THE GUEST ROOM IN ANNA'S HOUSE FACES THE river, and over passing days I have fashioned a makeshift desk before the window. This required a small table, which I covered with a cloth so I would not scratch the satin finish, and from the library I purloined an apple-green English leather swivel chair. At first, I was dismayed that I had forgotten my laptop computer, but I discovered an unexpected solace in putting fountain pen to paper and letting thoughts flow through my fingers and shimmer in black ink. My penmanship is awful, and the notion that it has something to do with being a doctor is probably true. There are days when I must sign my name or initials five hundred times, and I suppose scribbling gross descriptions and measurements with bloody gloved hands has taken its toll, too.
I have developed a ritual at Anna's house. Each morning I slip into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee that was timed to begin dripping at exactly half past five. I return to my room, shut the door and sit at the window writing before a glass square of utter darkness. My first morning here, I was outlining classes I am scheduled to teach at the Institute's next death investigation school. But transportation fatalities, asphyxia and forensic radiology completely left my mind as life on the river was touched by first light.
This morning I have faithfully watched the show once again. At half past six, the darkness lightened to a charcoal gray, and within minutes I could make out the silhouettes of bare sycamores and oaks, then dark plains turned into water and land. Most mornings the river is warmer than the air, and fog rolls over the surface of the James. Right now it looks like the River Styx and I halfway expect a ghostly, gaunt man in rags to pole by in his boat through veils of mist. I don't expect to see animals until closer to eight, and they have become a huge comfort to me. I have fallen in love with the Canada geese that congregate by Anna's dock in a chorus of honking. Squirrels run errands up and down trees, tails curled like plumes of smoke. Birds hover at my window and look me straight in the eye as if to see what I am spying on. Deer run through bare winter woods on the opposite river bank and red-tailed hawks swoop.
At rare, privileged moments I am graced by bald eagles. Their enormous wingspans, white helmets and pantaloons make them unmistakable, and I am comforted because eagles fly higher and alone and don't seem to have the same agendas other birds do. I watch them circle or perch briefly in a tree, never staying in one spot long before suddenly they are gone, leaving me to wonder, like Emerson, if I have just been sent a sign. I have found nature to be kind. The rest of what I live with these days is not.
It is Monday, January 17th, and I remain in exile at Anna's house, or at least this is how I view it. Time has passed slowly, almost stagnantly, like the water beyond my window. The currents of my life are moving in a certain, barely perceptible direction, and there is no possibility of rerouting their inevitable progress. The holidays have come and gone, and my cast has been replaced by Ace bandages and a splint. I am driving a rental car because my Mercedes is being held for further investigation, at Hull Street and Commerce Road, at the impound lot, which is not attended by police twenty-four hours a day and there is no guard dog. On New Year's Eve, someone smashed a window out of my car and stole the two-way radio, the AM-FM radio and CD player and God knows what else. So much for the chain of evidence, I told Marino.
There are new developments in the Chandonne case. As I suspected, when the seminal fluid in Susan Pless's case was originally tested in 1997, only four probes were used. The New York medical examiner's office still uses four probes for the first screening because they are developed in-house and therefore it is more economical to resort to them first. The frozen extraction was retested using fifteen loci, and the result is a non-match. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne was not the donor of the seminal fluid, nor was his brother, Thomas. But there are so many alleles in common, the DNA profiles are so incredibly close, that we can only assume there is a third brother, and it is this brother who had sex with Susan. We are baffled. Berger is on her head. "DNA has told the truth and fucked us," Berger told me over the phone. Chandonne's dentition matches the bite marks and his saliva and hair were on the bloody body, but he did not have vaginal sex with Susan Pless right before she died. That may not be enough for a jury in this day of DNA. A New York grand jury will have to decide if it is enough for an indictment, and it struck me as incredibly ironic when Berger said this. It doesn't seem to require much to accuse me of murder, nothing more than rumor and alleged intent and the fact that I conducted experiments with a chipping hammer and barbecue sauce.
For weeks, I have waited for the subpoena. Yesterday it arrived, and the sheriff's deputy was his usual cheerful self when he showed up at my office, not realizing, I suppose, that the case this time involves me as a defendant and not an expert witness. I have been asked to appear in room 302 of the John Marshall Courts Building to testify before the special grand jury. The hearing is set for Tuesday, February 1, at 2 P.M.
At a few minutes past seven, I stand inside the closet, pushing through suits and blouses as I run through all I need to do this day. I already know from Jack Fielding that we have six cases and two of the doctors are in court. I also have a ten o'clock telephone conference with Governor Mitchell. I pick out a black pants suit with blue pinstripes and a blue blouse with French cuffs. I wander into the kitchen for another cup of coffee and a bowl of high-protein cereal that Lucy brought over. I have to smile as I practically break my teeth on her healthy, crunchy gift. My niece is determined that I will emerge from my smoldering life a fit phoenix. I rinse dishes and finish getting dressed and am heading out the door when my pager vibrates. Marino's number shows up on the video display and is followed by 911.
Parked in Anna's driveway is the latest change in my life_ the rental car. It is a midnight blue Ford Explorer that smells like ancient cigarettes and will always smell like ancient cigarettes unless I do what Marino suggested and stick an air freshener on the dash. I plug my cell phone into the cigarette lighter and call him.
"Where are you?" he asks right off.
"Heading out the driveway." I turn on the heater and Anna's gates open to let me out. I don't even stop to pick up the newspaper, which Marino next tells me I need to see, because clearly I haven't read it yet or I would have called him right away.
"Too late," I tell him. "I'm already on Cherokee." I harden myself like a little kid flexing his stomach muscles when he dares someone to sock him in the gut. "So go on and tell me. What's in the paper?" I am expecting that the special grand jury investigation has been leaked to the press, and I am right. I drive along Cherokee as recent winter weather continues to dissolve in drips and puddles, and slushy snow sluggishly slides off roofs.
"Chief Medical Examiner Suspected in Grisly Slaying," Marino reads the banner headline on the front page. "It's got a picture of you, too," he adds. "Looks like one maybe that bitch took out in front of your house. The lady that fell on the ice, remember? It shows you climbing in my truck. Pretty good of my truck. Not so hot of you…"
"Just tell me what it says," I interrupt him.
He reads the highlights as I hug the hard curves of Cherokee Road. A Richmond special grand jury is investigating me in the murder of Deputy Police Chief Diane Bray, the newspaper says. The revelation is described as shocking and bizarre and has local law enforcement reeling. Although Common- wealth's Attorney Buford Righter refused comment, unnamed sources say Righter instigated the investigation with great heartache after witnesses came forth with statements and police produced evidence that was impossible to ignore. Additional unnamed sources claim I was in a heated clash with Bray, who believed I was incompetent and no longer fit to be chief medical examiner of Virginia. Bray was trying to have me removed from office and told people before her murder that I had confronted her on several occasions and had bullied and threatened her. Sources say there are indicators pointing to the possibility that I staged Bray's murder to look like the brutal murder of Kim Luong and on and on and on.
