Dawn. It looks like it might rain.
Rose gazes out a window of her corner apartment, the ocean gently lapping against the seawall across Murray Boulevard. Near her building — once a splendid hotel — are some of the most expensive homes in Charleston, formidable waterfront mansions she has photographed and arranged in a scrapbook that she peruses from time to time. It’s almost impossible for her to believe what’s happened, that she’s living both a nightmare and a dream.
When she moved to Charleston, her one request was that she live close to the water. “Close enough to know it’s there” is how she described it. “I suspect this will be the last time I’ll follow you anywhere,” she said to Scarpetta. “At my age, I don’t want a yard to bother with, and I’ve always wanted to live on the water, but not a marsh with that rotten-egg smell. The ocean. If only I could have the ocean at least close enough to walk to it.”
They spent a lot of time looking. Rose ended up on the Ashley River in a run-down apartment that Scarpetta, Lucy, and Marino renovated. It didn’t cost Rose a penny, and then Scarpetta gave her a raise. Without it, Rose couldn’t afford the lease, but that fact was never mentioned. All Scarpetta said was that Charleston is an expensive city compared to other places they’ve lived, but even if it wasn’t, Rose deserved a raise.
She makes coffee and watches the news and waits for Marino to call. Another hour passes, and she wonders where he is. Another hour, and not a word, and her frustration grows. She’s left several messages for him saying she can’t come in this morning and could he drop by to help her move her couch? Besides, she needs to talk to him. She told Scarpetta she would. Now’s as good a time as any. It’s almost ten. She’s called his cell phone again, and it goes straight to voicemail. She looks out the open window, and cool air blows in from beyond the seawall, the water choppy and moody, the color of pewter.
She knows better than to move the couch herself but is impatient and irked enough to do it. She coughs as she ponders the folly of a feat that would have been manageable not all that long ago. She wearily sits and loses herself in memories of last night, of talking and holding hands and kissing on this same couch. She felt things she didn’t know she could feel anymore, all the while wondering how long it can last. She can’t give it up, and it can’t last, and she feels a sadness so deep and dark that there’s no point in trying to see what’s in it.
The phone rings, and it’s Lucy.
“How did it go?” Rose asks her.
“Nate says hello.”
“I’m more interested in what he said about you.”
“Nothing new.”
“That’s very good news.” Rose moves to the kitchen counter and picks up the television remote control. She takes a deep breath. “Marino’s supposed to come by to move my couch, but as usual…”
A pause, then Lucy says, “That’s one of the things I’m calling about. I was going to drop by to see Aunt Kay and tell her about my appointment with Nate. She doesn’t know I went. I always tell her after the fact so she doesn’t go crazy worrying. Marino’s bike is parked at her house.”
“Was she expecting you?”
“No.”
“What time was this?”
“Around eight.”
“Impossible,” Rose says. “Marino’s still in a coma at eight. At least these days.”
“I went to Starbucks, then headed back to her house around nine, and guess what? I pass his potato-chip girlfriend in her BMW.”
“You sure it was her?”
“Want her plate number? Her DOB? What’s in her bank account — not much, by the way. Looks like she’s gone through most of her money. Not from her dead rich daddy, either. Tells you something he left her nothing. But she makes a lot of deposits that don’t make sense, spends it as fast as she gets it.”
“This is bad. Did she see you when you were coming back from Starbucks?”
“I was in my Ferrari. So unless she’s blind in addition to being a vapid twat. Sorry…”
“Don’t be. I know what a twat is, and no doubt she fits the bill. Marino has a special homing device that leads him directly to twats.”
“You don’t sound good. Like you can hardly breathe,” Lucy says. “How about I come over a little later and move the couch?”
“I’ll be right here,” Rose says, coughing as she hangs up.
