Y-12 National Security Complex. Scarpetta stops her rental car at a checkpoint in the midst of concrete blast barriers and fences topped with razor wire.
She rolls down her window for the second time in the past five minutes and hands over her identification badge. The guard steps inside his booth to make a phone call while another guard searches the trunk of the red Dodge Stratus that Scarpetta was unhappy to find waiting for her at Hertz when she landed in Knoxville an hour ago. She’d requested an SUV. She doesn’t drive red. She doesn’t even wear red. The guards seem more vigilant than they’ve been in the past, as if the car makes them wary, and they are already wary enough. Y-12 has the largest stockpile of enriched uranium in the country. Security is unyielding, and she never bothers the scientists here unless she has a special need that has reached, as she puts it, critical mass.
In the back of the car is the brown-paper-wrapped window from Lydia Webster’s laundry room, and a small box containing the gold coin that has the unidentified murdered little boy’s fingerprint on it. In the far reaches of the complex is a redbrick lab building that looks like all the others, but housed within it is the largest scanning electron microscope on the planet.
“You can pull over right there.” A guard points. “And he’ll be right here. You can follow him in.”
She moves on and parks, waiting for the black Tahoe driven by Dr. Franz, the director of the materials science lab. She always follows him in. No matter how many times she’s been here, she not only can’t find her way, she wouldn’t dare try. Getting lost inside a facility that manufactures nuclear weapons isn’t an option. The Tahoe rolls up and turns around, and Dr. Franz’s arm waves out his window, motioning for her to proceed. She follows him past nondescript buildings with nondescript names, then the terrain dramatically changes into woods and open fields, and finally the one-story labs known as Technology 2020. The setting is deceptively bucolic. Scarpetta and Dr. Franz get out of their vehicles. She removes the brown-paper-wrapped window from the back, where it was held safely in place with the seat belt.
“What fun things you bring us,” he says. “Last time, it was a complete door.”
“And we found a bootprint, didn’t we — that nobody thought was there.”
“There’s always a there there.” Dr. Franz’s motto.
About her age and dressed in a polo shirt and baggy jeans, he isn’t what comes to mind when one conjures up the image of a nuclear metallurgical engineer who finds it fascinating to spend his time magnifying a milled tool part or a spider spinneret, or pieces and parts of a space shuttle or a submarine. She follows him inside what would look like a normal lab, were it not for the massive metal chamber supported by four dampening pillars the diameter of trees. The VisiTech Large Chamber Scanning Electron Microscope — LC-SEM — weighs ten tons, and required a forty-ton forklift to install it. Simply put, it’s the biggest microscope on earth, and its original intended use wasn’t forensic science but failure analysis of materials such as the metals used in weapons. But technology is technology, as far as Scarpetta is concerned, and by now Y-12 is used to her shameless begging.
Dr. Franz unwraps the window. He places it and the coin on top of a three-inch-thick steel turntable, and begins positioning an electron gun the size of a small missile, and the detectors lurking behind it, lowering them as close as he can to suspect areas of sand and glue and broken glass. With a remote axis control, he slides and tilts. Hums and clicks. Stopping at end stops — or switches — that prevent precious parts from crashing into samples or one another or going over the edge. He closes the door so he can vacuum down the chamber to ten-to-the-minus-six, he explains. Then he’ll backfill the rest of it to ten-to-the-minus-two, he adds, and you couldn’t open the door if you tried, he says. Showing her. And what they basically have are the conditions of outer space, he explains. No moisture, no oxygen, just the molecules of a crime.
The sound of vacuum pumps and an electrical smell, and the clean-room begins to heat up. Scarpetta and Dr. Franz leave, shutting an outer door, back in the lab now, and a column of red, yellow, green, and white lights remind them that no human is inside the chamber, because that would be almost instant death. It would be like a space walk without a suit, Dr. Franz says.
He sits before a computer console with multiple large flat video screens, and says to Scarpetta, “Let’s see. What magnification? We can go up to two hundred thousand X.” They could, but he’s being droll.
“And a grain of sand will look like a planet, and maybe we’ll discover little people living on it,” she says.
“Exactly what I was thinking.” He clicks through layers of menus.
She sits next to him, and the big roughing vacuum pumps remind Scarpetta of an MRI scanner, and then the turbo pump kicks in and is followed by a silence that is broken at intervals when the air dryer vents in a huge, heartfelt sigh that sounds like a whale. They wait for a while, and when they get a green light, they begin to look at what the instrument sees as the electron beam strikes an area of window glass.
“Sand,” Dr. Franz says. “And what the heck?”
Mingled with the different shapes and sizes of grains of sand that look like chips and shards of stone are spheres with craters that look like microscopic meteorites and moons. An elemental analysis confirms barium, antimony, and lead in addition to the silica of sand.