By now I am on Huguenot Road in the thick of rush-hour traffic. I tell Marino to stop. I have heard quite enough.
"It goes on forever," he says.
"I'm sure it does."
"They must have been working on it all during the holidays 'cause it's got all kinds of shit about you and your background." I hear pages turning. "Even stuff about Benton and his death, and Lucy. There's this big sidebar with all your vital statistics, where you went to school. Cornell, Georgetown, Hopkins. The pictures on the inside are good. Even one of you and me together at a crime scene. Oh shit, it's Bray's crime scene."
"What about Lucy?" I ask.
But Marino is bewitched by publicity, by what must be huge photographs that include him and me working together. "I ain't never seen anything like this." More pages turning. "It just goes on and on, Doc. So far I've counted five bylines. They must've had the entire fucking news staff working this thing without our having a clue. Including an aerial shot of your house…"
"What about Lucy?" I ask with more force. "What does it say about Lucy?"
"Well, I'll be damned, there's even a photo of you and Bray out in the parking lot at Luong's scene, at the convenience store. Both of you look like you hate each other's guts…"
"Marino!" I raise my voice. It is all I can do to concentrate on my driving. "Okay, enough!"
A pause, then, "I'm sorry, Doc. Jesus, I know it's awful, but I didn't get a chance to look at much beyond the front page before I got hold of you. I had no idea. I'm sorry. I just never seen nothing like this unless somebody really famous suddenly dies."
Tears smart. I don't point out the irony of what he just said. I feel as if I have died.
"Let me look at this Lucy stuff," Marino is saying. "Pretty much what you'd expect. She's your niece but you've always been more like her mother, uh, graduated all-that-laude-shit from UVA, her DUI car wreck, fact she's gay, flies a helicopter, FBI, ATF, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that she almost shot Chandonne in your front yard. I guess that's the fucking point." Marino returns to his irritated self. As much as he picks on Lucy, he doesn't like it one bit if anybody else does. "Don't say she's on admin leave or that you're hiding out at Anna's house. Least there's something those assholes haven't dug up."
I inch closer to West Gary Street. "Where are you?" I ask him.
"HQ. About to head your way," he replies. "Because you're gonna have quite a welcome party." He means the press. "Thought you might like a little company. Plus, I got some stuff to go over with you. Also thought we might try a little trick, Doc. I'll get to your office first and ditch my car. You pull in front on Jackson Street instead of going around to the back lot off Fourth, hop out and go in and I'll park your car. Word from the troops_there's about thirty reporters, photographers, TV guys camping out at your parking place, waiting for you to show up."
I start to agree with him and then have second thoughts. No, I say. I am not about to start the charade of hiding, ducking and holding up files or my coat to hide my face from cameras as if I am a crime boss. Absolutely not. I tell Marino I will see him at my office, but I will park as usual and deal with the media. For one thing, my stubbornness has kicked in. For another, I don't see what I have to lose by going about my business as usual and simply telling the truth, and the damn truth is I didn't kill Diane Bray. I never even thought about it, although I certainly disliked her more than anyone else I have ever met in my life.
On 9th Street I stop at a red light and put on my suit jacket. I check myself in the rearview mirror to make sure I look reasonably glued together. I put on a dab of lipstick and comb my fingers through my hair. I turn on the radio, bracing myself for the first news spot. I anticipate that local stations will interrupt their programs frequently to remind everybody that I am the first scandal of the new millennium.
"… So, I gotta say this, Jim. I mean, talk about someone who could get away with the perfect murder…"
"No kidding. You know, I interviewed her once…"
I switch to a different station and then another one as I am mocked and degraded or simply reported on because someone has leaked to the media what is supposed to be the most secret and sacred of all legal proceedings. I wonder who violated his code of silence, and what is even sadder, several names come to mind. I don't trust Righter. I don't trust anyone he has contacted for telephone or bank records. But I have another suspect in mind_Jay Talley_and I am betting that he has been subpoenaed, too. I compose myself as I pull into my parking lot and see the television and radio vans lining 4th Street and the dozens of people waiting for me with cameras, microphones and notepads.
NOT ONE OF THE REPORTERS NOTICES MY DARK BLUE
Explorer because they aren't expecting it, and this is when I realize I have made a serious tactical error. I have been driving a rental car for days and it didn't occur to me until this moment that I might be asked why. I turn into my reserved space by the front door and am sighted. The pack moves toward me like hunters after big game, and I will myself to go into my role. I am the chief. I am reserved, poised and unafraid. I have done nothing wrong. I climb out and take my time gathering my briefcase and a stack of folders out of the backseat. My elbow aches beneath layers of elasticized wrappings, and cameras click and microphones point at me like guns cocking and finding their mark.
"Dr. Scarpetta? Can you comment about…?"
"Dr. Scarpetta…?"
"When did you find out a special grand jury is investigating you?"
"Isn't it true you and Diane Bray were at odds…?"
"Where's your car?"
"Can you confirm that you've basically been run out of your home and don't even have your own car right now?"
"Will you resign?"
I face them on the sidewalk. I am silent but steady as I wait for them to get quiet. When they realize I intend to address their questions I catch surprised looks and their aggression quickly settles down. I recognize many faces but can't remember names. I am not sure I have ever known the names of the media's real troops who gather the news behind the scenes. I remind myself they are simply doing their jobs and there is no reason for me to take any of this personally. That's right, nothing personal. Rude, inhumane, inappropriate, insensitive and largely inaccurate, but not personal. "I've no prepared statement," I start to say.
"Where were you the night Diane Bray was murdered…?"
"Please," I interrupt them. "Like you, I've recently learned there is a special grand jury investigation into her murder, and I ask you to honor the very necessary confidentiality of such a proceeding. Please understand why I'm not at liberty to discuss it with you."
"But did you…?"
"Isn't it true you aren't driving your own car because the police have it?"
Questions and accusations rip the morning air like shrapnel as I walk toward my building. 1 have nothing more to say. I am the chief. I am poised and calm and unafraid. I did nothing wrong. There is one reporter whom I do remember, because how could I forget a tall, white-haired, chisel-featured African American whose name is Washington George? He wears a long leather trench coat and presses behind me as I struggle to open the glass door leading inside the building.
"Can I just ask you one thing?" he says. "You remember me? That's not my question." A smile. "I'm Washington George. I work for the AP."
