Scarpetta Page 6

And so she continued, and every two weeks, money was wired into her bank account. No taxes were withheld, and she received no benefits, nor was she reimbursed for any expenses she might incur, such as when she’d needed a new computer some months back and a range extender for the wireless network. She wasn’t given sick leave or vacation days or paid overtime, but as the agent had explained, it was part of the job description to be “on the call twenty-forty-seven.”

  In an earlier life, Shrew had held real jobs with real companies, her last one a database marketing manager for a consulting firm. She was no tabula rasa, was all too aware that her current employment demands were unreasonable and she had grounds to sue the company if she knew whom she worked for. But she wouldn’t think of complaining. She was paid reasonably well, and it was an honor to work for an anonymous celebrity whose column was the most talked-about one in New York, if not the entire country.

  The holidays were an especially busy time for Shrew. Not for personal reasons, because she really wasn’t allowed to have personal reasons for anything. But website traffic inevitably surged, and the banner on the home page was a tremendous challenge. Shrew was clever, but admittedly had never been an especially gifted graphic artist.

  This time of year the publishing schedule was escalated as well. Instead of three columns per week, the Boss picked up the pace to please the fans and sponsors, and rewarded them for a year of being a faithful, enthusiastic, lucrative audience. Beginning Christmas Eve, Shrew was to post a column daily. On occasion, she was fortunate and got several at once and made adjustments, and they waited in a queue for auto release, and she was allowed a respite, could run a frivolous errand or two, or get her hair done, or go for a walk, instead of waiting for the Boss to get on with things. The Boss never thought twice about Shrew’s inconveniences, and the truth was, it might be more dismal than that.

  Shrew suspected the Boss deliberately orchestrated it, no doubt through programming, so that columns were shipped one at a time although several days of them had been done in advance and were already in the can. What this implied was two important bits of intelligence.

  First, unlike Shrew, the Boss had a life and stockpiled work so he or she could do other things, maybe take a trip or be with friends or family, or simply rest. Second, the Boss did think about Shrew, was invested enough in their relationship to remind her regularly that she was small and unimportant, and was owned and controlled by whoever the anonymous celebrity might be. Shrew’s was a nonexistence, and it was not her right to be granted a day or two when the work was done and she didn’t need to think about it. She was to wait on the Boss and serve at the Boss’s pleasure. The Boss answered Shrew’s prayers or didn’t, rather much with a finger on the mouse, the cursor on send.

  It was fortunate, really, that Shrew would dread the holidays were she given the opportunity to enjoy them, because they were nothing more than an empty ship that took her from one year into the next, reminding her of what she didn’t have and what wasn’t ahead, and that biology was unkind and played mischievous tricks on the mind. She didn’t recall the process being a gradual one, as logic had always told her it would be—a little gray hair here, a wrinkle or stiff joint there.

  It seemed that one day she looked in the mirror and didn’t find the thirty-year-old she was inside or recognize the ruin looking back at her. Whenever she’d put on her glasses these days, she discovered she was surrounded by loose, crinkled skin. She’d find that pigmented spots, like squatters, had taken up residence all over her body, and hair, like neglected landscaping, had moved from where it belonged to areas well outside the garden. She had no idea why she needed so many veins unless it was to rush extra blood to cells bent on dying for the hell of it.

  It suited her that during this joyless journey between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day she’d not had a moment to herself, and was on hold, waiting for the next column, no matter how many of them might already be done, the momentum building in a crescendo to New Year’s Day, when the Boss posted twice. These, naturally, were always the most sensational.

  Shrew had received the second one a little while ago and was surprised and puzzled by it. The Boss never headlined with the same public figure twice in a row, especially for today’s Daily Double, and this second column, like the first one, was solely devoted to Dr. Kay Scarpetta. No doubt it would be quite the hit because it covered all the bases: sex, violence, and the Catholic Church.

  Shrew expected a swarm of comments from the fans, and possibly yet another coveted Poisoned Pen Prize, which would leave everybody guessing, just like last time, when no one showed up to collect it. But she couldn’t help puzzling rather nervously. What was it about the well-respected lady medical examiner that had set off the Boss like this?

  Shrew carefully re-read the new column, making sure there were no typos or misspellings she might have missed. She fine-tuned the format as she wondered where on earth the Boss had gotten all this highly personal information she had flagged with the familiar NBS in red. Never-before-seen information was the most coveted. With rare exception, it and all gossip came from anecdotes, sightings, rumors, and fabrications sent in by fans, which were sifted through by Shrew and moved to an electronic research file accessed by the Boss. But none of the NBS information about Dr. Scarpetta was anything Shrew had sorted through or selected.

  So where had the Boss gotten it?

