt and asked the dispatcher to raise Marino. Marino did not respond. I took the stairs and broke into a trot when I got outside. When I was in my car, I locked the doors and started the engine. I grabbed the phone and tried headquarters, which was directly across the street from the courthouse. While a detective in the squad room told me that Marino wasn't in, I drove through the lot in back looking for his white Ford LTD. It. wasn't there. Then I pulled into an empty reserved place and called Neils Vander.

  "You remember the burglary on Franklin - the prints you recently ran that matched up with Waddell?”

  "The burglary in which the eiderdown vest was-.”

  "That's the one.”

  “I remember it.”

  "Was the complainant's ten print card turned in for exclusionary purposes?”

  “No, I didn't have that. Just the latents recovered from the scene.”

  "Thank you, Neils.”

  “Next I called the dispatch.

  “Can you tell me if Lieutenant Marino is marked on?”

  I asked.

  She came back to me, "He is marked on.”

  “Listen, please see if you can, raise him and find out where he is. Tell him this is Dr. Scarpetta and it's urgent.”

  Maybe a minute later the dispatcher's voice came over the line. "He's at the city pumps.”

  "Tell him I'm two minutes from there and on my way.” The gas pumps used by the city police were located on a bleak patch of asphalt surrounded by a chain-link fence. Filling up was strictly self-service. There was no attendant, no rest room or vending machines, and the only way you were going to clean your windshield was if you brought your own paper towels and Windex. Marino was tucking his gas card in the side pouch where he always kept it when I pulled up next to him. He got out and came around to my window.

  "I just heard the news on the radio.” He couldn't contain his smile. "Where's Grueman? I want to shaker his hand.”

  “I left him at the courthouse with Wesley. What happened?” I suddenly felt light-headed.

  "You don't know?” he asked, incredulous. "Shit, Doc. They cut you loose, that's what happened. I can think of maybe two times in my career that a special grand jury hasn't returned with a true bill.”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head. "I guess I should be dancing a jig. But I don't feel like it.”

  "I probably wouldn't, either.”

  “Marino, what was the name of that man who claimed his eiderdown vest was stolen?”

  “Sullivan. Hilton Sullivan. Why?”

  "During my testimony, Patterson made the outrageous accusation that I might have used a revolver from the firearms lab to shoot Susan. In other words, there is always a risk involved if you use your own weapon because if it's checked and it's proven that it fired the then you've got a lot of explaining to do.”

  "What's this got to do with Sullivan?”

  "When did he move into his condo?”

  "I don't know.”

  "If I were going to kill someone with my Ruger, it would be pretty clever of me to report it stolen to the police before I commit any crimes. Then if for some reason the gun is ever recovered - for example if the heat is on and I decide to toss it - the cops might trace the serial number back to me, but I can prove through the burglary report I filed that the gun was not in my possession at the time of the crime.”

  "Are you suggesting Sullivan falsified a report? That he staged the burglary?”

  "I'm suggesting you consider that," I said. "It's convenient that he has no burglar alarm and left a window unlocked. It’s convenient that he was obnoxious with the cops. I'm sure they were delighted to see him leave and weren't about to go the extra mile and get his fingerprints for exclusionary purposes. Especially since he was dressed in white and bitching about the dusting powder everywhere: My point is, how do you know that the prints in Sullivan's condo weren't left by Sullivan? He lives there. His prints would be all over the place.”

  "In AFIS they matched up with Waddell.”

  "If that's the case, then why would Sullivan call the police in response to that story about eiderdown we planted in the paper?”

  "As Benton said, this guy loves to play games. He loves to jerk people around. He skates on the edge for kicks.”

  "Shit. Let me use your phone.”

  He came around to the passenger's side and got in. Dialing Directory Assistance, he got the number of the building where Sullivan lived. When the superintendent was on the line, Marino asked him how long ago Hilton Sullivan had purchased his condominium. .

  "Well, then, who does?” Marino asked. He scribbled something on a notepad. "What's the number and what street does it face? Okay.. What about, his car? Yeah, if you've got it.”

  When Marino hung up, he looked at me. "Christ, the squirrel doesn't own the condo at all. It's owned by some businessman who rents it, and Sullivan started renting it the friggin' first week in December. He paid the deposit on the sixth, to be exact.”