"I remember you."
"Here, let me help you with that." He holds the door and we go inside the lobby, where the security guard looks at me, and I know that look now. My notoriety is reflected in people's eyes. My heart sinks. "Good morning, Jeff," I say as I walk past the console.
A nod.
I pass my plastic ID over the electronic eye and the door leading into my side of the building unlocks. Washington George is still with me, and he is saying something about information he has that he thinks I need to know, but I am not listening. A woman sits in my reception area. She huddles in a chair and seems sad and small amid polished granite and glass blocks. This is not a good place to be. I always ache for anyone who finds himself in my reception area. "Is someone helping you?" I ask her.
She is dressed in a black skirt and nurses' shoes, a dark raincoat pulled tightly around her. She hugs her pocketbook as if someone might steal it. "I'm just waiting," she says in a hushed voice.
"Who are you here to see?"
"Well, I don't rightly know," she stammers, her eyes swimming in tears. Sobs well up inside her and her nose begins to run. "It's about my boy. Do you think I might see him? I don't understand what y'all are doing to him in there." Her chin trembles and she wipes her nose on the back of her hand. "I just need to see him."
Fielding left me a message about today's cases, and I know that one of them is a teenage boy who supposedly hanged himself. What was the name? White? I ask her and she nods. Benny, she gives me his first name. I presume she is Mrs. White and she nods again and explains that she and her son changed their last name to White after she got remarried a few years back. I tell her to come on with me_and now she is crying hard_and we will find out what is going on with Benny. Whatever Washington George has to tell me will have to wait.
"I don't think you're going to want it to wait," he replies.
"All right, all right. Come on in with me and I'll get to you as soon as I can." I am saying this as I let us into my office with another pass of my ID key. Cleta is entering cases into our computer, and she instantly blushes when she sees me.
"Good morning," she tries to be her usual cheerful self. But she has that look in her eye, the look I've grown to hate and fear. I can only imagine what my staff has been saying among themselves this morning, and it doesn't escape my attention that the newspaper is folded on top of Cleta's desk and she has tried to cover it with her sweater. Cleta has put on weight over the holidays and has dark circles under her eyes. I am making everybody miserable.
"Who's taking care of Benny White?" I ask her.
"I think Dr. Fielding is." She looks at Mrs. White and gets up from her workstation. "Can I take your coat? What about some coffee?"
I tell Cleta to take Mrs. White to my conference room and Washington George can wait in the medical library. I find my secretary, Rose. I am so relieved to see her that I forget about my troubles, nor does she reflect them to me by giving me a look_that secretive, curious, embarrassed look. Rose is just Rose. If anything, disaster irons more starch in her than usual. She meets my eyes and shakes her head. "I'm so disgusted I could spit nails," she says when I show up in her doorway. "The most ridiculous hogwash I've ever heard of my entire life." She picks up her copy of the paper and shakes it at me as if I am a bad dog. "Don't you let this bother you, Dr. Scar-petta." As if it is that simple. "More chicken crap than Kentucky Fried, that damn Buford Righter. He can't come out and just tell you to your face, can he? So you have to find out this way?" Shaking the paper again.
"Rose, is Jack in the morgue?" I ask.
"Oh God, working on that poor kid." Rose gets off the subject of me, and her indignation turns to pity. "Lord, Lord. Have you seen him?"
"I just got here…"
"Looks like a little choir boy. Just the most beautiful blue-eyed blond. Lord, Lord. If that was my child…"
I interrupt Rose by putting a finger to my lips as I hear Cleta coming up the hallway with the boy's poor mother. I mouth his mother to Rose and she gets quiet. Her eyes linger on mine. She is fidgety and high-strung this morning, and dressed severely in black, her hair pulled back and pinned up, reminding me of Grant Wood's American Gothic. "I'm okay," I tell her quietly.
"Well, I don't believe that." Her eyes get dewy and she nervously busies herself with paperwork.
Jean-Baptiste Chandonne has decimated my entire staff. Everyone who knows and depends on me is dismayed, bewildered. They don't completely trust me anymore and secretly anguish over what will happen to their lives and jobs. I am reminded of my worst moment in school when I was twelve_ like Lucy, precocious, the youngest in my class. My father died that school year on December 23, and the only thing good I can find in his waiting until two days before Christmas is at least the neighbors were winding down from work, most of them home and cooking and baking. In the good Italian-Catholic tradition, my father's life was celebrated with abundance. For several days, our house was filled with laughter, tears, food, drink and song.
When I returned to school after the New Year, I became even more relentless in my cerebral conquests and explorations. Making perfect scores on tests was no longer enough. I was desperate for attention, desperate to please, and begged the nuns for special projects, any project, I didn't care what. Eventually, I was hanging around the parochial school all afternoon, beating chalkboard erasers on the school steps, helping the teachers grade tests, putting together bulletin boards. I got very good with scissors and staplers. When there was a need to cut out letters of the alphabet or numbers and exactly assemble them into words, sentences, calendars, the nuns came looking for me.
Martha was a girl in my math class who sat in front of me and never spoke. She glanced back at me a lot, cold but curi-ous, always trying to catch a peek at the grades circled in red on top of my folded homework and tests, hopeful she had scored better than I had. One day, after an especially difficult algebra test, I noticed that Sister Teresa's demeanor toward me decidedly chilled. She waited until I was cleaning erasers again, squatting outside on stucco steps, pounding, creating clouds of chalk dust in the winter tropical sun, and I looked up. There she was in her habit, towering over me like a giant, frowning Antarctic bird wearing a crucifix. Someone had accused me of cheating on my algebra test, and although Sister Teresa did not identify the source of this lie, I had no doubt of the culprit: Martha. The only way I could prove my innocence was to take the test again and make another perfect score.
Sister Teresa watched me closely after that. I dared never let my eyes stray from what I was doing at my desk. Several days passed. I was emptying the trash baskets, just the two of us alone in the classroom, and she told me I must pray constantly that God would keep me free of sin. I must thank our Heavenly Father for the great gifts I have and look to Him to keep me honest, because I was so smart I could get away with a lot of things. God knows everything, Sister Teresa said. I can't fool God. I protested that I was honest and not trying to fool God and she could ask God herself. I began to cry. "I am not a cheater," I sobbed. "I want my daddy."
When I was at Johns Hopkins in my first year of medical school, I wrote Sister Teresa a letter and recounted that wrenching, unfair incident. I reiterated my innocence, still bothered, still furious that I had been falsely accused and the nuns didn't defend me and never seemed quite as sure of me afterward.