“Did this case involve a shooting?” Dr. Franz says.
“Not that I know of,” Scarpetta answers, and she adds, “It’s like Rome.”
“Could be environmental or occupational particulate,” he supposes. “The highest peak, of course, is silicon. Plus traces of potassium, sodium, calcium, and don’t know why, but a trace of aluminum. I’m going to subtract out the background, which is glass.” Now he’s talking to himself.
“This is similar — very similar — to what they found in Rome.” She says it again. “The sand in Drew Martin’s eye sockets. Same thing, and I’m repeating myself because I almost can’t believe it. Certainly, I don’t understand it. What appears to be gunshot residue. And these darkly shaded areas here?” She points. “These strata?”
“The glue,” he says. “I would venture to say that the sand isn’t from there — from Rome or its surrounds. What about the sand in Drew Martin’s case? Since there was no basalt, nothing to indicate volcanic activity, such as you’d expect in that area. So he brought his own sand with him to Rome?”
“I do know it’s never been assumed the sand came from there. At least not the nearby beaches of Ostia. I don’t know what he did. Maybe the sand is symbolic, has meaning. But I’ve seen magnified sand. I’ve seen magnified dirt. And I’ve never seen this.”
Dr. Franz manipulates the contrast and magnification some more. He says, “And now it gets stranger.”
“Maybe epithelial cells. Skin?” She scrutinizes what’s on the screen. “No mention of that in Drew Martin’s case. I need to call Captain Poma. It all depends on what was deemed important. Or noticed. And no matter how sophisticated the police lab, it’s not going to have R&D-quality instruments. It’s not going to have this.” She means the LC-SEM.
“Well, I hope they didn’t use mass spec and digest the entire sample in acid. Or there won’t be anything left to retest.”
“They didn’t,” she says. “Solid-phase x-ray analysis. Raman. Any skin cells should still be in the sand over there, but as I said, I’m not aware of it. There’s nothing on the report. No one mentioned it. I need to call Captain Poma.”
“It’s already seven p.m. over there.”
“He’s here. Well, in Charleston.”
“Now I’m more confused. I thought you told me earlier he’s Carabiniere. Not Charleston PD.”
“He showed up rather unexpectedly. In Charleston last night. Don’t ask me. I’m more confused than you are.”
She’s still stung. It wasn’t a pleasant surprise when Benton appeared at her house last night and had Captain Poma with him. For an instant, she was speechless with surprise, and after coffee and soup, they left just as abruptly as they had arrived. She hasn’t seen Benton since, and she’s unhappy and hurt, and not sure what to say to him when she sees him — whenever that might be. Before she flew here this morning, she considered taking off her ring.
“DNA,” Dr. Franz is saying. “So we don’t want to screw this up with bleach. But the signal would be better if we could get rid of skin debris and oils. If that’s what this is.”
It’s like looking at constellations of stars. Do they resemble animals or even a dipper? Does the moon have a face? What is she really seeing? And she pushes Benton from her thoughts so she can concentrate.
“No bleach, and to be safe, we definitely should try DNA,” she says. “And although epithelial cells are common in GSR, that’s only when a suspect’s hands are dabbed with double-sided sticky carbon tape. So what we’re seeing, if it’s skin, doesn’t make sense unless the skin cells were transferred by the killer’s hands. Or the cells were already on the windowpane. But what would be peculiar about the latter is the glass was cleaned, wiped off, and we’re seeing fibers from that. Consistent with white cotton, and the dirty T-shirt I found in the laundry basket is white cotton, but what does that mean? Not much, really. The laundry room would be a landfill of microscopic fibers.”
“At this magnification, everything becomes a landfill.” Dr. Franz clicks the mouse, and manipulates and repositions, and the electron beam strikes an area of broken glass.
Beneath the polyurethane foam, which dried clear, cracks look like canyons. Blurred white shapes might be more epithelial cells, and lines and pores are a skin imprint from some part of the body hitting the glass. There are fragments of hair.
“Someone ran into it or punched it?” Dr. Franz says. “That’s how it was broken, maybe?”
“Not with a hand or the bottom of a foot,” Scarpetta points out. “No friction ridge detail.” She can’t stop thinking about Rome. She says, “Instead of the GSR having been transferred from someone’s hands, maybe it was in the sand.”
“You mean before he touched it?”
“Maybe. Drew Martin wasn’t shot. We know that for a fact. Yet traces of barium, antimony, lead are in the sand found in her eye sockets.” She goes through it again, trying to sort it out. “He put the sand in there and then glued her eyelids shut. So what appears to be GSR could have been on his hands and was transferred to the sand, because certainly he touched it. But what if the GSR is there because it was already there?”
“First time I’ve ever heard of anybody doing something like that. What kind of world do we live in?”
“I hope it will be the last time we hear of somebody doing something like that, and I’ve been asking the same question most of my life,” she says.
