Five Scarpetta Novels Page 19

  Crossing the street, I entered the cafe, which was typically busy and loud. Daigo was mixing whiskey sours and did not notice me until I was pulling out a chair at the bar.

  “You look like you need something strong tonight, honey,” she said, dropping an orange slice and a cherry into each glass.

  “I do but I’m working,” I said, and the dog’s barking had stopped.

  “That’s the problem with you and the Captain, both. You’re always working.” She caught a waiter’s eye.

  He came over and got the drinks, and Daigo started on the next order.

  “Are you aware of the dog directly across the street from you? Across Twenty-eighth Street?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  “You must mean Outlaw. Least that’s what I call that son of a bitch dog. You have any idea how many customers that mangy thing’s scared off from here?” She glanced at me as she angrily sliced a lime. “You know he’s half shepherd and half wolf,” she went on before I could reply. “He bother you or something?”

  “It’s just that his barking is very fierce and loud, and I’m wondering if he might have barked after Danny Webster left here last night. Especially since we are suspicious he was parked under the magnolia tree, which is in the dog’s yard.”

  “Well, that damn dog barks all the time.”

  “Then you don’t remember, not that I would expect you—”

  She cut me off as she read an order and popped open a beer, “ ’Course I remember. Like I said, he barks all the time. Wasn’t no different with that poor boy. Outlaw barked up a storm when he went out. That damn dog barks at the wind.”

  “What about before Danny went out?” I asked.

  She paused to think, then her eyes lit up. “Well, now that you mention it, it seems like the barking was pretty constant early in the evening. In fact, I made a comment about it, said it was driving me crazy and I had half a mind to call the damn thing’s owner.”

  “What about other customers?” I asked. “Did many other people come in while Danny was in here?”

  “No.” Of that she was sure. “First of all, he came in early. Other than the usual barflies, there was no one here when he arrived. Fact is, I don’t remember anybody coming in to eat until at least seven. And by then he’d already left.”

  “And how long did the dog bark after he left?”

  “On and off the rest of the night, like he always does.”

  “On and off but not solidly.”

  “No one would take that all night. Not solidly.” She eyed me shrewdly. “Now if you’re wondering if that dog was barking because somebody was out there waiting for that boy”—she pointed her knife at me—“I don’t think so. The kind of riffraff that would show up here is going to run like hell when that dog starts in. That’s why they have him. Those people over there.” She pointed with the knife again.

  I thought again of the stolen Sig used to shoot Danny, and of where the officer had lost it, and I knew exactly what Daigo meant. The average street criminal would be afraid of a big, loud dog and the attention its barking might bring. I thanked her and walked back outside. For a moment I stood on the sidewalk and surveyed smudges of gas lamps set far apart along narrow, dark streets. Spaces between buildings and homes were thick with shadows, and anyone could wait in them and not be seen.

  I looked across at my new car, and the small yard beyond it where the dog lay in wait. He was silent just now, and I walked north on the sidewalk for several yards to see what he might do. But he did not seem interested until I neared his yard. Then I heard the low, evil growling that raised the hair on the back of my neck. By the time I was unlocking my car door, he was on his hind legs, barking and shaking the fence.

  “You’re just guarding your turf, aren’t you, boy?” I said. “I wish you could tell me what you saw last night.”

  I looked at the small house as an upstairs window suddenly slid up.

  “Bozo, shut up!” yelled a fat man with tousled hair. “Shut up, you stupid mutt!” The window slammed shut.

  “All right, Bozo,” I said to the dog who was not really called Outlaw, unfortunately for him. “I’m leaving you alone now.” I looked around one last time and got into my car.

  The drive from Daigo’s restaurant to the restored area on Franklin where police had found my former car took less than three minutes if one were driving the posted speed. I turned around at the hill leading to Sugar Bottom, for to drive down there, especially in a Mercedes, was out of the question. That thought led to another.

  I wondered why the assailant would have chosen to remain on foot in a restored area with a Neighborhood Watch program as widely publicized as the one here. Church Hill published its own newsletter, and residents looked out their windows and did not hesitate to call the cops, especially after shots had been fired. It seemed it might have been safer to have casually returned to my car and driven a safe distance away.

  Yet the killer did not do this, and I wondered if he knew this area’s landmarks but not the culture because he really was not from here. I wondered if he had not taken my car because his own was parked nearby and mine was of no interest. He didn’t need it for money or to get away. That theory made sense if Danny had been followed instead of happened upon. While he was eating dinner, his assailant could have parked, then returned to the cafe on foot and waited in the dark near the Mercedes while the dog barked.

  I was passing my building on Franklin when my pager vibrated against my side. I slipped it off and turned on its light so I could see. I had neither radio nor phone yet, and made a quick decision to turn into the OCME back parking lot. Letting myself in through a side door, I entered our security code, walked into the morgue and took the elevator upstairs. Traces of the day’s false alarm had vanished, but Rose’s death certificates suspended in air were an eerie display. Sitting behind my desk, I returned Marino’s page.