As I stand in Rose's office now, more than twenty years later, I think about what Jaime Berger said the first time we met. She promised that the hurt had only begun. Of course, she was right. "Before everybody leaves today," I say to my secretary, "I'd like to talk to them. If you'd pass that along, Rose. We'll see how the day goes and find a time. I'm going to check on Benny White. Please make sure his mother is all right, and I'll be in shortly to talk to her."
I head down the hallway past the break room and find Washington George in the medical library. "I just have a minute," I tell him in a distracted way.
He is scanning books on a shelf, notepad down by his side like a gun he might use. "I heard a rumor," he says. "If you know it's true, maybe you can verify it. If you don't know, well, maybe you should. Buford Righter's not going to be the prosecutor in your special grand jury hearing."
"I know nothing about it," I reply, masking the indignation I always feel when the press knows details before I do. "But we've worked a lot of cases together," I add. "I wouldn't expect him to want to deal with this himself."
"I guess so, and what I understand is a special prosecutor has been appointed. That's the part I'm getting to. You aware of this?" He tries to read my face.
"No." I am trying to read his face, too, hoping to catch a foreshadowing that might prevent me from being broadsided.
"No one's indicated to you that Jaime Berger's been appointed to get you indicted, Dr. Scarpetta?" He stares me in the eye. "From what I understand, that's one of the reasons she came to town. You've been going through the Luong and Bray cases with her and all that, but I have it from a very good source it's a setup. She's been undercover, I guess you would say. Righter set it up before Chandonne allegedly showed up at your house. I understand Berger's been in the picture for weeks."
All I can think to say is, "Allegedly?" I am shocked,
"Well," Washington George says, "I assume by your reaction that you haven't heard any of this."
"I don't guess you can tell me who your reliable source is," I respond.
"Naw." He smiles a little, somewhat sheepishly. "So you can't confirm?"
"Of course I can't," I say as I gather my wits about me.
"Look, I'm going to keep digging, but I want you to know I like you and you've always been nice enough to me." He goes on. I am barely hearing a word of it. All I can think of is Berger spending hours with me in the dark, in her car, in my house, in Bray's house, and all along she was making mental notes to use against me in the special grand jury hearing. God, no wonder she seems to know so much about my life. She has probably been through my phone records, bank statements, credit reports and interviewed everyone who knows me. "Washington," I say, "I've got the mother of some poor person who just died, and I can't stand here and talk to you any longer." I walk off. I don't care if he thinks I am rude.
I cut through the ladies' room and in the changing area I put on a lab coat and slip paper covers over my shoes. The autopsy suite is full of sounds, every table occupied with the unfortunate. Jack Fielding is splashed with blood. He has already opened up Mrs. White's son and is inserting a syringe with a fourteen-gauge needle into the aorta to draw blood. Jack gives me a rather frantic, wild-eyed look when I walk over to his table. The morning news is all over his face.
"Later." I raise my hand before he can ask a question. "His mother's in my office." I indicate the body.
"Shit," Fielding says. "Shit is all I gotta say about this entire fucking world."
"She wants to see him." I take a rag from a bag on a gurney and wipe the boy's delicately pretty face. His hair is the color of hay and, except for his suffused face, his skin is like rose milk. He has fuzz on his upper lip and the first hint of pubic hair, his hormones just beginning to stir, preparing for an adult life he was not destined to have. A narrow, dark furrow around the neck angles up to the right ear where the rope was knotted. Otherwise, his strong, young body bears no evidence of violence, no hint that he should have had any reason in the world not to live. Suicides can be very challenging. Contrary to popular belief, people rarely leave notes. People don't al- ways talk about their feelings in life and sometimes their dead bodies don't have much to say, either.
"Goddamn," Jack mutters.
"What do we know about this?" I ask him.
"Just that he started acting weird at school right about Christmas." Jack picks up the hose and rinses out the chest cavity until it gleams like the inside of a tulip. "Dad died of lung cancer a few years ago." Water slaps. "That damn Stan-field, Jesus Christ. What we got out there? Some kind of special? Three fucking cases from him in four fucking weeks." Jack rinses off the bloc of organs. They shimmer in deep hues on the cutting board, waiting for their ultimate violation. "He keeps turning up like a fucking bad penny." Jack grabs a large surgical knife from the cart. "So this kid goes to church yesterday, comes home and hangs himself in the woods."
The more times Jack Fielding uses the word "fuck," the more upset he is. He is extremely upset. "What about Stan-field?" I ask darkly. "I thought he was quitting."
"I wish he would. The guy's an idiot. He calls about this case and guess what else? Apparently, he goes to the scene. The kid's hanging from a tree and Stanfield cuts him down."
I have a feeling I know what's coming.
"He cuts through the knot''
I was right. "He took photographs first, let's hope."
"Over there." He nods at the counter on the other side of the room.
I go to look at the photographs. They are painful. It appears Benny didn't even stop to change clothes when he came home from church, but went straight into the woods, threw a nylon rope over a tree branch, looped one end and threaded the other end through it. Then he made another loop with a simple slip knot and put it over his head. In the photographs, he is dressed in a navy blue suit and a white shirt. A red-and-blue-striped clip-on tie is on the ground, either dislodged by the rope or maybe he took it off first. He is kneeling, arms dangling by his sides, his head bent, a typical position for suicidal hangings. I don't have many cases where people are fully suspended, their feet off the ground. The point is to put enough compres- sion on the blood vessels of the neck so that insufficient oxygenated blood reaches the brain. It takes only 4.4 pounds of pressure to compress the jugular veins, and a little more than twice that to occlude the carotids. The weight of the head against the noose is enough. Unconsciousness is quick. Death takes minutes.
"Let's do this." I get back to Jack. "Cover him up. We'll put some plasticized sheets over him so blood won't soak through. And let's give his mother a viewing before you do anything else to him."
He takes a deep breath and tosses his scalpel back on the cart.
"I'll go talk to her and see what else we can find out." I walk off. "Buzz Rose when you're ready. Thanks, Jack." I pause to meet his eyes. "We'll talk later? We've never had that cup of coffee. We never even wished each other Merry Christmas."
I find Mrs. White in my conference room. She has stopped crying and is in a deep, depressed space, staring without blinking, lifeless. She barely focuses on me when I walk in and shut the door. I tell her I just looked at Benny and am going to give her a chance to see him in a few minutes. Her eyes fill with tears again and she wants to know if he suffered. I tell her he would have slipped into unconsciousness rapidly. She wants to know if he died because he couldn't breathe. I reply that we don't know all the answers right now, but it is unlikely that his airway was obstructed.