“Nothing to say it wasn’t already there,” Dr. Franz says. “In other words, in this case”—he indicates the images on the screen—“is the sand on the glue or is the glue on the sand? And was the sand on his hands or were his hands in the sand? The glue in Rome. You said they didn’t use mass spec. Did they analyze it with FTIR?”
“I don’t think so. It’s cyanoacrylate. That’s as much as I know,” she says. “If we can try FTIR and see what molecular fingerprint we get.”
“Fine.”
“On the glue from the window and also the glue on the coin?”
“Certainly.”
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy is a simpler concept than the name implies. Chemical bonds of a molecule absorb light wavelengths and produce an annotated spectrum that is as unique as a fingerprint. At first glance, what they find is no surprise. The spectra are the same for the glue used on the window and the glue on the coin: Both are a cyanoacrylate but not one either Scarpetta or Dr. Franz recognizes. The molecular structure isn’t the ethylcyanoacrylate of everyday superglue. It’s something different.
“Two-octylcyanoacrylate,” Dr. Franz says, and the day is running away from them. It’s half past two. “I have no idea what that is except, obviously, an adhesive. And the glue in Rome? The molecular structure of that?”
“I’m not sure anyone asked,” she says.
Historic buildings softly lit, and the white steeple of Saint Michael’s pointing sharply at the moon.
From her splendid room, Dr. Self can’t distinguish the harbor and the ocean from the sky because there are no stars. It has stopped raining, but not for long.
“I love the pineapple fountain, not that you can see it from here.” She talks to the city lights beyond her window because it’s more pleasant than talking to Shandy. “Way down there at the water, below the market. And little children, so many of them underprivileged, splash in it during the summer. I will say, if you have one of those expensive condos, the noise would rather much tarnish your mood. Listen, I hear a helicopter. Do you hear it?” Dr. Self says. “The Coast Guard. And those huge planes the Air Force has. They seem like flying battleships, overhead every other minute, but then you know about those big planes. Wasting more taxpayers’ money for what?”
“I wouldn’t have told you if I’d thought you’d stop paying me,” Shandy says from her chair near a window, where she has no interest in the view.
“For more waste, more death,” Dr. Self says. “We know what happens when these boys and girls come home. We know it all too well, don’t we, Shandy?”
“Give me what we talked about and maybe I’ll leave you alone. I just want what everybody else does. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t give a shit about Iraq,” Shandy says. “I’m not interested in sitting here for hours talking about your politics. You want to hear real politics, come hang out at the bar.” She laughs in a not-so-nice way. “Now, that’s a thought, you at the bar. You on a big ole hog.” She rattles ice in her drink. “A Bush-whacker in Bush country.”
“Or perhaps you’re shrubs.”
“Cause we hate A-rabs and queers and don’t believe in flushing little babies down the toilet or selling their pieces and parts to medical science. We love apple pie, buffalo wings, Budweiser, and Jesus. Oh, yeah — and fucking. Give me what I came here for and I’ll shut up and go home.”
“As a psychiatrist, I’ve always said know yourself. But not so with you, my dear. I recommend you do your best not to know yourself at all.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Shandy says snidely. “Marino sure got over you when he got all over me.”
“He did exactly what I predicted. He thought with the wrong head,” Dr. Self says.
“You may be as rich and famous as Oprah, but all the power and glory in the world can’t turn on a man like I do. I’m young and sweet and know what they want, and I can keep going as long as they can and make them go a lot longer than they ever dreamed they could,” Shandy says.
“Are you talking about sex or the Kentucky Derby?”
“I’m talking about you being old,” Shandy says.
“Perhaps I should have you on my show. Such fascinating questions I could ask. What men see in you. What magical musk you must exude to keep them following you like your own rounded ass. We’ll display you just as you are right now, in black leather pants as tight as the peel on a plum, and a denim jacket with nothing under it. Of course, your boots. And the pièce de résistance — a do-rag that looks as if it’s on fire. Shopworn, to put it kindly, but it belongs to your poor friend who was just in a terrible accident. My audience would find it touching that you wear his do-rag around your neck and say you won’t take it off until he gets better. I’m reluctant to tell you that when a head is cracked open like an egg and the brain is exposed to the environment, which includes pavement, it’s fairly serious.”
Shandy drinks.
“I suspect by the end of an hour — and I don’t see a series in this, just one small segment of one show — we’ll conclude that you’re alluring and pretty with a suppleness and come-hither-ness there’s no denying,” Dr. Self says. “Likely, you can get away with your base predilections for now, but when you get as old as you think I am, gravity will make you honest. What do I say on my show? Gravity will get you. Life is inclined toward falling. Not standing or flying, indeed, barely sitting. But to fall just as hard as Marino did. When I encouraged you to seek him out after he was foolish enough to seek me out first, the potential plunge seemed rather minimal. Just whatever trouble you could cause, my dear. And just how far could Marino fall, after all, when he’s never risen above much of anything to begin with?”