  “Where the hell are you?” he said right off.

  “The office,” I said, staring up at the clock.

  “Well, I think that’s the last place you ought to be right now. And I bet you’re alone. You eaten yet?”

  “What do you mean, this is the last place I should be right now?”

  “Let’s meet and I’ll explain.”

  We agreed to go to the Linden Row Inn, which was downtown and private. I took my time because Marino lived on the other side of the river, but he was quick. When I arrived, he was sitting at a table before the fire in the parlor. Off duty, he was drinking a beer. The bartender was a quaint older man in a black bow tie, and he was carrying in a big bucket of ice while Pachelbel played.

  “What is it?” I said to Marino as I sat. “What’s happened now?”

  He was dressed in a black golf shirt, and his belly strained against the knitted fabric and flowed roundly over the waistband of his jeans. The ashtray was already littered with cigarette butts, and I suspected the beer he was drinking wasn’t his first or last.

  “Would you like to hear the story of your false alarm this afternoon, or has someone gotten to you first?” He lifted the mug to his lips.

  “No one has gotten to me about much of anything. Although I’ve heard a rumor about some radioactivity scare,” I said as the bartender appeared with fruit and cheese. “Pellegrino with lemon, please,” I ordered.

  “Apparently, it’s more than a rumor,” Marino said.

  “What?” I gave him a frown. “And why would you know more about what’s going on inside my building than I do?”

  “Because this radioactive situation has to do with evidence in a city homicide case.” He took another swallow of beer. “Danny Webster’s homicide, to be exact.”

  He allowed me a moment to grasp what he had just said, but my limits were unwilling to stretch.

  “Are you implying that Danny’s body was radioactive?” I asked as if he were crazy.

  “No. But the debris we vacuumed from the inside of your car apparently is. And I’m telling you, the guys that did the processing are scared
shitless, and I’m not happy about it either because I poked around inside your ride, too. That’s one thing I got a big damn problem with like some people do with spiders and snakes. It’s like these guys who got exposed to Agent Orange in Nam, and now they’re dying of cancer.”

  The expression on my face now was incredulous. “You’re talking about the front seat passenger’s side of my black Mercedes?”

  “Yeah, and if I were you, I wouldn’t drive it anymore. How do you know that shit won’t get to you over a long time?”

  “I won’t be driving that car anymore,” I said. “Don’t worry. But who told you the vacuumings were radioactive?”

  “The lady who runs that SEM thing.”

  “The scanning electron microscope.”

  “Yeah. It picked up uranium, which set the Geiger counter off. Which I’m told has never happened before.”

  “I’m sure it hasn’t.”

  “So next we have a panic on the part of security, which are right down the hall, as you know,” he went on. “And this one guard makes the executive decision to evacuate the building. Only problem is, he forgets that when he breaks the glass on the little red box and yanks the handle, he’s also going to set off the deluge system.”

  “To my knowledge,” I said, “it’s never been used. I could see how someone might forget. In fact, he might not even have known about it.” I thought of the director of general services, and I knew what his attitude would be. “Good God. All this happened because of my car. In a sense, because of me.”

  “No, Doc.” Marino met my eyes and his face was hard. “It all happened because some asshole killed Danny. How many times I got to tell you that?”

  “I think I’d like a glass of wine.”

  “Quit blaming yourself. I know what you’re doing. I know how you get.”

  I searched for the bartender, and the fire was beginning to feel too hot. Four people had sat nearby and they were talking loudly about the “enchanted garden” in the Inn’s courtyard where Edgar Allan Poe used to play when he was a boy in Richmond.

  “He wrote about it in one of his poems,” a woman was saying.

  “They say the crab cakes are good here.”

  “I don’t like it when you get like this,” Marino went on, leaning closer to me and pointing a finger. “Next thing I know you’re doing things on your own and me? I don’t sleep.”

  The bartender saw me and made a quick detour in our direction. I changed my mind about Chardonnay and ordered Scotch as I took off my jacket and draped it over a chair. I was perspiring and uncomfortable in my skin.

  “Give me one of your Marlboros,” I said to Marino.

  His lips parted as he stared at me, shocked.

  “Please.” I held out my hand.

  “Oh no you don’t.” He was adamant.

  “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll smoke one and you’ll smoke one and then both of us will quit.”

  He hesitated. “You ain’t serious.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “I don’t see anything in it for me.”

  “Except being alive. If it’s not too late.”

  “Thank you. But no deal.” Picking up his pack, he knocked out a cigarette for each of us, his lighter in hand.

  “How long has it been?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe three years.” The cigarette tasted bland, but holding it with my lips felt wonderful, as if lips had been created for such a fit.

  The first hit cut my lungs like a blade, and I was instantly lightheaded. I felt as I had when I smoked my first Camel at the age of sixteen. Then nicotine enveloped my brain, just as it had back then, and the world spun more slowly and my thoughts coalesced.