Benny may have died from hypoxic brain damage, but I am more inclined to suspect that the compression of blood vessels caused a vasovagal response. In other words, his heart slowed down and he died. When I mention he was kneeling, she suggests that maybe he was praying for the Lord to take him home. Maybe, I reply. He very well could have been praying. I comfort Mrs. White as best I can. She informs me
that a hunter was looking for a deer he shot earlier and found
her son's body, and Benny couldn't have been dead very long because he disappeared right after church, about twelve-thirty, and the police came by her house around five. They told her the hunter found Benny at around two. So at least he wasn't out there all by himself for very long, she keeps saying. And it was a good thing he had his New Testament in his suit pocket because it had his name and address in it. That was how the police figured out who he was and located his family.
"Mrs. White," I say, "was something going on with Benny of late? What about at church yesterday morning? Anything happen that you know about?"
"Well, he's been moody." She is steadier now. She is talking about Benny as if he is sitting out in the reception area waiting for her. "He'll be twelve next month, and you know how that goes."
"What do you mean by 'moody'?"
"He would go in his room a lot and shut the door. Stay in there listening to music with the headphones on. He gets a smart mouth now and again, and he didn't used to be that way. I've been concerned." Her voice catches. She blinks, suddenly remembering where she is and why. "I just don't know why he had to do something like that!" Tears seem to spurt out of her eyes. "I know there're some boys at church he's been having a hard time with. They tease him a lot, calling him pretty boy"
"Did anyone tease him yesterday?" I ask.
"That very well could be. They're all in Sunday School together. And there's been a lot of talk, you know, about those killings in the area." She pauses again. She doesn't want to continue down a path that leads to a subject both foreign and aberrant to her.
"The two men killed right before Christmas?"
"Uh huh. The ones they say were cursed, because that's not how America started, you know. With people doing things like that."
"Cursed? Who says they were cursed?"
"It's the talk. A lot of talk," she goes on, taking a deep breath. "With Jamestown being just down the road. There's always been stories about people seeing ghosts of John Smith and Pocahontas and all the rest of it. Then these men are murdered right near there, near Jamestown Island, and all this talk about them being, well, you know. Being unnatural, which is why someone killed them, I guess. Or at least that's what I hear."
"Did you and Benny talk about all this?" My heart is getting heavier by the moment.
"Some. I mean, everybody's been talking about those men killed and burned and tortured. People've been locking their doors more than usual. It's been spooky, I must admit. So Benny and I've discussed it, yes we have. To tell you the truth, he's been a lot moodier since all that happened. So maybe that's what had him upset." Silence. She stares at the tabletop. She can't decide which tense to use when she talks about her dead son. "That and the other boys calling him pretty. Benny hated that, and I don't blame him. I'm always telling him, Just wait until you grow up and are handsomer than all the rest. And the girls are just lining up. That'll teach 'em." She smiles a little and starts crying again. "He's real touchy about it. And you know how children can tease."
"Possibly he got teased a lot yesterday at church?" I guide her along. "Do you think maybe the boys made comments about so-called hate crimes, about gays and maybe implied…?"
"Well," she blurts out. "Well, yes. About curses against people who are unnatural and wicked. The Bible makes itself very clear. 'God gave them up to their own lust,' " she quotes.
"Any possibility Benny's been worried about his sexuality, Mrs. White?" I am very gentle but firm. "That's pretty normal for kids entering adolescence. A lot of sexual identity confusion, that sort of thing. Especially these days. The world's a complicated place, much more complicated than it used to be." The phone rings. "Excuse me a minute."
Jack is on the line. Benny is ready to be viewed. "And Marino's in here looking for you. Says he's got important information."
"Tell him where I am." I hang up.
"Benny did ask me if those men had those awful things done to them because they're… He used the word queer," Mrs. White is saying. "I said that very well may have been God's punishment."
"How did he react to that?" I ask her.
"I don't remember him saying anything."
"When was this?"
"Maybe three weeks ago. Right after they found that second body and all the news came out about them being hate crimes."
I wonder if Stanfield has any idea how much damage he has caused by leaking investigative details to his goddamn brother-in-law. Mrs. White is chattering nervously as dread builds with her every step down the hallway. I escort her to the front of the office and through a door that takes us into the small viewing room. Inside are a couch and table. There is a painting of a peaceful English countryside on the wall. Opposite the sitting area is a wall of glass. It is covered with a curtain. On the other side is the walk-in refrigerator.
"Why don't you just sit and make yourself comfortable," I tell Mrs. White and touch her shoulder.
She is tense, frightened, her eyes riveted to the drawn blue curtain. She perches on the edge of the couch, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. I open the curtain and Benny is swathed in blue, a blue sheet tucked under his chin to hide the ligature mark. His wet hair is combed back, eyes shut. His mother is frozen on the edge of the couch. She doesn't seem to breathe. She stares blankly, without comprehension. She frowns. "How come his face is all red like that?" she asks almost accusingly.
"The rope prevented the blood from flowing back to his heart," I explain. "So his face is congested."
She gets up and moves closer to the window. "Oh my baby," she whispers. "My sweet child. You're in heaven now. In Jesus' arms in paradise. Look, his hair's all wet like he's just been baptized. You must have given him a bath. I just need to know he didn't suffer."
I can't tell her that. I imagine when he first tightened the noose around his neck, the roaring pressure in his head was very frightening. He had begun the process of terminating his own life, and he was awake and alert long enough to feel it coming. Yes, he suffered. "Not long," is what I say. "He didn't suffer long, Mrs. White."
She covers her face with her hands and weeps. I draw the curtain and lead her out.
"What will you do to him now?" she asks as she woodenly follows me out.
"We'll finish looking at him and do some tests, just to see if there's anything else we need to know."
She nods.
"Would you like to sit for a while? Can we get you anything?"
"No, no. I'll just go on."
"I'm very sorry about your son, Mrs. White. I can't tell you how sorry. If you have any questions, just call. If I'm not available, someone here will help you. It's going to be hard, and you'll go through a lot of things. So please call if we can help."
She stops in the hallway and grabs my hand. She looks intensely into my eyes. "You're sure someone didn't do this to him? How do we know for a fact he did it to himself?"
"Right now, there's nothing to make us think someone else did this," I assure her. "But we'll investigate every possibility. We're not finished yet. Some of these tests take weeks."
"You won't keep him here for weeks!"
"No, he'll be ready to go in a few hours. The funeral home can come for him."
We are in the front office and I escort her through a glass door, back into the lobby. She hesitates, as if not quite sure what to do next. "Thank you," she says. "You've been very kind."
It isn't often I am thanked. My thoughts are so heavy as I return to my office that I almost run into Marino before I notice him. He is waiting for me just inside my doorway and has paperwork in hand, his face radiating excitement. "You aren't going to fucking believe this," he says.