She turns on the television in time to see a tennis ball kick up a puff of red dust off the line, Drew Martin’s serve so fast and out of reach, her opponent doesn’t even try. CNN plays footage from last year’s French Open, the news about Drew going on and on. Replays of tennis and her life and death. Over and over again. More footage. Rome. The ancient city, then the small cordoned-off construction site surrounded by police and yellow tape. Emergency lights pulsing.
“What else do we know at this time? Are there any new developments?”
“Rome officials continue to be tight-lipped. It would appear there are no leads and no suspects, and this terrible crime continues to be shrouded in mystery. People here ask why. You can see them laying flowers at the edge of the construction site where her body was found.”
More replays. Rose tries not to watch. She’s seen all of it so many times, but she continues to be mesmerized by it.
Drew slicing a backhand.
Drew charging the net and slamming a lob so hard it bounces into the stands. The crowd jumping to its feet and wildly cheering.
Drew’s pretty face on Dr. Self’s show. Talking fast, her mind jumping from one subject to the next, excited because she’d just won the U.S. Open, called the Tiger Woods of tennis. Dr. Self leaning into the interview, asking questions she shouldn’t ask.
“Are you a virgin, Drew?”
Laughing, blushing, hiding her face with her hands.
“Come on.” Dr. Self smiling, so damn full of herself. “This is what I’m talking about, everyone.” To her audience. “Shame. Why do we feel shame when we talk about sex?”
“I lost my virginity when I was ten,” Drew says. “To my brother’s bicycle.”
The crowd going crazy.
“Drew Martin dead at sweet sixteen,” an anchor says.
Rose manages to push the couch across the living room and shove it against the wall. She sits on it and cries. She gets up and paces and weeps, and moans that death is wrong and violence is unbearable and she hates it. Hates it all. In the bathroom, she retrieves a prescription bottle. In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of wine. She takes a tablet and washes it down with wine, and moments later, coughing and barely able to breathe, she washes down a second tablet. The telephone rings and she is unsteady when she reaches for it, dropping the receiver, fumbling to pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Rose?” Scarpetta says.
“I shouldn’t watch the news.”
“Are you crying?”
The room’s spinning. She’s seeing double. “It’s just the flu.”
“I’m coming over,” Scarpetta says.
Marino rests his head against the back of the seat, his eyes masked by dark glasses, his big hands on his thighs.
He’s dressed in the same clothes he had on last night. He slept in them, and it looks like it. His face is a deep red hue, and he has the stale stench of a drunk who hasn’t bathed in a while. The sight and smell of him brings back memories that are too awful to describe, and she feels the rawness, the soreness of flesh he should never have seen or touched. She wears layers of silk and cotton, fabrics gentle to her skin, her shirt buttoned at the collar, her jacket zipped up. To hide her injuries. To hide her humiliation. Around him, she feels powerless and naked.
Another awful silence as she drives. The car is filled with the aromas of garlic and sharp cheese, and he has his window open.
He says, “The light hurts my eyes. I can’t believe how much the light’s killing my eyes.”
He has said this numerous times, offering an answer to an unasked question of why he won’t look at her or take off his dark glasses despite the overcast sky and rain. When she made coffee and dry toast barely an hour ago and brought it to him in bed, he groaned as he sat up and held his head. Unconvincingly, he asked, “Where am I?”
“You were very drunk last night.” She set the coffee and toast on the bedside table. “Do you remember?”
“If I eat anything, I’ll puke.”
“Do you remember last night?”
He says he doesn’t remember anything after riding his motorcycle to her house. His demeanor says he remembers all of it. He continues to complain about feeling sick.
“I wish you didn’t have food back there. Now’s not a good time for me to smell food.”
“Too bad. Rose has the flu.”
She parks in the lot next to Rose’s building.
“I sure as shit don’t want to get the flu,” he says.
“Then stay in the car.”
“I want to know what you did with my gun.” He has said this several times as well.
“As I’ve told you, it’s in a safe place.”