  Apparently, assuming this was true, Dr. Kay Scarpetta had grown up in a poor, uneducated Italian family: a sister who was screwing boys before puberty, a dumb cow of a mother, and a blue-collar father just off the boat, whom little Kay helped in the small family grocery store. She played the role of doctor for many years while he died of cancer in his bedroom, thus explaining her eventual addiction to death. Her priest felt sorry for her and arranged for a scholarship at a Miami parochial school, where she was the resident nerd, a whiner, and a tattletale. For good reason, the other girls hated her.

  At this point in the column, the Boss switched to story mode, which was always when the writing was strongest.

  . . . On this particular afternoon, little Florida cracker Kay was alone in the chemistry lab, working on a project for extra credit, when Sister Polly suddenly appeared. She flowed across the empty room in her black scapular, her wimple and veil, and nailed her severe little pious eyes onto little Kay.

  “What does our Father instruct us about forgiveness, Kay?” Sister Polly demanded, her hands on her virgin hips.

  “That we should forgive others as He forgives us.”

  “And did you obey His word? What do you say?”

  “I didn’t obey.”

  “Because you tattled.”

  “I was working on a math problem and had my pencils on my desk, Sister Polly, and Sarah broke them in half. I had to buy more, and she knows my family is poor . . .”

  “And now you’ve just tattled again.” Sister Polly reached into a pocket and said, “God believes in restitution.” She pressed a quarter into the palm of little Kay’s hand before slapping her across the face.

  Sister Polly told her to pray for her enemies and to forgive them. She severely reprimanded little Kay for being a sinner with a wagging tongue, and said she clearly needed reminding that God didn’t look kindly upon tattlers.

  In the bathroom across the hall, Sister Polly locked the door and took off her black leather cincture as she ordered little Kay to remove her plaid tunic and Peter Pan collar blouse and everything under it, and bend over and hold her knees. . . .

  Satisfied that the column was ready to go live, Shrew typed her system administrator password to get into the website programming. She posted the column, but not without misgiving.

  Had Dr. Scarpetta done something of late that might have incited hatred in the Boss, whoever the Boss was?

  Shrew gazed out the window behind her computer, momentarily reminded that throughout the entire day, a police car had been parked in front of the brownstone apartment building directly across the street. Perhaps a polic
eman had moved in, although she couldn’t imagine that the average policeman could afford the rents in Murray Hill. It occurred to her that the policeman might be on a stakeout. Perhaps there was a burglar or lunatic on the loose. Her thoughts returned to the Boss’s obvious intention of ruining the New Year for the lady medical examiner whom Shrew had always admired.

  The last time she had seen Dr. Scarpetta on TV was a few days after Christmas, after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, and Dr. Scarpetta was explaining, diplomatically and tastefully, the damage shrapnel or a bullet or blunt-force trauma could cause, depending on what part of the brain or spinal cord was injured. Might that have something to do with the Boss’s first column this morning, and now the bonus column? Perhaps Dr. Scarpetta had touched a nerve of extreme prejudice. If so, what sort of person did Shrew work for? Was it someone who hated the Pakistanis or Islam or democracy or human rights or women in charge? Perhaps the timing was simply coincidental and completely unrelated.

  But somehow Shrew didn’t think so, and her intuition gave rise to an awful speculation she’d never before considered. How did she know she didn’t work for a terrorist organization that used the infamous, highly profitable Internet gossip column to subliminally communicate with extremist sympathizers and spread propaganda and, most important, fund terrorist plots?

  Shrew didn’t know. But if she was right, it was simply a matter of time before someone came looking for her, either Homeland Security or a member of the very terrorist sect behind Shrew’s highly secretive and, frankly, suspicious job—one she had never uttered a word about to anyone.

  To her knowledge, the only people who knew she worked for Gotham Gotcha were the Italian agent who had hired her over the phone (a man she’d never met and whose name she didn’t know), and the anonymous celebrity who actually wrote the columns and e-mailed them to Shrew for a light copyedit and format. Then she’d post them, and the programming would do the rest, and the columns would go live at one minute past midnight. If terrorists were involved, then Dr. Scarpetta was a target. They were trying to destroy her professionally and personally, and her life could be in danger.

  Shrew needed to warn her.

  How could she do that without admitting she was the anonymous system administrator for the anonymous website?

  She couldn’t.

  She pondered this as she sat in front of her computer, staring out her window at the police car, wondering if there might be a way to get an anonymous message to her.

  At the very moment she was having these paranoid and decidedly unpleasant thoughts, someone pounded on her door, startling her. Maybe it was that strange young man in the apartment across from hers. Like most people who had caring families, he had gone away for the holidays. Maybe he was back and wanted to borrow something or ask a question.

  She looked through the peephole and was shocked to see a big rugged face, a balding head, and out-of-style wire-rimmed glasses.

  Oh God in heaven.

  She snatched up the phone and called 911.

  Inside Bellevue’s cafeteria, Benton Wesley and Jaime Berger sat in a pink booth against the back wall, where they could have privacy. People who didn’t recognize Berger often noticed her anyway.