"I'm to the point of believing just about anything," I grimly reply as I almost fall into the big leather chair behind my piled-up desk. I sigh. I expect Marino has come to tell me that Jaime Berger is the special prosecutor. "If it's about Berger, I already know," I say. "An AP reporter told me she's been appointed to get me indicted. I haven't decided if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Hell, I can't decide if I even care."
Marino has a puzzled expression on his face. "No kidding? She is? How's she gonna do that? She pass the bar in Virginia?"
"Doesn't have to," I reply. "She can appear pro hoc vice" The phrase means for this one particular occasion, and I go on to explain that at a special jury's request, the court can grant an out-of-state lawyer special permission to participate in a case even if that person is not licensed to practice law in Virginia.
"So what about Righter?" Marino asks. "What will he be doing during all this?"
"Someone from the commonwealth's attorney's office will have to work with her. My guess is he'll be second chair and leave the questioning to her."
"We've had a weird break in The Fort James Motel case." He gives me his news. "Vander's been working like hell on the prints he got inside the room, and you aren't gonna fucking believe it," he says again. "Guess whose popped up? Diane Bray's. I'm not shitting you. A perfect latent by the light switch when you first come in the room_her latent, Bray's damn fingerprint. Of course, we got the dead guy's prints, but no hit on any others except Bev Kiffin, as you'd expect. Her prints are on the Gideon Bible, for example, but not his, not Matos's. And that's kind of interesting, too. It's looking like Kiffin might have been the one who opened the Bible to whatever it was."
"Ecclesiastes," I remind him.
"Yeah. A latent on the open pages, Kiffin's fingerprint. And remember, she said she didn't open the Bible, so I asked her about it over the phone and she still says she didn't open it. So I'm getting mighty suspicious about what her involvement is, especially now that we know Bray was in that very room before the guy was killed in there. What was Bray doing at that motel? You want to tell me that?"
"Maybe her drug-dealing brought her there," I reply. "I can't think of another reason. Certainly, the motel isn't the sort of place you would expect her to stay."
"Bingo." Marino fires his finger at me like a gun. "And Kiffin's husband supposedly works for the same trucking company that Barbosa did, right? Although we still ain't found no record of someone named Kiffin who drives a truck or whatever_can't even track him down at all, which I have to admit is strange. And we know Overland's into smuggling drugs and guns, right? Maybe it's making more sense if it turns out that Chandonne's the one who left those hairs at the campsite. Maybe we're talking his family cartel, huh? Maybe that's what fucking brought him to Richmond to begin with_ the family business. And while he was in the area, he just couldn't control his habit of whacking women."
"Might also help explain what Matos was doing there," I add.
"No kidding. Maybe he and John the Baptist were pals. Or maybe someone in the family sent Matos to Virginia to snuff Johnny-boy, take him out of commission so he don't sing to anyone about the family business."
There are endless possibilities. "What none of this explains is why Matos was murdered and who did it. Or why Barbosa was killed," I point out.
"No, but I feel like we're getting warmer," Marino replies. "And I got an itch and I think if we scratch it, we might find Talley. Maybe he's the missing link in all this."
"Well, he apparently knew Bray in Washington," I say. "And he's been living in the same city where the Chandonne family is headquartered."
"And he always manages to be on the scene when John the Baptist is, too," Marino adds. "And I think I saw the asshole the other day. Was pulled up at a red light and there's this big black Honda motorcycle in the lane next to me. Didn't recognize him at first because he had a helmet on with this tinted shield covering his face, but he was staring at my truck. I'm pretty sure it was Talley and he looked away real quick. Asshole."
Rose buzzes me to say that the governor is calling for our ten o'clock telephone appointment. I motion for Marino to shut my office door while I wait on the line for Mitchell. Reality again intrudes. I am returned to my predicament and its wide broadcast. I have a feeling I know exactly what the governor has on his mind. "Kay?" Mike Mitchell is somber. "I was very sorry to see the paper this morning."
"I'm not happy about it, either," I let him know.
"I'm supportive of you and will continue to be," he says, maybe to ease me into the rest of what he plans to relay, which can't be good. I don't respond. I also suspect he knows about Berger and probably had something to do with her being appointed the special prosecutor. I don't bring it up. There is no point. "I think in light of your current circumstances," he goes on, "that it's best you relinquish your duties until this matter is resolved. And Kay, it's not because I believe a word of it." This is also not the same thing as saying that he thinks I am innocent. "But until things calm down, I believe your continuing to run the medical examiner system for the commonwealth would be unwise."
"Are you firing me, Mike?" I ask him point-blank.
"No, no," he is quick to say, and his tone is gentler. "Let's just get through the special grand jury hearing, and we'll go from there. I haven't given up on you or your idea of being a private contractor, either. Let's just get through this," he says again.
"Of course, I will do whatever you wish," I tell him with all due respect. "But I have to say that I don't think it's in the best interest of the commonwealth for me to withdraw from ongoing cases that still need my attention."
"Kay, it's not possible." He is the politician. "We're only talking two weeks, assuming your hearing turns out all right."
"Good God," I reply. "It has to."
"And I'm sure it will."
I get off the phone and look at Marino. "Well, that's that."
I start throwing things in my briefcase. "I hope they don't change the locks the minute I'm out the door."
"Really, what could he do? When you think about it, Doc, what could he do?" Marino has resigned himself to this inevitability.
"I would just like to know who the hell leaked it to the media." I shut my briefcase and snap in the locks. "Have you been subpoenaed, Marino?" I go ahead and ask. "Nothing's confidential. May as well tell me."
"You knew I would be." He has a pained expression on his face. "Don't let the bastards get you, Doc. Don't give up."
I pick up my briefcase and open the office door. "I'm doing anything but give up. In fact, I've got a lot to do."
His expression asks, what"? I've just been ordered by the governor to do nothing. "Mike's a good guy," Marino says. "But don't push him. Don't give him a reason to fire you. Why don't you go somewhere for a few days? Maybe go see Lucy in New York. Didn't she head on up to New York? Her and Teun? Just get the hell out of here until the hearing. I wish you would so I don't have to worry about you every other minute. I don't even like you being out there in Anna's house all by yourself."
I take a deep breath and try to tuck in my fury and hurt. Marino is right. There is no point in pissing off the governor and making matters worse. But now I feel run out of town on top of everything else, and I have not heard a word from Anna, and that stings, too. I am almost in tears, and I refuse to cry in my office. I avert my eyes from Marino, but he catches my feelings.
"Hey," he says, "you got every right not to feel good. All of this sucks, Doc."