She parks. On the backseat is a box filled with covered dishes. She stayed up all night cooking. She cooked enough tagliolini with fontina sauce, lasagna Bolognese, and vegetable soup to feed twenty people.
“Last night you were in no condition to have a loaded gun,” she adds.
“I want to know where it is. What did you do with it?”
He walks slightly ahead of her, not bothering to ask if he can carry the box.
“I’ll tell you again. I took it from you last night. I took your motorcycle key. Do you remember my taking your key away from you because you insisted on riding your motorcycle when you could barely stand up?”
“That bourbon in your house,” he says as they walk toward the whitewashed building in the rain. “Booker’s.” As if it’s her fault. “I can’t afford good bourbon like that. It goes down so smooth, I forget it’s a-hundred-and-twenty-something proof.”
“So I’m to blame.”
“Don’t know why you got something that strong in your house.”
“Because you brought it over New Year’s Eve.”
“Someone may as well have hit me over the head with a tire iron,” he says as they climb steps and the doorman lets them in.
“Good morning, Ed,” Scarpetta says, aware of the sound of a TV inside his office off the lobby. She hears the news, more coverage of Drew Martin’s murder.
Ed looks toward his office, shakes his head, and says, “Terrible, terrible. She was a nice girl, a real nice girl. Saw her just here right before she got killed, tipped me twenty dollars every time she came through the door. Terrible. Such a nice girl. Acted like a normal person, you know.”
“She was staying here?” Scarpetta says. “I thought she always stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel. At least that’s what’s been in the news whenever she’s in this area.”
“Her tennis coach has an apartment here, hardly ever in it, but he’s got one,” Ed says.
Scarpetta wonders why she’s never heard about that. Now isn’t the time to ask. She’s worried about Rose. Ed pushes the elevator button and taps the button for Rose’s floor.
The doors shut. Marino’s dark glasses stare straight ahead.
“I think I got a migraine,” he says. “You got anything for a migraine?”
“You’ve already taken eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. Nothing else for at least five hours.”
“That don’t help a migraine. I wish you hadn’t had that stuff in the house. It’s like someone slipped me something, like I was drugged.”
“The only person who slipped you something is yourself.”
“I can’t believe you called Bull. What if he’s dangerous?”
She can’t believe he’d say such a thing after what happened last night.
“I sure as hell hope you don’t ask him to help in the office next,” he says. “What the hell does he know? He’ll just get in the way.”
“I can’t think about this right now. I’m thinking about Rose right now. And maybe this would be a good time for you to worry about somebody besides yourself.” Anger begins to rise, and Scarpetta walks quickly along a hallway of old white plaster walls and worn blue carpet.
She rings the bell to Rose’s apartment. No answer, no sound inside except the TV. She sets the box on the floor and tries the bell again. Then again. She calls her cell phone, her landline. She hears them ringing inside, then voicemail.
“Rose!” Scarpetta pounds on the door. “Rose!”
She hears the TV. Nothing but the TV.
“We’ve got to get a key,” she says to Marino. “Ed has one. Rose!”
“Fuck that.” Marino kicks the door as hard as he can, and wood splinters and the burglar chain breaks, brass links clinking to the floor as the door flies open and bangs against the wall.
Inside, Rose is on the couch, motionless, her eyes shut, her face ashen, strands of long, snowy hair unpinned.
“Call nine-one-one now!” Scarpetta puts pillows behind Rose to prop her up as Marino calls for an ambulance.
She takes Rose’s pulse. Sixty-one.
“They’re on their way,” Marino says.
“Go to the car. My medical bag’s in the trunk.”
He runs out of the apartment, and she notices a wineglass and a prescription bottle on the floor, almost hidden by the skirt of the couch. She’s stunned to see that Rose has been taking Roxicodone, a trade name for oxycodone hydrochloride, an opioid analgesic that’s notoriously habit-forming. The prescription of one hundred tablets was filled ten days ago. She takes the top off the bottle and counts the fifteen-milligram green tablets. There are seventeen left.