“Give me the money,” Shandy says. “Or maybe I should pay you so I don’t have to listen to you anymore. No wonder your—”
“Don’t say it,” Dr. Self snaps at her but with a smile. “We’ve agreed on who we don’t discuss and what names we must never say. It’s for your own good. You mustn’t forget that part. You have much more to worry about than I do.”
“You should be glad,” Shandy says. “Truth is? I did you a favor, because now you won’t have to deal with me anymore, and you probably like me about as much as you like Dr. Phil.”
“He’s been on my show.”
“Well, get me his autograph.”
“I’m not glad,” Dr. Self says. “I wish you’d never called with your disgusting news, which you told me so I’d pay you off and help you stay out of jail. You’re a smart girl. It’s not to my advantage to have you in jail.”
“I wish I’d never called. I didn’t know you’d stop the checks because…”
“Because what for? What would I be paying for? What I was paying for doesn’t need my support anymore.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. But you always said I had to be honest.”
“If I did, I’ve wasted my words,” Dr. Self says.
“And you wonder why…?”
“I wonder why you want to annoy me by breaking our rule. There are some subjects we don’t bring up.”
“I can bring up Marino. And I sure have.” Shandy smirks. “Did I tell you? He still wants to fuck the Big Chief. That should bother you, since the two of you are about the same age.”
Shandy plows through hors d’oeuvres as if they are Kentucky Fried Chicken.
“Maybe he’d fuck you if you asked him real nice. But he’d fuck her before even me, given the choice. Can you imagine?” she says.
If bourbon were air, there would be nothing left to breathe in the room. Shandy grabbed so much in the Club Level drawing room, she had to ask the concierge for a tray while Dr. Self made a cup of hot chamomile tea and looked the other way.
“She sure must be something special,” Shandy says. “No wonder you hate her so much.”
It was metaphorical. Everything Shandy represents causes Dr. Self to look the other way, and she’d looked the other way so long, she didn’t see the collision coming.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Dr. Self says. “You’re to leave this very pretty little city and never come back. I know you’ll miss your beach house, but since I’m only being polite to call it yours, I predict you’ll get over it quickly. Before you pack up, you’ll strip it to the bone. Do you remember the stories about Princess Diana’s apartment? What happened to it after she died? Carpet and wallpaper torn out, even the light-bulbs removed, her car crushed into a cube.”
“No one’s touching my BMW or my bike.”
“You’re to start tonight. Scrub, paint, use bleach. Burn things — I don’t care. But not a drop of blood or semen or spit, not an article of clothing, not a single hair or a fiber or a morsel of food. You should go back to Charlotte where you belong. Join the Church of the Sports Bar and worship the god of money. Your erstwhile father was wiser than I. He left you nothing, and certainly I have to leave you something. I have it in my pocket. And then I’m rid of you.”
“You’re the one who said I should live here in Charleston so I could be…”
“And now I have the privilege of changing my mind.”
“You can’t make me do a fucking thing. I don’t give a shit who you are, and I’m tired of you telling me what to say. Or not to say.”
“I am who I am and can make you do whatever I please,” Dr. Self says. “Now’s a good time to be pleasant to me. You asked my help, and here I am. I’ve just told you what to do so you can get away with your sins. You should say ‘Thank you’ and ‘Whatever you wish is my command’ and ‘I’ll never do anything to upset or inconvenience you again.’”
“Then give it to me. I’m out of bourbon and out of my mind. You make me feel crazier than a shithouse rat.”
“Not so fast. We haven’t finished our little fireside chat. What did you do with Marino?”
“He’s gonzo.”
“Gonzo. Then you are well-read, after all. Fiction truly is the best fact, and gonzo journalism is truer than truth. The exception is the war, since fiction got us into it. And that led to what you did, that atrociously horrible thing you did. Amazing to contemplate,” Dr. Self says. “You’re sitting here right this very minute and in that very chair because of George W. Bush. I’m sitting here because of him, too. Giving you an audience is beneath me, and this really will be the last time I rush to your rescue.”
“I’m going to need another house. I can’t just move somewhere and not have a house,” Shandy says.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the irony. I ask you to have a little fun with Marino because I wanted a little fun with the Big Chief, as you call her. I didn’t ask for the rest of it. I didn’t know the rest of it. Well, now I do. Very few people best me, and no one I’ve met is worse than you. Before you pack up, clean up, and go wherever people like you go, one last question. Was there ever even a minute when it bothered you? We’re not talking poor impulse control, my dear. Not when something so loathsome went on and on and on. How did you look at it day after day? I can’t even look at a mistreated dog.”