I cross the hallway and cut through the ladies' room, on my way to the morgue. Turk is sewing up Benny White and Jack is sitting at the counter doing paperwork. I pull out a chair next to my assistant chief and pluck several stray hairs off his scrubs. "You got to quit shedding," I say, trying to hide my upset. "You going to tell me why your hair keeps falling out?" I have been meaning to ask him for weeks. As usual, so much has happened and Jack and I have not talked.
"All you got to do is read the paper," he says, putting down his pen. "That should tell you why my hair's falling out." His eyes are heavy.
I nod as I get his meaning. It is what I expect. Jack has known for a while that I am in serious trouble. Maybe Righter contacted him weeks ago and started fishing, just as he did with Anna. I ask Jack if this is the case, and he admits it. He says he has been a wreck. He hates politics and administration and does not want my job and never will.
"You make me look good," he says. "You always have, Dr. Scarpetta. They might think I should be appointed chief. Then what do I do? I don't know." He runs his fingers through his hair and loses more. "I just wish everything could go back to normal."
"Believe me, so do I," I say as the phone rings and Turk answers it.
"That reminds me," Jack says. "We're getting weird phone calls down here. I tell you about that?"
"I was down here when we got one," I reply. "Someone claiming to be Benton."
"Sick," he says in disgust.
"That's the only one I'm aware of," I add.
"Dr. Scarpetta?" Turk calls out. "Can you take it? It's Paul."
I go to the phone. "How are you, Paul?" I ask Paul Monty, the statewide director of the forensic labs.
"First, I just want you to know everybody in this damn building is pulling for you, Kay," he says. "Bullshit. I read all that bullshit and practically spit my coffee out. And we're working our fannies off." By this he means evidence testing. There is supposed to be an egalitarian order in the workup of evidence_appropriately, no one victim should be more important than another and moved to the front of the line. But there is also an unspoken code, same as in police shootings. People take care of their own. It is a fact. "Got some interesting test results that I wanted to pass on to you personally," Paul Monty goes on. "The hairs from the campground_the ones that you suspect are Chandonne's? Well, the DNA matches. What's of even more interest is that a fiber comparison shows that the cotton linens from that campsite match fibers collected from the mattress in Diane Bray's bedroom."
A scenario forms. Chandonne took Diane Bray's linens after her murder and fled to the campground. Maybe he slept on them. Or maybe he simply disposed of them. But either way, we can definitely place Chandonne at The Fort James Motel. Paul has nothing more to report at the moment.
"What about the dental floss I found in the toilet?" I ask Paul. "In the room where Matos was killed?"
"No hit on that. The DNA's not Chandonne's or Bray's or any of the usual suspects," he tells me. "Maybe some previous guest at the motel? Could be unrelated."
I return to the counter, where Jack resumes telling me about the strange phone calls. He says there have been several of them.
"One I happened to answer and the person, a guy, asked for you, says he's Benton and then hangs up," Jack reports. "Turk answered the second time. The guy says to tell you he called and will be an hour late to dinner, identifies himself as Benton and hangs up. So add that to the mix. No wonder I'm going bald."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I absently pick up Polaroid photographs of Benny White's body on the gurney before he was unclothed.
"Thought you had enough shit going on. I should have told you. I was wrong."
The sight of this young boy dressed in his Sunday best and inside an unzipped body pouch on top of a steel gurney is so incongruous. I feel deeply saddened as I notice his pants are a little short and his socks don't quite match, one blue, one black. I feel worse. "You find anything unexpected with him?" I have talked enough about my problems. My problems, as a matter of fact, do not seem very important when I look at photographs of Benny and think about his mother in the viewing room.
"Yeah, one thing puzzled me," Jack says. "The story I got is he came home from church and never went inside the house. He gets out of the car and heads out to the barn, saying he'll be right in and is trying to find his pocket knife_thinks it might be in his tackle box and he forgot to take it out when he came home from fishing the other day. He never comes back to the house. In other words, he never ate Sunday dinner. But this little guy had a full stomach."
"Could you tell what he might have eaten?" I ask.
"Yeah. Popcorn, for one thing. And looks like he ate hot-dogs. So I call his house and talk to his stepdad. I ask if Benny might have eaten anything at church and am told no. His step-dad's got no idea where the food came from," Jack replies.
"That's very odd," I comment. "So he comes home from church and goes out to hang himself, but stops off someplace to eat popcorn and hotdogs first?" I get up from the counter. "Something's wrong with that picture."
"If it wasn't for the gastric contents, I'd say it's a straightforward suicide." Jack remains seated, looking up at me. "I could kill Stanfield for cutting through the knot. The fuck-head."
"Maybe we should take a look at where Benny was hanged," I decide. "Go to the scene."
"They live on a farm in James City County," Jack says. "Right on the river, and apparently the woods where he was hanged are at the edge of the field, not even a mile from the house."
"Let's go," I tell him. "Maybe Lucy can give us a ride."
IT IS A TWO-HOUR FLIGHT FROM THE HANGAR IN
New York to HeloAir in Richmond, and Lucy was more than happy to show off her new company vehicle. The plan is simple. She will pick up Jack and me and land us at the farm, then the three of us will check out where Benny White allegedly killed himself. I also want to see his bedroom. Afterwards, we will drop Jack off in Richmond and I will return to New York with Lucy, where I will stay until the special grand jury hear- ing. This is all planned for tomorrow morning, and Detective Stanfield has no interest in meeting us at the scene.
"What for?" are the first words out of his mouth. "What you need to go there for?"
I almost mention the gastric contents that don't make sense. I come close to inquiring as to whether there was anything Stanfield observed that made him suspicious. But I catch myself. Something stops me. "If you can just give me directions to their place," I tell him.
He describes where Benny White's family lives, just off Route 5, I can't miss it because there is a small country store at the intersection, and I need to turn left at that store. He gives me landmarks that will not be helpful from the air. I finally get it out of him that the farm is less than a mile from the ferry near Jamestown, and that's when I realize for the first time that Benny White's farm is very close to The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground.
"Oh yeah," Stanfield says when I ask him about this. "He was right there in the same area as the other ones. That's what had him so upset, according to his mom."
"How far is the farm from the motel?" I ask.
"Right across the creek from it. It's not much of a farm."
"Detective Stanfield, is there any possibility Benny knew Bev Kiffin's children, her two boys? I understand Benny liked to fish." I envision the fishing pole leaning against the upstairs window in Mitch Barbosa's townhouse.
"Now, I know the story about him supposedly getting his pocket knife out of his tackle box, but I don't think that's what he did. I think he just wanted an excuse to get away from everybody," Stanfield replies.
"Do we know where he got the rope?" I push aside his annoying assumptions.