“Rose!” Scarpetta shakes her. She’s warm and sweating. “Rose, wake up! Can you hear me! Rose!”
Scarpetta goes to the bathroom and returns with a cool washcloth, places it on Rose’s forehead, and holds her hand, talking to her, trying to rouse her. Then Marino is back. He looks frantic and frightened as he hands Scarpetta the medical bag.
“She moved the couch. I was supposed to do it,” he says, his dark glasses staring at the couch.
Rose stirs as a siren sounds in the distance. Scarpetta takes a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope from her medical bag.
“I promised to come over and move it,” Marino says. “She moved it by herself. It was over there.” His dark glasses look at an empty space near a window.
Scarpetta pushes up Rose’s sleeve, slides the stethoscope on her arm, wraps the cuff just above the bend in the arm, tight enough to stop blood flow.
The siren is very loud.
She squeezes the bulb, inflates the cuff, then opens the valve to release the air slowly as she listens to the blood beating its way along the artery. Air hisses quietly as the cuff deflates.
The siren stops. The ambulance is here.
Systolic pressure eighty-six. Diastolic pressure fifty-eight. She moves the diaphragm over Rose’s chest and back. Respiration is depressed, and she’s hypotensive.
Rose stirs, moves her head.
“Rose?” Scarpetta says loudly. “Can you hear me?”
Her eye lids flutter open.
“I’m going to take your temperature.” She places a digital thermometer under Rose’s tongue and in seconds it beeps. Temperature ninety-nine-point-one. She holds up the bottle of pills. “How many did you take?” she asks. “How much wine did you drink?”
“It’s just the flu.”
“You move the couch yourself?” Marino asks her, as if it matters.
She nods. “Overdid it. That’s all.”
Rapid footsteps and the clatter of paramedics and a stretcher in the hallway.
“No,” she protests. “Send them away.”
Two EMTs in blue jumpsuits fill the doorway and push the stretcher inside. On top of it is a defibrillator and other equipment.
Rose shakes her head. “No. I’m all right. I’m not going to the hospital.”
Ed appears in the doorway, worried, looking in.
“What’s the problem, ma’am?” One of the EMTs, blond with pale blue eyes, comes over to the couch and looks closely at Rose. He looks closely at Scarpetta.
“No.” Rose is adamant, waving them off. “I mean it! Please go away. I fainted. That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” Marino says to her, but his dark glasses are staring at the blond EMT. “I had to bust the damn door down.”
“And you better fix it before you leave,” Rose mutters.
Scarpetta introduces herself. She explains that it seems Rose mixed alcohol with oxycodone, was unconscious when they got here.
“Ma’am?” The blond EMT leans closer to Rose. “How much alcohol and oxycodone did you have, and when did you take it?”
“One more than usual. Three tablets. And just a little bit of wine. Half a glass.”
“Ma’am, it’s very important you’re honest with me about this.”
Scarpetta hands him the prescription bottle and says to Rose, “One tablet every four to six hours. You took two more than that. And you’re on a high dose already. I want you to go to the hospital just to make sure everything’s all right.”
“No.”
“Did you crush them or chew them or swallow them whole?” Scarpetta asks, because when the tablets are crushed, they dissolve more quickly and the oxycodone is more rapidly released and absorbed.
“I swallowed them whole, just like I always do. My knees were aching something awful.” She looks at Marino. “I shouldn’t have moved the couch.”
“If you won’t go with these nice EMTs, I’ll take you,” Scarpetta says, aware of the blond EMT’s stare.
“No.” Rose adamantly shakes her head.
Marino watches the blond EMT watch Scarpetta. Marino doesn’t protectively move close to her as he would have done in the past. She doesn’t address the most disturbing question — why Rose is on Roxicodone.
“I’m not going to the hospital,” Rose says. “I’m not. I mean it.”