“Just give me what I came here for, okay?” Shandy says. “Marino’s gone.” She refrains from saying gonzo this time. “I did what you told me…”
“I didn’t tell you to do the thing that’s forced me to come to Charleston when I have infinitely better things to do. And I’m not leaving until I know you are.”
“You owe me.”
“Shall we add up what you’ve cost me over the years?”
“Yeah, you owe me because I didn’t want to keep it and you made me. I’m tired of living your past. Doing shit because it makes you feel better about your own shit. Anytime you could have taken it off my hands, but you didn’t want it, either. That’s what I finally had to figure out. You didn’t want it, either. So why should I suffer?”
“Do you realize this lovely hotel is on Meeting Street, and if my suite faced north instead of east, we could almost see the morgue?”
“She’s the one who’s a Nazi, and I’m pretty sure he fucked her, not just wanted to, but I mean did it for real. He lied to me so he could spend the night at her house. So how does that make you feel? She must be something, all right. He’s got such a thing for her, he’d bark like a dog or use a litterbox if she told him to. You owe me for having to put up with all that. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t pulled one of your tricks and said, ‘Shandy? There’s this big, dumb cop, and how about doing me a favor?’”
“You did yourself a favor. You got information I didn’t know you needed,” Dr. Self says. “So I made a suggestion, but you certainly didn’t take me up on it for my sake. It was an opportunity. You’ve always been so skilled at taking advantage of opportunities. In fact, I’d call you brilliant at it. Now, this wondrous revelation. Maybe it’s my reward for all you’ve cost me. She cheated? Dr. Kay Scarpetta cheated? I wonder if her fiancé knows.”
“And what about me? The asshole cheated on me. Nobody does that. All the guys I could have, and that fat fuck cheats on me?”
“Here’s what you do about it.” Dr. Self slips an envelope out of a pocket of her red silk robe. “You’re going to tell Benton Wesley.”
“You’re a piece of work.”
“It’s only fair he should know. Your cashier’s check. Before I forget.” She holds up the envelope.
“So now you’re going to play another little game with me.”
“Oh, it’s not a game, my dear. And I just happen to have Benton’s e-mail address,” Dr. Self says. “My laptop’s on the desk.”
Scarpetta’s conference room.
“Nothing unusual,” Lucy says. “Looked the same.”
“The same?” Benton asks. “The same as what?”
The four of them are gathered around a small table in what was a servants’ quarters, quite possibly occupied by a young woman named Mary, a slave set free who wouldn’t leave the family after the War. Scarpetta has gone to much trouble to know the history of her building. Right now she wishes she’d never bought it.
“I will ask again,” says Captain Poma. “Has there been a difficulty with him? Perhaps a problem with his job?”
Lucy says, “When doesn’t he have difficulty with any job?”
No one’s heard from Marino. Scarpetta has called him half a dozen times, maybe more, and he hasn’t called her back. On her way here, Lucy stopped by his fishing shack. His motorcycle was parked underneath it, but his truck was gone. He didn’t answer the door. He wasn’t there. She says she looked through a window, but Scarpetta knows better. She knows Lucy.
“Yes, I’d say so,” Scarpetta says. “I’d say he’s been unhappy. Misses Florida and is sorry he moved here, and probably doesn’t like working for me. This isn’t a good time to dwell on the trials and troubles of Marino.”
She feels Benton’s eyes on her. She makes notes on a legal pad and checks other notes she’s already made. She checks preliminary lab reports even though she knows exactly what they say.
“He hasn’t moved,” Lucy says. “Or if he did, he left all his stuff behind.”
“And you saw all this through a window?” Captain Poma says, and he’s very curious about Lucy.
He’s been watching her since everyone assembled in this room. He seems slightly amused by her, and her response is to ignore him. The way he looks at Scarpetta is the way he looked at her in Rome.
“Seems like a lot to see through a window,” he says to Scarpetta, even though he’s talking to Lucy.
“He hasn’t gone into his e-mail, either,” Lucy says. “He might suspect I’m monitoring it. Nothing between him and Dr. Self.”
“In other words,” Scarpetta says, “he’s off the radar screen. Completely.”
She gets up and pulls down window shades because it’s dark. It’s raining again, and has been since Lucy picked her up in Knoxville, when the mountains looked like they weren’t there because it was so foggy. Lucy had to divert wherever she could, flying very slowly, following rivers and finding lower elevations. It was luck, or perhaps God’s good grace, that they weren’t stranded. Search efforts have been halted, except those conducted on the ground. Lydia Webster hasn’t been found alive or dead. Her Cadillac hasn’t been seen.
“Let’s organize our thoughts,” Scarpetta says, because she doesn’t want to talk about Marino. She’s afraid Benton will sense how she feels.
