Trace Page 27

  “You sure she’s not going to call the cops?” Marino asks.

  She feels his eyes on her. They shine on her like the soft heat from a lamp and she doesn’t blame him for feeling scared. The accusations alone would ruin him, that is the truth of the matter. He would be destroyed in law enforcement, and it is quite possible that a Richmond jury would find him guilty just because he is a man, a very big man, and Mrs. Paulsson is skilled at acting pitiful and helpless. The thought of her sharpens Scarpetta’s anger.

  “She won’t,” she says. “I called her bluff. Tonight she’ll dream about all the magical evidence I carried out of her house. Most of all, she’ll dream about the game. She doesn’t want the cops or anyone else knowing about the little game or games that go on in her historic little house. Let me ask you something.” She looks up from the papers in her lap. “Had Gilly been alive and home, do you think Suz, as you call her, would have done what she did last night? Conjecture, granted. But what’s your instinct?”

  “I think she does whatever the hell she wants,” he replies in a dead tone, the flat tone of resentment and outrage restrained by shame.

  “Do you remember if she was drunk?”

  “She was high,” he replies. “High as a kite.”

  “On alcohol or maybe something else in addition?”

  “I didn’t see her pop any pills or smoke nothing or shoot up. But there’s probably a lot I didn’t see.”

  “Someone is going to have to talk to Frank Paulsson,” Scarpetta says, looking at another report. “Depending on what we find out tomorrow, we might see if Lucy would help.”

  Marino gets a look on his face and smiles for the first time in hours. “Holy shit. What an idea. She’s a pilot. Let her loose on the pervert.”

  “Exactly.” Scarpetta turns a page and takes a deep, quiet breath. “Nothing,” she says. “Absolutely nothing that tells me anything more about Gilly. She was asphyxiated and had chips of paint and metal in her mouth. Mr. Whitby’s injuries are consistent with his being run over by the tractor. For the hell of it, we should find out if there is any possibility he has some connection to the Paulssons.”

  “She would know,” Marino says.

  “You’re not calling her.” She does tell him what to do in this situation. He is not to call Suzanna Paulsson. “Don’t push your luck.” She looks up at him.

  “I wasn’t saying I would. Maybe she knew the tractor driver. Hell, maybe he was into the game. Maybe they have a perverts’ club.”

  “Well, they aren’t neighbors.” Scarpetta looks at paperwork in Whitby’s folder. “He lived over near the airport, not that it matters, necessarily. Tomorrow while I’m in the labs, maybe you can see what you can find out.”

  Marino doesn’t answer her. He doesn’t want to talk to any Richmond cops.

  “You’ve got to walk into it,” she says, closing the file folder.

  “Walk into what?” He looks at the phone by the bed, probably thinking about beer again.

  “You know what.”

  “I hate it when you talk like that,” he says, getting crabby. “Like I’m supposed to figure out something from a word or two. I guess some guys would be grateful to know a woman who only talks in a few words.”

  She folds her hands on top of the file folder in her lap and is somewhat amused. Whenever she’s right, he gets cranky. She waits to see what he’ll say next.

  “All right,” he says, unable to stand the silence for long. “Walk into what? Just tell me what the hell I need to walk into besides the loony bin, because right about now I’m feeling half crazy.”

  “You need to walk into what you fear. And you fear the police because you’re still afraid that Mrs. Paulsson has called them. She hasn’t. She won’t. Get it over with and then the fear will be gone.”

  “It ain’t about fear. It’s about being stupid,” he retorts.

  “Good. Then you’ll call Detective Browning or someone, because if you don’t, you’re being stupid. I’m going back to my room now,” she adds, getting up from the chair and moving it back near the window. “I’ll see you in the lobby at eight.”

  34.

  SHE DRINKS a glass of wine in bed, and it is not a very good wine, a Cabernet that has a sharp aftertaste. But she drinks every drop in the glass as she sits alone inside her hotel room. It is two hours earlier in Aspen and maybe Benton is out to dinner or in a meeting, busy with his case, his secret case that he will not discuss with her.