“It looks like we’re not going to need you,” Scarpetta says to the EMTs. “But thanks.”
“I heard you lecture a few months back,” the blond EMT says to her. “The child fatality session at the National Forensic Academy. You lectured.”
His name tag reads T. Turkington. She has no recollection of him.
“What the hell were you doing there?” Marino asks him. “The NFA’s for cops.”
“I’m an investigator for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department. They sent me to the NFA. I’m a graduate.”
“Now, ain’t that strange,” Marino says. “Then what the hell are you doing here in Charleston, riding around in an ambulance?”
“My days off, I work as an EMT.”
“This ain’t Beaufort County.”
“Can use the extra pay. Emergency medicine’s good supplemental training for my real job. I have a girlfriend here. Or did.” Turkington is easygoing about it. To Scarpetta, he says, “If you’re sure everything’s all right in here, we’ll be on our way.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep my eye on her,” Scarpetta replies.
“Nice to see you again, by the way.” His blue eyes fix on her, and then he and his partner are gone.
Scarpetta says to Rose, “I’m taking you to the hospital to make sure nothing else is wrong.”
“You’re not taking me anywhere,” she says. “Would you please go find me a new door?” she says to Marino. “Or a new lock or whatever it takes to fix the mess you made.”
“You can use my car,” Scarpetta says, tossing him the keys. “I’ll walk home.”
“I need to get into your house.”
“It will have to wait until later,” she says.
The sun slips in and out of smoky clouds, and the sea heaves against the shore.
Ashley Dooley, a South Carolinian born and bred, has taken off his Windbreaker and tied the sleeves around his big belly. He points his brand-new camcorder at his wife, Madelisa, then stops filming when a black-and-white basset hound appears from the sea oats on the dune. The dog trots to Madelisa, his droopy ears dragging in the sand. He presses against her legs, panting.
“Oh, look, Ashley!” She squats and pets him. “Poor baby, he’s shaking. What’s the matter, honey? Don’t be scared. He’s still a puppy.”
Dogs love her. They seek her out. She’s never had a single dog growl at her or do anything but love her. Last year, they had to put Frisbee to sleep when he got cancer. Madelisa hasn’t gotten over it, won’t forgive Ashley for refusing treatment because of the expense.
“Move over there,” Ashley says. “You can have the dog in the film if you want. I’ll get all these fancy houses in the background. Holy shit, look at that one. Like something you’d see in Europe. Who the hell needs something that big?”
“I wish we could go to Europe.”
“I tell you, this camcorder’s something.”
Madelisa can’t stand to hear about it. Somehow he could afford thirteen hundred dollars for a camcorder but couldn’t spare a dime for Frisbee.
“Look at it. All those balconies and a red roof,” he’s saying. “Imagine living in something like that.”
If we lived in something like that, she thinks, I wouldn’t mind you buying fancy camcorders and a plasma-screen TV, and we could have afforded Frisbee’s vet bills. “I can’t imagine,” she says, posing in front of the dune. The basset hound sits on her foot, panting.
“I hear there’s a thirty-million-dollar one down that way.” He points. “Smile. That’s not a smile. A big smile. Think it’s owned by someone famous, maybe the man who started Wal-Mart. Why’s that dog panting so much? It’s not that hot out here. And he’s shivering, too. Maybe he’s sick, could have rabies.”
“No, pumpkin, he’s shaking like he’s scared. Maybe he’s thirsty. I told you to bring a bottle of water. The man who started Wal-Mart’s dead,” she adds, as she pets the basset hound and scans the beach, doesn’t notice anybody nearby, just a few people in the distance, fishing. “I think he’s lost,” she says. “I don’t see anybody around who might be his owner.”
“We’ll look for it, get some footage.”