Guilty and angry, and increasingly afraid. It appears Marino has pulled a disappearing stunt, got in his truck and drove away without a warning, without any effort to repair the damage he’s done. He’s never been facile with words, and he’s never made much effort to understand his complicated emotions, and this time what he needs to fix exceeds his capacity to cope. She’s tried to dismiss him, to not give a damn, but he’s like the persistent fog. Thoughts of him obscure what’s around her, and one lie becomes another. She told Benton her bruises are from the hatchback of her SUV accidentally shutting on her wrists. She hasn’t undressed in front of him.
“Let’s try to make some sense of what we know,” she says to everyone. “I would like to talk about the sand. Silica — or quartz, and limestone, and with high magnification, fragments of shells and coral, typical of sand in subtropical areas like this. And most interesting and perplexing of all, the components of gunshot residue. In fact, I’m just going to call it gunshot residue, because we can’t figure out any other explanation for barium, antimony, and lead to be present in beach sand.”
“If it’s beach sand,” Captain Poma says. “Maybe it isn’t. Dr. Maroni says the patient who came to see him claimed to have just returned from Iraq. I would expect gunshot residue in many areas of Iraq. Maybe he brought sand back from Iraq because he became demented over there, and the sand is a reminder.”
“We didn’t find gypsum, and gypsum’s common in desert sand,” Scarpetta says. “But it really depends on what area of Iraq, and I don’t believe Dr. Maroni knows the answer to that.”
“He didn’t tell me exactly where,” Benton says.
“What about his notes?” Lucy asks.
“It’s not in them.”
“Sand in different regions of Iraq has different compositions and morphology,” Scarpetta says. “It all depends on how sediment was deposited, and although a high saline content doesn’t prove the sand is from a beach, both samples we have — from Drew Martin’s body and Lydia Webster’s house — have a high saline content. In other words, salt.”
“I think what’s important is why sand is so important to him,” Benton says. “What does sand say about him? He calls himself the Sandman. Symbolic of putting people to sleep? Maybe. A type of euthanasia that might be related to the glue, to some medical component? Maybe.”
The glue. Two-octylcyanoacrylate. Surgical glue, primarily used by plastic surgeons and other medical practitioners to close small incisions or cuts, and in the military to treat friction blisters.
Scarpetta says, “The surgical glue might be what he had because of whatever it is he does and whoever he is. Not simply symbolism.”
“Is there an advantage?” Captain Poma asks. “Surgical glue instead of everyday superglue? I’m not so familiar with what plastic surgeons do.”
“Surgical glue is biodegradable,” she says. “It’s noncarcinogenic.”
“A healthy glue.” He smiles at her.
“You might say that.”
“Does he believe he’s relieving suffering? Maybe.” Benton resumes, as if ignoring them.
“You said it’s sexual,” Captain Poma points out.
He’s dressed in a dark blue suit and a black shirt and black tie and looks as if he stepped out of a Hollywood premiere or an ad for Armani. What he doesn’t look like is someone who belongs in Charleston, and Benton doesn’t seem to like him any more than he did in Rome.
“I didn’t say it was only sexual,” Benton replies. “I said there’s a sexual component. I will also say he may not be aware of it, and we don’t know if he assaults his victims sexually, only that he tortures them.”
“And I’m not sure we know that for a fact.”
“You saw the photographs he sent to Dr. Self. What do you call it when someone forces a woman to sit naked in a tub of cold water? And possibly dunks her?”
“I don’t know what I’d call it, because I wasn’t there when he did it,” Captain Poma says.
“Had you been, I suppose we wouldn’t be here, because the cases would be solved.” Benton’s eyes are like steel.
“I find it rather fantastic to think he’s relieving their suffering,” Captain Poma says to him. “Especially if your theory is correct and he tortures them. It would seem he causes suffering. Not relieves it.”
“Obviously, he causes it. But we’re not dealing with a rational mind, only an organized one. He’s calculating and deliberate. He’s intelligent and sophisticated. He understands breaking and entering and leaving no evidence. He possibly engages in cannibalism, and possibly believes he’s one with his victims, makes them part of him. That he has a significant relationship with them and is merciful.”
“The evidence.” Lucy is far more interested in that. “Do you think he knows there’s gunshot residue in the sand?”
“He might,” Benton says.
“I seriously doubt it,” Scarpetta says. “Very seriously. Even if the sand comes from some battlefield, so to speak, someplace meaningful to him, that doesn’t mean he knows the elemental composition. Why would he?”
“Point well taken. I should say it’s likely he brings the sand with him,” Benton says. “It’s very likely he brings his own tools and cutting instruments with him. Whatever he brings with him isn’t purely utilitarian. His world is rife with symbols, and he’s acting on impulses that make sense only when we understand these symbols.”
“I really don’t care about his symbols,” Lucy says. “What I care most about is he e-mailed Dr. Self. That’s the lynchpin, in my opinion. Why her? And why hijack the port’s wireless network? Why climb over the fence — we’ll assume. And use an abandoned container? Like he’s cargo?”