  He opened the car door, adding, "And he drives a dark blue Chewy van. An old one with no windows.”

  Marino followed me back to headquarters and we left my car in his parking place. We shot across Broad Street, heading toward Franklin.

  "Let's hope the manager hasn't alerted him.” Marino raised his voice above the roar of the engine.

  He slowed down and parked in front of an eight-story brick building.

  "His condo's in back," he explained, looking around. "So he shouldn't be able to see us.”

  He reached under the seat and got out his nine-millimeter to back up the 357 in the holster under his left arm. Tucking the pistol in the back of his trousers and an extra clip in his pocket, he opened his door.

  "If you're expecting a war, I'll be glad to stay In the car," I said.

  "If a war starts, I'll toss you my three-fifty and a couple speed loaders, and you damn better be as good a shot as Patterson's been saying you are. Stay behind me at all times.”

  At the top of the steps, he rang the bell. "He's probably not going to be here.”

  Momentarily, the lock clicked free and the door opened. An elderly man with bushy gray eyebrows identified himself as the building superintendent Marino hail spoken to earlier do the phone.

  "Do you know if he's in?” Marino asked: "I have no idea.”


  "We're going to go up and check.”

  "You Won't be going up because hers on this floor.”

  The superintendent pointed east. “Just follow that corridor and take the first left. It's a corner apartment at the very end. Number seventeen.”

  The building possessed a debut tined luxuriousness, reminiscent of old hotels that no one particularly wards to stay in anymore because the rooms are too small and the decor is too dark and a little frayed. I noted cigarette burns in the deep red carpet, and the stain on the paneling was almost black. Hilton Sullivan's corner apartment was announced by a small brass 17. There was no peephole, and when Marino knocked, we heard footsteps.

  "Who is it?” a voice asked.

  "'Maintenance," Marino said. “To change the filter in your heater.”

  The door opened, and the instant I saw the piercing blue eyes in the space and they saw me, my breath caught. Hilton Sullivan tried to slam shut the door, but Marino's foot was wedged against the jamb.

  "Get to the side!”

  Marino shouted at me as he snatched out his revolver and leaned as far away from the door's opening as he could.

  I darted up the corridor as he suddenly kicked the door open wide and it slammed against the wall inside. Revolver ready, he went in, anti I waited in dread for a scuffle or gunfire. Minutes went by. Then l heard Marino saying something on his portable radio. He reappeared, sweating, his face an angry red.

  "I don't fucking believe it He went out the window like a damn jackrabbit and there's not a sign of him. Goddamn son of a bitch. His van's sitting right-out there in the lot in back. He's off on foot somewhere. I've sent out an alert to units in the area.”

  He wiped his face on his sleeve and struggled to catch his broth.

  "I thought he was a woman," I said numbly.

  "Huh?” Marino stared at me.

  "When I went to see Helen Grimes, he was inside her house. He looked out the door once while we were talking on the porch. I thought it was a woman.”

  "Sullivan was at Helen the Hun's house?” Marino said loudly.

  "I'm sure of it.”

  "Jesus Christ. That don't make a damn bit of sense.”

  But it did make sense when we began looking around Sullivan's apartment. It was elegantly furnished with antiques and fine rugs, which Marino said belonged to the owner, not to Sullivan, according to the superintendent. Jazz drifted from the bedroom, where we found Hilton Sullivan's blue down jacket on the bed next to a beige corduroy shirt and a pair of faded jeans, neatly folded. His running shoes and socks were on the rug. On the mahogany dresser were a green cap and a pair of sunglasses: and a loosely folded blue uniform shirt that still had Helen Grimes's nameplate pinned above the breast pocket. Beneath it was a large envelope of photographs that Marino went through while I silently looked on.

  "Holy shit," Marino muttered every other minute.

  In more than a dozen of them, Hilton Sullivan was nude and in poses of bondage, and Helen Grimes was his sadistic guard. One favorite scenario seemed to be Sullivan sitting in a chair while she played the role of interrogator, yoking him from behind or inflicting other punishments. He was an exquisitely pretty blond young maid, with a lean body that I suspected was surprisingly strong. Certainly, he was agile. We found a photograph of Robyn Naismith's bloody body propped against the television in her living nom, and another one of her on a steel table in the morgue. But what unnerved me more than any of this was Sullivan's face. It was absolutely devoid of expression, his eyes cold the way I imagined they would be when he killed.