  Scarpetta rearranges the pillows behind her back, propped up in bed, and sets the empty wineglass on the bedside table, next to the phone. She looks at the phone, then looks at the TV wondering if she should turn it on. Deciding not to turn on the TV, she looks at the phone again and picks up the receiver. She dials Benton’s cell phone number because he said not to call his town home, and he meant it when he told her that. He was clear about it. Don’t call the condo, he told her. I won’t be answering the landline, he said.

  That doesn’t make sense, she replied what now seems months ago. Why won’t you answer the phone in your condo?

  I don’t want distractions, he replied. I won’t be answering the landline. If you really have to reach me, Kay, call my cell phone. Please don’t take it personally. It’s just the way it is. You know how it is.

  Benton’s cell phone rings twice and he answers.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, staring at the blank TV screen opposite the bed.

  “Hi,” he says softly but distantly. “I’m in my office.”

  She imagines the third-floor bedroom he has turned into an office inside his Aspen condo. She imagines him sitting at his desk, a document opened on his computer screen. He is working on his case, and she feels better knowing he is home, working.

  “It was a pretty rough day,” she says. “How about you?”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She starts to tell him about Dr. Marcus but doesn’t want to get into it. Then she starts to tell him about Marino, but the words won’t come out. Her brain is sluggish and for some reason she feels stingy toward Benton. She longs for him and feels stingy toward him and doesn’t want to tell him much of anything.

  “Why don’t you tell me about yours,” she says instead. “Did you ski or snowshoe?”

  “No.”

  “Is it snowing?”

  “This very minute, yes,” he says. “And where you are?”

  “Where I am?” She is getting annoyed. It doesn’t matter what he told her days ago or what she knows. She is hurt and annoyed. “Are you asking me generically because you can’t remember where I am? I’m in Richmond.”

  “Of course. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Is someone there? Are you in the middle of a meeting or something?” she asks.

  “Very much so,” he says.

  He can’t talk, and she is sorry she called. She knows what he is like when he doesn’t feel it is safe to talk, and she wishes she hadn’t called him. She imagines him in his office and wonders what else he might be doing. Maybe he worries that he is under electronic surveillance. She shouldn’t have called. Maybe he simply is preoccupied, but she would rather believe he is cautious than so preoccupied that he can’t focus on her. She shouldn’t have called.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry I called. We haven’t talked in two days. But I understand you’re in the middle of whatever it is you’re doing, and I’m tired.”

  “You called because you’re tired?”

  He is teasing her, very subtly kidding her and at the same time maybe a little stung. He doesn’t want to think she called him because she is tired, she considers, and she smiles, pressing the phone against her ear. “You know how I get when I’m tired,” she jokes. “I can’t control myself when I’m tired.” She hears a noise in the background, perhaps a voice, a woman’s voice. “Is someone there?” she asks again, no longer joking.

  A long pause, and she detects the muffled voice again. Maybe he has the radio or TV on. Then she hears nothing.


  “Benton?” she says. “Are you there? Benton? Damn it,” she mutters. “Damn it,” she says, hanging up.

  35.

  THE PUBLIX at Hollywood Plaza is busy. Edgar Allan Pogue walks through the parking lot with his plastic grocery bags, his eyes moving in all directions as he scans for anybody noticing him. No one does. If someone did, it wouldn’t matter. No one will remember him or think of him. No one ever does. Besides, he is only doing what is right. A favor to the world, he thinks as he passes along the edges of the light shining down from tall lamps in the parking lot. He keeps to the shadows and walks briskly but not anxiously.

  His white car is like about twenty thousand other white cars in South Florida, and he has parked it in a far corner of the lot between two other white cars. One of the white cars, the Lincoln that was parked to the left of him earlier, is no longer there, but as destiny dictated, another white car, this one a Chrysler, took its place. At magical, pure times like this, Pogue knows he is being watched and guided. The eye watches. He is guided by the eye, by the higher power, the god of all gods, the god who sits on top of Mount Olympus, the biggest god of all gods, who is incomprehensibly more immense than any movie star or person who has an attitude and thinks she is an almighty herself. Like her. Like the Big Fish.