Lucy was her usual self. She climbed the shipyard’s fence earlier tonight and looked around because she had a hunch. Where could one hijack the port’s network without being seen? She got her answer inside a banged-up container where she discovered a table and a chair and a wireless router. Scarpetta has thought a lot about Bull, about the night he decided to smoke weed near abandoned containers and got cut up. Was the Sandman there? Did Bull get too close? She wants to ask him but hasn’t seen him since they searched the alley together and found the gun and the gold coin.
“I left everything in place,” Lucy says. “Hoping he wouldn’t know I was there. But he might. I can’t say. He’s not sent any e-mails from the port tonight, but he hasn’t for a while.”
“What about the weather?” Scarpetta asks, mindful of the time.
“Should clear by midnight. I’m stopping by the lab, then heading to the airport,” Lucy says.
She gets up. Then Captain Poma does. Benton stays in his chair, and Scarpetta meets his eyes, and her phobias return.
He says to her, “I need to talk to you a minute.”
Lucy and Captain Poma leave, and Scarpetta shuts her door.
“Maybe I should start. You showed up in Charleston with no announcement,” she says. “You didn’t call. I hadn’t heard from you in days, and then you walk in unexpectedly last night with him…”
“Kay,” he says, reaching for his briefcase and placing it on his lap. “We shouldn’t be doing this right now.”
“You’ve barely talked to me.”
“Can we…?” he starts to say.
“No, we can’t put this off until later. I can scarcely concentrate. I have to get to Rose’s apartment building, have so much to do, too much to do, and everything’s disintegrating and I know what you want to talk to me about. I can’t tell you how I feel. Maybe I really can’t. I don’t blame you if you’ve made a decision. I certainly understand.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest we put this off until later,” Benton says. “I was going to suggest we stop interrupting each other.”
This confuses her. That light in his eyes. She’s always believed what’s in his eyes is only for her, and now she’s afraid it isn’t and never was. He’s looking at her, and she looks away.
“What do you want to talk to me about, Benton?”
“Him.”
“Otto?”
“I don’t trust him. Waiting for the Sandman to show up to send more e-mails? On foot? In the rain? In the dark? Did he tell you he was coming here?”
“I suppose someone informed him of what’s been happening. A connection of the Drew Martin case with Charleston, with Hilton Head.”
“Maybe Dr. Maroni’s been talking to him,” Benton considers. “I don’t know. He’s like a phantom.” He means the captain. “All over the damn place. I don’t trust him.”
“Maybe I’m the one you don’t trust,” she says. “Maybe you should say it and get it over with.”
“I don’t trust him at all.”
“Then you shouldn’t spend so much time with him.”
“I haven’t. I don’t know what he does or where. Except I think he came to Charleston because of you. It’s obvious what he wants. To be the hero. To impress you. To make love to you. I can’t say I’d blame you. He’s handsome and charming, I’ll give him that.”
“Why are you jealous of him? He’s so small compared to you. I’ve done nothing to warrant it. You’re the one who lives up there and leaves me alone. I understand your not wanting to be in this relationship anymore. Just tell me and get it over with.” Scarpetta looks at her left hand, at the ring. “Should I take it off?” She starts to take it off.
“Don’t,” Benton says. “Please don’t. I don’t believe you want that.”
“It’s not a matter of what I want. It’s what I deserve.”
“I don’t blame men for falling in love with you. Or wanting you in bed. Do you know what happened?”
“I should give you the ring.”
“Let me tell you what happened,” Benton says. “It’s about time you knew. When your father died, he took some of you with him.”
“Please don’t be cruel.”
“Because he adored you,” Benton says. “How could he not? His beautiful little girl. His brilliant little girl. His good little girl.”
“Don’t hurt me like this.”
“I’m telling you a truth, Kay. A very important one.” The light in his eyes again.
She can’t look at him.
“From that day forward, a part of you decided it was too dangerous to notice the way someone looks at you if he adores you or wants you sexually. If he adores you and dies? You believe you can’t endure that again. Sexually wants you? Then how do you work with cops and DAs if you think they’re imagining what’s under your clothes and what they might do with it?”
“Stop it. I don’t deserve this.”
“You never did.”
“Just because I choose not to notice doesn’t mean I deserve what he did.”
“Never in a million years.”
“I don’t want to live here anymore,” she says. “I should give you back the ring. It was your great-grandmother’s.”
“And run away from home? Like you did when you had no one left but your mother and Dorothy? You ran away without going anywhere. Lost in learning and accomplishment. Running fast, too busy to feel. Now you want to run away like Marino just did.”
“I should never have let him into the house.”
“You have for twenty years. Why wouldn’t you have that night? Especially when he was so drunk and dangerous to himself. One thing you are is kind.”