“Look for what?” she asks, the dog pressed against her legs, panting, shaking. She checks him, noting he needs a bath and his claws need clipping. Then something else. “Oh, my goodness. I think he’s hurt.” She touches the top of the dog’s neck, looks at blood on her finger, begins parting his fur, looking for a wound, not finding one. “Now, that’s strange. How’d he get blood on him? There’s some more of it, too. But it doesn’t look like he’s hurt. Now that’s just yucky.”
She wipes her fingers on her shorts.
“Maybe there’s a carcass of a chewed-up cat somewhere.” Ashley hates cats. “Let’s keep walking. We’ve got our tennis clinic at two and I’m gonna need some lunch first. We got any of that honey-baked ham left?”
She looks back. The basset hound sits in the sand, panting, staring at them.
“I know you have a spare key in that little box you bury in your garden under that pile of bricks behind the bushes,” Rose says.
“He’s hung over as hell, and I don’t want him riding his motorcycle with a damn forty-caliber pistol jammed in the back of his jeans,” Scarpetta says.
“How did it end up at your house to begin with? How did he end up there, for that matter?”
“I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you.”
“Why don’t you get off the couch and pull up a chair. It’s hard for me to talk when you’re practically sitting on top of me,” Rose says.
Scarpetta carries over a dining room chair, sets it down, and says, “Your medication.”
“I haven’t been stealing pills from the morgue, if that’s what you’re implying. All those pitiful people who come in with dozens of prescription bottles, because why? Because they don’t take them. Pills don’t fix a damn thing. If they did, those people wouldn’t end up in the morgue.”
“Your bottle has your name on it and the name of your physician. Now, I can look him up or you can tell me what kind of doctor he is and why you’re seeing him.”
“An oncologist.”
Scarpetta feels as if she’s been kicked in the chest.
“Please. Don’t make this harder for me,” Rose says. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out until it was time to pick out an acceptable urn for my ashes. I know I did something I shouldn’t.” She catches her breath. “Was in such a state, got so upset, and was aching all over.”
Scarpetta takes her hand. “Funny how we get ambushed by our feelings. You’ve been stoical. Or dare I use the word stubborn? Now today you have to reckon with it.”
“I’m going to die,” Rose says. “I hate doing this to everyone.”
“What kind of cancer?” Holding Rose’s hand.
“Lung. Before you start thinking it’s from all that secondary smoke I was exposed to in the early days when you puffed away in your office…” Rose starts to say.
“I wish I hadn’t. I can’t tell you how much I wish that.”
“What’s killing me has nothing to do with you,” Rose says. “I promise. I come by it honestly.”
“Non — small cell or small cell?”
“Non — small.”
“Adenocarcinoma, squamous?”
“Adenocarcinoma. Same thing my aunt died from. Like me, she never smoked. Her grandfather died of squamous. He did smoke. I never in a million years imagined I’d get lung cancer. But then it’s never occurred to me I’d die. Isn’t it ridiculous.” She sighs, the color slowly returning to her face, the light to her eyes. “We look at death every day and it doesn’t change our denial about it. You’re right, Dr. Scarpetta. I guess today it hit me from behind. I never saw it coming.”
“Maybe it’s about time you call me Kay.”
She shakes her head.
“Why not? Aren’t we friends?”
Rose says, “We’ve always believed in boundaries, and they’ve served us well. I work for someone I’m honored to know. Her name is Dr. Scarpetta. Or Chief.” She smiles. “I could never call her Kay.”
“So now you’re depersonalizing me. Unless you’re talking about someone else.”
“She’s someone else. Someone you really don’t know. I think you have a much lower opinion of her than I do. Especially these days.”
“Sorry, I’m not this heroic woman you just described, but let me help what little I can — get you to the best cancer center in the country. Stanford Cancer Center. Where Lucy goes. I’ll take you. We’ll get you any treatment you…”
“No, no, no.” Rose shakes her head again slowly, side to side. “Now be quiet and listen to me. I’ve consulted all sorts of specialists. Do you remember last summer I went on a three-week cruise? A lie. The only cruise I went on was from one specialist to another, and then Lucy took me to Stanford, which is where I got my doctor. The prognosis is the same. My only choice was chemo and radiation, and I refused.”