  Using the remote to unlock his car, he opens the trunk and lifts out another bag, this one from All Season Pools. In the front seat of his white car, he sits in the warm darkness, debating whether he can see well enough for the task at hand. Lights from the lamps in the parking lot barely reach the outer limits where he sits, and he waits for his eyes to adjust, and they do. Inserting the key into the ignition, he turns on the battery so he can listen to music, and he pushes a button on the side of his seat to move it as far back as it will go. He needs plenty of room to work, and his heart trips into gear as he opens the plastic bag and pulls out a pair of thick rubber gloves, a box of granulated sugar, a bottle of generic soda pop, rolls of aluminum foil and duct tape, several large permanent markers, and a package of peppermint chewing gum. The inside of his mouth has tasted like stale cigars ever since he left his apartment at six P.M. He can’t smoke now. Smoking another cigar gets rid of the stale, dirty tobacco taste, but he can’t smoke now. Peeling the wrapper off a stick of gum, he curls the gum into a tight roll and places it inside his mouth and then opens two more sticks and does the same thing, making himself wait before he lets his teeth sink into the three rolls of gum, and his salivary glands explode painfully, like needles shooting through his jaws, and he begins to chew, in big, hard chews.

  He sits in the dark, chewing. Soon annoyed with rap music, he seeks other channels until he finds what is called adult rock these days, and he opens the glove box and pulls out a Ziploc plastic pouch. Coils of black human hair press against the clear plastic as if he has a human scalp inside. He carefully withdraws the soft curly wig and pets it as he looks at the ingredients of his alchemy on the passenger’s seat. He starts the car.

  The pastels of downtown Hollywood float past like a dream, and the tiny white lights strung in the palms are galaxies as he moves through space and feels the energy of what’s next to him on the passenger’s seat. He turns east on Hollywood Boulevard and drives exactly two miles per hour below the speed limit toward the A1A highway. Up the road the Hollywood Beach Resort is massive and pale pink and terra-cotta, and on the other side of it is the sea.

  36.

  DAWN IS on the ocean and tangerine and rose spread along the dusky blue horizon as if the sun is a broken egg. Rudy Musil pulls his combat green Hummer into Lucy’s driveway and pushes the remote to open her electric gate, and instinctively he looks around, looks everywhere and listens. He doesn’t know why, but he is so unsettled this morning that he jumped out of bed and decided he would check on Lucy’s house.

  The black bars of the metal gate slowly roll open, shuddering at intervals along the track because it curves, and although the gate is curved too, it doesn’t like curves, it seems. Just one of many design flaws, Rudy often thinks when he comes to Lucy’s salmon-color mansion. The biggest design flaw of all was the one she made when she bought this damn house, he thinks. Living like a filthy-rich damn drug dealer, he thinks. The Ferraris are one thing. He can understand wanting the best cars and the best helicopter. He likes his Hummer, for that matter, but it’s one thing to want a rocket or a tank and another thing to want an anchor, a huge gaudy anchor.

  He noticed it when he pulled into the driveway but he doesn’t take a second look or think anything about it until he pulls past the open gate and gets out of the Hummer. Then he backtracks to pick up the newspaper and sees the flag is up on the mailbox. Lucy doesn’t get mail at her house and she isn’t home to put the flag up. She wouldn’t put the flag up even if she were home. All deliveries and outgoing mail are handled at the training camp and office a half hour south in Hollywood.

  This is weird, he thinks, and he walks over to the mailbox and stands near it, the newspaper in one hand, the other hand pushing his sun-streaked hair down because it is in cowlicks this early morning. He hasn’t shaved or showered either, and he needs to. All night he thrashed about, sweating in bed, unable to get comfortable no matter what he did. He looks around, thinking. No one is out. No one is jogging or walking the dog. One thing he certainly has noticed about this neighborhood is that people keep to themselves and don’t enjoy their rich homes or even their modest ones. Rarely does anyone sit on the patio or use the pool, and those who have boats rarely go out in them. What a weird place, he thinks. What an unfriendly, peculiar, nasty place, he thinks, angrily.