  "Maybe we know why Donahue liked him so much„" Marino said, sliding the photographs back inside their envelope. "Someone was taking these pictures. Donahue's wife told me the warden's hobby was photography.”

  "Helen Grimes must know who Hilton Sullivan really is," I said as sirens wailed.

  Marino peered out the window. "Good. Lucero's here.”

  I examined the down vest on the bed and discovered a downy white feather protruding from a minute tear in a seam.

  More engines sounded. Car doors slammed shut.

  "We're out of here," Marino said when Lucero arrived. "Make sure you impound his blue van.”

  He turned to me. "Doc? You remember how to get to Helen Grimes's crib?”

  "Yes.”

  “Lets go talk at her.”

  Helen Grimes did not have much to say.

  When we got to her house some forty-five minutes later, we found the front door unlocked and went inside. The heat was turned up as high as it would go, and I could have been anywhere in the world and recognized the smell.

  "Holy God," Marino said when he walked into the bedroom.

  Her headless body was in uniform and sitting in a chair against the wall. It wasn't until three days later that the farmer across the road found the rest of her. He didn't know why anyone would have left a bowling bag in one of his fields. But he wished he had never opened it.

  EPILOGUE

  The yard behind my mother's Miami house was half in the shade and half in the gentle sun, and hibiscus grew in a riot of red on either side of the back screen door. Her Key Lime tree by the fence was heavy with fruit when virtually all others in the neighborhood were barren or dead. It was a fact I failed to understand, for I had not known it was possible to criticize plants into good health. I thought you had to talk nicely to them.

  "Katie" my mother called from the kitchen window. I heard water drumming into the sink. There was no point in answering.

  Lucy knocked out my queen with a castle. "You know," I said, "I really hate playing chess with you.”

  "Then why do you keep asking me?”

  "Me asking you? You force me, and one game is never enough.”

  "That's because I keep giving you another chance. But you blow it every time.”

  We were sitting across from each other at the patio table. The ice in our lemonades had melted and I felt a little sunburned.

  "Katie? Will you and Lucy go out after a while and get the wine?” my mother said from the window.

  I could see the shape of her head and the round outline of her face. Cupboard doors opened and shut; then the telephone sounded its high-pitched ring. It was for me, and my mother simply handed the cordless phone out the door.

  "It's Benton," the familiar voice said. "I see from the papers that the weather's great down there. It's raining here and a lovely forty-five degrees.”

  "Don't make me homesick.”

  "Kay, we think we've got an ID. And by the way, someone went to a lot of trouble. Fake identifications - good ones. He was able to walk into a gun store, and rent a condo, with no questions asked.”

  "Where'd he get his money?”

  “Family. He's probably had some stashed. Anyway, after going through prison records and talking to a lot of people, it seems that Hilton Sullivan is an alias for a thirty-one-year-old male named Temple Brooks Gault from Albany, Georgia. His father owns a pecan plantation and there's a lot of money. Gault's typical in some ways - preoccupied with guns, knives, martial arts, violent pornography. He's antisocial, et cetera.”

  "In what-ways is he atypical?” I asked.

  "His pattern would indicate that he's completely unpredictable. He doesn't really fit any profile, Kay. This guy's off the charts. If something strikes his fancy, he just does it. He's consummately narcissistic and vain his hair, for example. He highlights it himself. We found the bleach, rinses, and so on in his apartment. Some of his inconsistencies are, well, weird.”

  “Such as?”

  "He was driving this beat up old van that was once owned by a housepainter. Doesn't appear Gault ever washed it or bothered to clean it out, not even after. he murdered Eddie Heath inside the thing. We've got some pretty promising trace, by the way, and blood that's consistent with Eddie's type. That's disorganized. Yet Gault also apparently eradicated bite marks and had his fingerprints changed. That's as organized as hell"

  “Benton, what is his history? "A manslaughter con
viction. Two and a half yes ago he got angry with a man in, a bar and kicked him in the head. This was in Abingdon, Virginia. Gault, by the way, has a black belt in karate.”

  "Any new developments on locating him?” I watched Lucy set up the chessboard.

  "None. But for all of us involved in the cases, I’ll say what I've said before. This guy's absolutely without fear. He's very much guided by impulse and is, therefore, troublesome to second-guess.”