“We should try anything we possibly can.”
“I’m already in stage three-B.”
“It’s spread to the lymph nodes?”
“Lymph nodes. And bone. Well on its way to being stage four. Surgery’s impossible.”
“Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or even just radiation therapy by itself. We’ve got to try. We can’t just give up like this.”
“In the first place, there’s no we. It’s me. And no. I won’t put myself through it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to have all my hair fall out and be sick and miserable when I know this disease is going to kill me. Sooner rather than later. Lucy even said she would get me marijuana so the chemo wouldn’t make me as sick. Imagine me smoking pot.”
“Obviously, she’s known about this for as long as you have,” Scarpetta says.
Rose nods.
“You should have told me.”
“I told Lucy, and she’s a master of secrets, has so many I’m not sure any of us know what’s really true. What I didn’t want is this very thing. To make you feel bad.”
“Just tell me what I can do.” As grief tightens its grip.
“Change what you can. Don’t ever think you can’t.”
“Tell me. I’ll do anything you want,” Scarpetta says.
“It’s not until you’re dying that you begin to realize all the things in life you could have changed. This I can’t change.” Rose taps her chest. “You have the power to change almost anything you want.”
Images from last night, and for an instant, Scarpetta imagines she smells him, feels him, and she struggles not to show how devastated she is.
“What is it?” Rose squeezes her hand.
“How can I not feel terrible?”
“You were just thinking about something, and it wasn’t me,” Rose says. “Marino. He looks awful and is acting odd.”
“Because he got shit-face drunk,” Scarpetta says, anger in her voice.
“‘Shit-face.’ Now, that’s a term I haven’t heard you use. But then I’m getting rather vulgar myself these days. I actually used the word twat this morning when I was talking to Lucy on the phone — referring to Marino’s latest. Who Lucy happened to pass in your neighborhood around eight. When Marino’s motorcycle was still parked in front of your house.”
“I have a box of food for you. It’s still in the hall. Let me get it and I’ll put it away.”
A coughing fit, and when Rose removes the tissue from her mouth, it is spotted with bright red blood.
“Please let me take you back to Stanford,” Scarpetta says.
“Tell me what happened last night.”
“We talked.” Scarpetta feels her face turn red. “Until he was too drunk.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you blush.”
“A hot flash.”
“Yes, and I have the flu.”
“Tell me what to do for you.”
“Let me go about my business as usual. I don’t want to be resuscitated. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”
“Why don’t you move in with me?”
“That’s not going about my business as usual,” Rose says.
“Will you at least give me permission to talk to your doctor?”
“There’s nothing else for you to know. You asked what I want, and I’m telling you. No curative treatment. I want palliative care.”
“I have an extra room in my house. Small as it is. Maybe I should get a bigger place,” Scarpetta says.
“Don’t be so selfless it makes you selfish. And it’s selfish if you make me feel guilty and just plain horrible because I’m hurting everyone around me.”
Scarpetta hesitates, then says, “Can I tell Benton?”
“You can tell him. But not Marino. I don’t want you telling him.” Rose sits up, places her feet on the floor. She takes both of Scarpetta’s hands. “I’m no forensic pathologist,” she says. “But why are there fresh bruises on your wrists?”
The basset hound is still right where they left him, sitting in the sand near the No Trespassing sign.
“See, now, this just isn’t normal,” Madelisa exclaims. “Been sitting here for more than an hour, waiting for us to come back. Here, Droopy. You sweet little thing.”
“Honey, that’s not his name. Now, don’t be naming him. Look at his tag,” Ashley says. “See what his real name is and where he lives.”