  “God, I have missed this,” I mourned as I tapped an ash.

  “So don’t nag me anymore.”

  “Someone needs to.”

  “Hey, it’s not like it’s marijuana or something.”

  “I haven’t smoked that. But if it wasn’t illegal, maybe today I would.”

  “Shit. Now you’re beginning to scare me.”

  I inhaled one last time and put the cigarette out while Marino watched me with a weird expression on his face. He always slightly panicked if I acted in a way he did not know.

  “Listen.” I got down to business. “I think Danny was followed last night, that his death isn’t a random crime motivated by robbery, gay bashing or drugs. I think his killer waited for him, maybe as long as an hour, then confronted him as he returned to my car in the dark shadows near the magnolia tree on Twenty-eighth Street. You know that dog, the one who lives right there? He barked the entire time Danny was inside the Hill Cafe, according to Daigo.”

  Marino regarded me in silence for a moment. “See, that’s what I was just saying. You went there tonight.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  His jaw muscles bunched as he looked away. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Daigo remembers the dog barking nonstop.”

  He said nothing.

  “I was there earlier and the dog doesn’t bark unless you get close to his property. Then he goes berserk. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  His eyes came back to me. “Who’s going to hang out there for an hour when a dog’s acting like that? Come on, Doc.”

  “Not your average killer,” I answered as my drink appeared. “That’s my point.”

  I waited until the bartender served us, and after he was gone from our table I said, “I think Danny may have been a professional hit.”

  “Okay.” He drained his beer. “Why? What the hell did that kid know? Unless he was into drugs or some type of organized crime.”

  “What he was into was Tidewater,” I said. “He lived there. He worked in my office there. He was at least peripherally involved in the Eddings case, and we know whoever killed Eddings was very sophisticated. That, too, was premeditated and carefully planned.”

  Marino was thoughtfully rubbing his face. “So you’re convinced there’s a connection.”

  “I think nobody wanted us to know there was. I think whoever is behind this assumed he would look like a carjacking gone bad or some other street crime.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what everybody still thinks.”

  “Not everybody.” I held his eyes. “Absolutely, not everybody.”

  “And you’re convinced Danny was the intended victim, saying this was a professional hit.”

  “It could have been me. It could have been him to scare me,” I said. “We may never know.”

  “You got tox yet on Eddings?” He motioned for another round.

  “You know what today was like. Hopefully, I’ll know something tomorrow. Tell me what’s going on with Chesapeake.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t got a clue.”

  “How can you not have a clue?” I impatiently said. “They must have three hundred officers. Isn’t anybody working on Ted Eddings’ death?”

  “Doesn’t matter if they have three thousand officers. All you need is one division screwed up, and in this instance it’s homicide. So that’s a barricade we can’t get around because Detective Roche is still on the case.”

  “I don’t understand it,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, he’s still on your case, too.”

  I didn’t listen for he wasn’t worth my time.

  “I’d watch my back, if I were you.” He met my eyes. “I wouldn’t take it lightly.” He paused. “You know how cops talk, so I hear things. And there’s a rumor being spread out there that you hit on Roche, and his chief’s going to try to get the governor to fire you.”

  “People can gossip about whatever they’d like,” I impatiently said.

  “Well, part of the problem is they look at him and how young he is, and some people don’t have a hard time imagining that you might be attracted.” He hesitated, and I could tell he despised Roche and wanted to maim him. “I hate to tell you,” Marino said, “but you’d be a whole lot better off if he wasn’t good-looking.”

  “
Harassment is not about how people look, Marino. But he has no case, and I’m not worried about it.”

  “Point is, he wants to hurt you, Doc, and he’s already trying hard. One way or another he’s going to screw you, if he can.”

  “He can wait in line with all the other people who want to.”

  “The person who called the tow lot in Virginia Beach and said they was you, was a man.” He stared at me. “Just so you know.”

  “Danny wouldn’t have done that,” was all I could say.

  “I wouldn’t think so. But maybe Roche would,” Marino replied.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  He sighed. “I don’t have time to tell you.”

  “We may need to make a trip to Charlottesville.”

  “What for?” He frowned. “Don’t tell me Lucy’s still acting screwy.”

  “That’s not why we need to go. But maybe we’ll see her, too,” I said.

  chapter

  11

  THE NEXT MORNING, I made evidence rounds, and my first stop was the Scanning Electron Microscopy lab where I found forensic scientist Betsy Eckles sputter-coating a square of tire rubber. She was sitting with her back to me, and I watched her mount the sample on a platform, which would next go into a vacuum chamber of glass so it could be coated by atomic particles of gold. I noted the cut in the center of the rubber, and thought it looked familiar, but couldn’t be sure.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She turned around from her intimidating console of pressure gauges, dials and digital microscopes that built images in pixels instead of lines on video screens. Graying and trim in a long lab coat, she seemed more harried than usual this Thursday.

  “Oh, good morning, Dr. Scarpetta,” she said as she placed the sample of punctured rubber into the chamber.