"His stepdaddy says there's all kinds of rope in the barn," Stanfield replies. "Well, they call it a barn but it's where they just keep junk. I asked him what was in there, and he said just junk. You know, I got a hunch Benny might have run into Bar-bosa out there, you know, fishing, and we know Barbosa was nice to kids. That sure would help explain it. And his mama did say the boy had been having nightmares and was mighty upset by the killings. Was scared to death, is the way she put it. Now what you're gonna want to do is go straight to the creek. You'll see the barn at the edge of the field, and then the woods right off to the left. There's an overgrown footpath and where he hung himself is maybe fifty feet down that path where a deer stand is. You can't miss it. I didn't climb up it, up the deer stand, to cut down the rope, only cut off the end that was around his neck. So it should still be right where it was. The rope should be right there where it was."
I refrain from showing my complete disgust with Stan-field's sloppy policing. I don't probe any further or suggest to him he ought to do exactly what he threatened: quit. I call Mrs. White to let her know my plans. Her voice is small and wounded. She is dazed and can't seem to comprehend that we want to land a helicopter on her farm. "We need a clearing. A level field, an area where there are no telephone lines or a lot of trees," I explain.
"We don't have a runway." She says this several times.
Finally, she puts her husband on the phone. His name is Marcus. He tells me they have a soybean field between their house and Route 5 and there's a silo painted dark green, too. There isn't another silo in that area, not one painted dark green, he adds. It is fine with him if we land in his field.
The rest of my day is long. I work at the office and catch my staff before they head home. I explain to them what is happening in my life and assure each person that his job is not in jeopardy. I also make it clear that I have done nothing wrong and am confident my name will be cleared. I don't tell them I have resigned. They have suffered enough tremors and don't need an earthquake. I don't pack items in my office or head out with anything other than my briefcase, as if all is well and I'll see everybody in the morning, as usual.
Now it is nine P.M. I sit in Anna's kitchen, picking at a thick slice of cheddar cheese and sipping a glass of red wine, going easy, unwilling to cloud my thinking and simply finding it almost impossible to swallow solid food. I have lost weight. I don't know how much. I have no appetite and have developed a wretched routine of going outside periodically to smoke. Every half hour or so, I try to contact Marino with no success. And I keep thinking about the Tlip file. It has hardly been out of my mind since I looked at it on Christmas Day. The telephone rings at close to midnight and I assume it is Marino finally returning my page. "Scarpetta," I answer.
"It's Jaime," Berger's distinctive, confident voice sounds over the line.
I pause in surprise. But then I remember: Berger seems to have no hesitation in talking to people she intends to send to jail, doesn't matter the hour.
"I've been on the phone with Marino," she starts off. "So I realize you know my situation. Or I guess I should say, our situation. And actually you ought to feel all right about it, Kay. I'm not going to coach you, but let me say this. Just talk to the jury the same way you do to me. And try not to worry."
"I think I'm beyond worrying," I reply.
"Mainly I'm calling to pass on some information. We got DNA on the stamps. The stamps from the letters in the Tlip file," she informs me as if she is in my mind again. So now the Richmond labs are dealing directly with her, it occurs to me. "It appears Diane Bray was all over the map, Kay. At least she licked those stamps, and I will assume she wrote the letters and was smart enough not to leave her prints on them. The prints that were left on several of the letters are Benton's, probably from when he opened them before he realized what they were. I assume he knew they were his prints. Don't know why he didn't make a note of it. I'm just wondering if Benton ever mentioned Bray to you. Any reason to think they knew each other?"
"I don't remember him mentioning her," I reply. My thoughts are locked. I can't believe what Berger has just said.
"Well, he certainly could have known her," Berger goes on. "She was in D.C. He was a few miles down the road in Quan-tico. I don't know. But it baffles me that she would send this stuff to him, and I'm wondering if she wanted it posted in New York so he would go down the path of believing the crank mail was from Carrie Grethen."
"And we know he did go down that path," I remind her.
"Then we also have to wonder if Bray possibly_just possibly_had anything to do with his murder," Berger adds the final touch.
It flashes in my mind that she is testing me again. What is she hoping? That I will blurt out something incriminating. Good. Bray got what was coming to her or She got what she deserved. At the same time, I don't know. Maybe it is my paranoia speaking and not reality. Maybe Berger is simply saying what is on her mind, nothing more.
"I don't guess she ever mentioned Benton to you," Berger is saying.
"Not that I recall," I reply. "I don't remember Bray ever saying a word about Benton."
"What I just can't get," Berger goes on, "is this Chandonne thing. If we consider that Jean-Baptiste Chandonne knew Bray_saying they were in business together_then why would he kill her? And in the manner he killed her? That strikes me as a non-fit. It doesn't profile right. What do you think?"
"Maybe you should Mirandize me before you ask me what I think about Bray's murderer," is what I say. "Or maybe you should save your questions for the hearing."
"You haven't been arrested," she replies, and I can't believe it. She has a smile in her tone. I have amused her. "You don't need to be Mirandized." She gets serious. "I'm not toying with you, Kay. I'm asking for your help. You should be goddamn glad it will be me in that room interviewing witnesses and not Righter."
"I'm just sorry anyone will be in that room. No one should be. Not on my account," I tell her.
"Well, there are two key pieces that we've got to figure out." She is impervious and has more to tell me. "The seminal fluid in Susan Pless's case isn't Chandonne's. And now we have this newest information about Diane Bray. It's just instinct. But I don't think Chandonne knew Diane Bray. Not personally. Not at all. I think all of his victims are people he had experienced only from a distance. He watched and stalked and fantasized. And that, by the way, was Benton's opinion, too, when he profiled Susan's case."
"Was it his opinion that the person who murdered her also left the seminal fluid?" I ask.
"He never thought more than one person was involved," Berger concedes. "Until your cases in Richmond, we were still looking for that well-dressed, good-looking guy who ate with her in Lumi. We sure weren't looking for some self-proclaimed werewolf with a genetic disorder, not back then we weren't."
I don't. I fade in and out, now and then picking up the alarm clock to check the time. Hours advance imperceptibly and weightily, like glaciers. I dream I am in my house and have a puppy, an adorable female yellow Labrador retriever with long, heavy ears and huge feet and the sweetest face imaginable. She reminds me of Gund stuffed animals in FAO Schwarz, that wonderful toy store in New York where I used to pick up surprises for Lucy when she was a child. In my dream, this wounded fiction I spin in my semi-conscious state, I am playing with the puppy, tickling her, and she is licking me, her tail wagging furiously. Then somehow I am walking into my house again, and it is dark and chilled and I sense nobody home, no life, absolute silence. I call out to the puppy_ I can't remember her name_and frantically search every room for her. I wake up in Anna's guest room, crying, sobbing, just bawling.