  Of all places to move, he thinks. Why here? Why the hell here? Why the hell do you want to be around assholes? You’ve broken all your rules, Lucy, every one of them, Lucy, he thinks as he yanks open the mailbox door and looks inside and instantly jumps to one side. He backs up ten feet without thinking and his adrenaline kicks in before what he’s seeing registers.

  “Shit!” he says. “Holy shit!”

  37.

  DOWNTOWN TRAFFIC is bad, as usual, and Scarpetta is driving because Marino is moving slowly. The injuries to places best not discussed seem to be his greatest source of pain, and he is walking slightly bowlegged and was awkward when he climbed into the SUV a few minutes earlier. She knows what she saw, but the outraged reddish-purple hue of fragile tissue was nothing more than a silent scream compared with the loud noise pain must be making now. Marino will not be himself for a while.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks him again. “I’m trusting you to tell me.” What she means is implicit. She’s not going to ask him to take off his clothes one more time. She will look at him if he asks, but she hopes it won’t be necessary. Besides, he won’t ask.

  “I think I’m better,” he replies, staring out at the old police department on 9th Street. The building has looked bad for years, paint peeling and tiles around the top border missing. Now it looks worse because it is silent and empty. “I can’t believe how many years I wasted in that joint,” he adds.

  “Oh come on.” She flips up the blinker and it click-clicks like a loud watch. “That’s no way to talk. Let’s don’t start the day with that kind of talk. I’m trusting you to tell me if the swelling gets worse. It’s very important you tell me the truth.”

  “It’s better.”

  “Good.”

  “I put the iodine stuff on myself this morning.”

  “Good,” she says. “Keep applying it every time you get out of the shower.”

  “It doesn’t sting as much anymore. Really not at all. What if she’s got some kind of disease like AIDS? I’ve been thinking about it. What if she does? How do I know she doesn’t?”

  “You don’t know, unfortunately,” Scarpetta says, moving slowly along Clay Street, the huge brown Coliseum crouching in the midst of empty parking lots off to their left. “If it makes you feel any better, when I looked around her house, I didn’t see any prescription medicines that would indicate she has AIDS or any oth
er sexually transmitted disease or any infection of any sort. That doesn’t mean she isn’t HIV-positive. She might be and not know it. The same could be said for anyone you’ve been intimate with. So if you want to worry yourself sick, you can.”

  “Believe me, I don’t want to worry,” he replies. “But it’s not like you can wear a rubber if someone’s biting you. It’s not like you can protect yourself. You can’t exactly have safe sex if someone’s biting you.”

  “The understatement of the year,” she replies as she turns onto 4th Street. Her cell phone rings, and it worries her when she recognizes Rudy’s number. Rarely does he call her, and when he does, it is either to wish her a happy birthday or to pass along bad news.

  “Hi, Rudy,” she says, slowly winding around the back parking lot of the building. “What’s up?”

  “I can’t get hold of Lucy,” his stressed voice sounds in her ear. “She’s either out of range or has her cell phone off. She headed out in the helicopter this morning for Charleston,” he says.

  Scarpetta glances over at Marino. He must have called Lucy after Scarpetta left his room last night.

  “It’s a damn good thing,” Rudy says. “A damn good thing.”

  “Rudy, what’s going on?” Scarpetta asks, and she is getting more unnerved by the second.

  “Someone put a bomb in her mailbox,” he says, talking fast. “It’s too much to go into. Some of it she needs to tell you.”

  Scarpetta creeps almost to a halt inside the parking lot, heading in the direction of the visitors’ slots. “When and what?” she asks.

  “I just found it. Not even an hour ago. Came by to check on the place and saw the flag up on the mailbox, which didn’t make sense. I opened it and this big plastic cup’s inside, the whole thing colored orange with marker, and the lid’s colored green with a piece of duct tape around the lid and over the opening, you know, the little spout you drink out of, and I couldn’t see what was in it so I got one of those long poles out of the garage, what do you call it. Has the grippers on the end for changing lightbulbs that are high up. I picked the damn thing up with it, carried it out back, and took care of it.”