“Rose told you. Maybe Lucy.”
“An e-mail from Dr. Self, indirectly. You and Marino are having an affair. I found out the rest of it from Lucy. The truth. Look at me, Kay. I’m looking at you.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything to him. And make it worse, because then you’ll be like him. This is why you’ve avoided me, didn’t tell me you were coming to Charleston. Have scarcely called me.”
“I haven’t avoided you. Where do I start? There’s so much.”
“What else?”
“We had a patient,” he says. “Dr. Self befriended her — I use the word loosely. She basically called this patient an imbecile, and from Dr. Self, it wasn’t name-calling or a joke. It was a judgment, a diagnosis. It was worse because Dr. Self said it, and the patient was going home where she wasn’t safe. She went to the first liquor store she could find. It appears she drank nearly a fifth of vodka, and she hanged herself. So I’ve been dealing with that. And so much else you don’t know about. That’s why I’ve been distant. Not talked to you much these past several days.”
He snaps open the clasps of his briefcase and lifts out his laptop.
“I’ve been very reluctant to use the hospital’s phones, their wireless Internet, been very careful on every front. Even the home front. One reason I wanted to get out of there. And you’re about to ask me what’s going on, and I’m about to tell you I don’t know. But it’s got to do with Paulo’s electronic files. The ones Lucy got into because he left them surprisingly vulnerable to anyone who might want to get into them.”
“Vulnerable if you knew where to look. Lucy isn’t exactly anyone.”
“She was also limited because she had to get into his computer remotely as opposed to having access to the actual machine.” He turns on his laptop. He inserts a CD into the drive. “Come closer.”
She moves her chair flush against his and looks at what he’s doing. Momentarily, he has a document on his screen.
“The notes we’ve already looked at,” she says, recognizing the electronic file that Lucy found.
“Not quite,” Benton says. “With all due respect to Lucy, I have access to a few bright people, too. Not as bright as she is, but they’ll do in a pinch. What you’re looking at is a file that’s been deleted and then recovered. It’s not the file you saw, the one Lucy found after tricking the system admin password out of Josh. That particular file was several copies removed from this. Several later.”
She taps the down arrow and reads. “It looks the same.”
“The text isn’t what’s different. It’s this.” He touches the file name at the top of the screen. “Do you notice the same thing I did when Josh first showed me this?”
“Josh? I hope you trust him.”
“I do, and for a good reason. He did the same thing Lucy did. Got into something he shouldn’t, and birds of a feather. Thankfully, they’re allies and he forgives her for duping him. In fact, he was impressed.”
“File name’s MSNote-ten-twenty-one-oh-six,” Scarpetta says. “From which I assume MSNotes are the initials of the patient and the notes Dr. Maroni made. And ten-twenty-one-oh-six is October twenty-first, two thousand six.”
“You just said it. You said MSNotes and the file name is MSNote.” He touches the screen again. “A file that’s been copied at least once, and inadvertently the name got changed. A typo. I don’t know how, exactly. Or maybe it was deliberate, so he didn’t keep copying over the same file. I do that sometimes if I don’t want to lose an earlier draft. What’s important is that when Josh recovered every deleted file pertaining to the patient of interest, we find the earliest draft was written two weeks ago.”
“Maybe it’s just the earliest draft he stored on that particular hard drive?” she suggests. “Or maybe he opened the file two weeks ago and saved it, which would have changed the date stamp? But I suppose that begs the question of why would he have looked at those notes before we even knew he had seen the Sandman as a patient? When Dr. Maroni left for Rome, we’d never heard of the Sandman.”
“There’s that,” Benton says. “And there’s the fabrication of the file. Because it is a fabrication. Yes, Paulo wrote those notes right before he left for Rome. He wrote them the very day Dr. Self was admitted to McLean on April twenty-seventh. In fact, several hours before she arrived at the hospital. And the reason I can say this with a reasonable degree of certainty is because Paulo may have emptied his trash, but even those deletions aren’t gone. Josh recovered them.”
He opens another file, this one a rough draft of the notes Scarpetta is familiar with, but in this version, the patient’s initials aren’t MS but WR.
“Then it would seem to me Dr. Self must have called Paulo. We assume that, anyway, because she couldn’t just show up at the hospital. Whatever she told him over the phone inspired him to begin writing these notes,” Scarpetta says.
“Another sign of fabrication,” Benton says. “Using a patient’s initials for a file name. We’re not supposed to do that. Even if you do stray from protocol and good judgment, it doesn’t make sense he changed his patient’s initials. Why? To rename him. Why? To give him an alias? Paulo knows better than to do any such thing.”
“Maybe the patient doesn’t exist,” Scarpetta says.
“Now you see what I’m leading up to,” Benton says. “I don’t think the Sandman was ever Paulo’s patient.”