She stoops down, and the basset hound ambles over to her, presses against her, licks her hands. She squints at the tag, doesn’t have her reading glasses. Ashley doesn’t have his, either.
“I can’t see it,” she says. “What little I can make out. Nope, doesn’t look like there’s a phone number. I didn’t bring my phone, anyhow.”
“I didn’t, either.”
“Now, that’s dumb. What if I twisted my ankle out here or something? Somebody’s barbecuing,” she says, sniffing, looking around, noticing a wisp of smoke rising from the back of the huge white house with the balconies and red roof — one of the few houses she’s seen with a No Trespassing sign. “Now, why aren’t you running off to see what’s cooking?” she says to the basset hound, stroking his floppy ears. “Maybe we could go out and buy us one of those little grills and cook out tonight.”
She tries to read the dog’s tags again, but it’s hopeless without her glasses, and she imagines rich people, imagines some millionaire grilling on the patio of that huge white house set back from the dune, partially hidden by tall pines.
“Say hello to your old-maid sister,” Ashley says, filming. “Tell her how luxurious our town house is here on Millionaire Row in Hilton Head. Tell her next time we’re staying in a mansion like that one where they’re barbecuing.”
Madelisa looks down the beach in the direction of their town house, unable to see it through thick trees. She returns her attention to the dog and says, “I bet he lives in the house right there.” Pointing to the white European-looking mansion where someone is barbecuing. “I’ll just go on over there and ask.”
“Go right on. I’ll wander a little bit, filming. Saw a few porpoises a minute ago.”
“Come on, Droopy. Let’s go find your family,” Madelisa says to the dog.
He sits in the sand and won’t come. She tugs his collar, but he’s not going anywhere. “Okay, then,” she says. “You stay put and I’ll find out if that big house is where you’re from. Maybe you got out and they don’t know it. But one thing’s for sure. Someone’s missing you something awful!”
She hugs and kisses him. She heads off across the hard sand, gets to the soft sand, walks right through sea oats, even though she hears it’s illegal to walk on the dunes. She hesitates at the No Trespassing sign, bravely steps up on the wooden boardwalk, heading to the huge white house where some rich person, maybe a celebrity, is cooking on the grill. Lunch, she supposes, as she keeps looking back, hoping the basset hound doesn’t run off. She can’t see him on the other side of the dune. She doesn’t see him on the beach, either, just Ashley, a small figure, filming several dolphins rolling through the water, their fins cutting through the waves, then dipping out of sight again. At the end of the boardwalk is a wooden gate, and she’s surprised it isn’t locked. It isn’t completely shut.
She walks through the backyard, looking everywhere, calling out “Hello!” She’s never seen such a big pool, what they call a black-bottom pool, trimmed with fancy tile that looks like it came from Italy or Spain or some other exotic faraway place. She looks around, calling out “hello,” pauses curiously at the smoking gas grill where a slab of raggedly cut meat is charred on one side, bloody-raw on top. It occurs to her that the meat is strange, doesn’t look like steak or pork, certainly not like chicken.
“Hello!” she calls out. “Anybody home?”
She bangs on the sun porch door. No answer. She walks around to the side of the house, supposing whoever is cooking might be somewhere over there, but the side yard is empty and overgrown. She peers through a space between the blinds and the edge of a big window and sees an empty kitchen, all stone and stainless steel. She’s never seen a kitchen like that except in magazines. She notices two big dog bowls on a mat near the butcher block.
“Hello!” she yells. “I think I have your dog! Hello!” She moves along the side of the house, calling out. She climbs up steps to a door, next to it a window missing a pane of glass. Another pane is broken. She thinks about hurrying back to the beach, but inside the laundry room is a big dog crate that’s empty.
“Hello!” Her heart beats hard. She’s trespassing, but she’s found the basset hound’s home and she’s got to help. How would she feel if it were Frisbee and someone didn’t bring him back?
“Hello!” She tries the door and it opens.