  She had compelling good looks, was of medium height and slim, with deep blue eyes and lustrous dark hair. Always smartly dressed, today she wore a charcoal cashmere blazer, a button-up black sweater, a black skirt with a slit in back, and black pumps with small silver buckles on the sides. Berger wasn’t provocative, but she wasn’t afraid to look like a woman. It was well known that if the attention of lawyers, cops, or violent offenders began wandering over her physical landscape, she’d lean close, point at her eyes, and say, “Look here. Look right here when I’m talking to you.”

  She reminded him of Scarpetta. Her voice had the same low timbre that commanded attention because it didn’t ask for it, her features similar in their keenness, and her physical architectural style completely to his liking, simple lines that led to generous curves. He had his fetishes. He admitted it. But as he had emphasized to Dr. Thomas a short while ago over the phone, he was faithful to Scarpetta and always would be. Even in his imagination, he was faithful to her, would instantly change channels when his fantasies strayed to erotic dramas that didn’t feature her. He would never cheat on her. Never.

  His behavior hadn’t always been so virtuous. What Dr. Thomas had said was true. He’d cheated on his first wife, Connie, and if he was honest about it, the betrayal had begun early on when he’d decided it was perfectly admissible and, in fact, healthy to enjoy the same magazines and movies other males did, especially during his four monk-like months at the FBI Academy when there was little to do at night except have a few beers in the Board-room, then return to his dorm where he could briefly relieve his stress and escape his uptight life.

  He had maintained this clandestine but healthy sexual routine throughout his sensible marriage until he and Scarpetta had worked one too many cases together and ended up in the Travel-Eze Motel. He’d lost his wife and half of a considerable inheritance, and their three daughters continued to have nothing to do with him. To this day, some of his former colleagues from his FBI past still had no respect for him, or at least they blamed it on his morals. He didn’t care.

  Worse than not caring and a vacuum where there should be a spark of remorse was the truth that he would do it all again, if he could. And he did do it all again, often, in his mind. He would replay that scene in the motel room, where he was bleeding from cuts that required stitches, and Scarpetta had tended to him. She’d barely dressed his wounds before he was undressing her. It was beyond fantasy.

  What always struck him when he looked back on it was how he’d managed to work around her for the better part of five years and not succumb sooner. The more he’d flipped back through the pages of his life during his talks with Dr. Thomas, the more amazed he was by a number of things, not the least of which was Scarpetta’s imperviousness. She honestly hadn’t known how he felt, was far more aware of how she felt. Or at least that’s what she told him when he’d admitted that with rare exception, whenever she’d seen him with his briefcase in his lap, it meant he was hiding an erection.

  Including the first time we met?

  Probably.

  In the morgue?

  Yes.

  Reviewing cases in that awful conference room of yours at Quantico, going through reports, photographs, having those relentless, endless, serious conversations?

  Especially then. Afterward, when I’d walk you back to your car, it was all I could do not to get in it and . . .

  If I’d known, Scarpetta had told him one night, when they were drinking a lot of wine, I would have seduced you immediately instead of wasting five goddamn years singing solo.

  Singing solo? Do you mean . . . ?

  Just because I work around dead people doesn’t mean I am one.

  “This is the main reason I’m not going to,” Jaime Berger was saying to Benton. “Political correctness. Political sensitivity. Are you paying any attention to me at all?”

  “Yes. If I seem glazed, I’m slightly sleep-deprived.”

  “The last thing I want is a perception of prejudice. Especially now, when there’s much more public awareness about dwarfism and the misconceptions and stereotypes historically associated with it. This morning’s Post, for example. The headline about this big.” She held her hands about two inches apart. “ Midget Murder. Horrible. Exactly what we don’t want, and I expect a backlash, especially if other news sources pick it up and it’s all the hell over the place.” Her eyes were on his, and she paused. “Unfortunately, I can’t control the press any more than you can.”

  She said it as if she meant something else.

  It was the something else that Benton was anticipating. He knew damn well the Terri Bridges case wasn’t Berger’s only agenda. He’d made a tactical error. He should have brought up the Gotham Gotcha column while he’d had the chance.

  “The joys
of contemporary journalism,” she said. “We’re never sure what’s true.”

  She would accuse Benton of lying to her by omission. But technically he hadn’t, because technically Pete Marino had committed no crime. What Dr. Thomas had said was correct. Benton wasn’t in Scarpetta’s house when it happened and would never know the nuances of what Marino had done to her that warm, humid Charleston night last May. Marino’s drunken, grossly inappropriate behavior had gone unreported and largely undiscussed. For Benton to have made even the slightest allusion to it would have been a betrayal of Scarpetta—and of Marino, for that matter—and in fact would constitute hearsay that Berger would never tolerate under other circumstances.

  “Unfortunately,” Benton said, “the same sort of thing is being passed around on the ward. The other patients are calling Oscar names.”

  “Vaudeville, carnivals, the Wizard of Oz,” Berger said.

  She reached for her coffee, and every time she moved her hands, Benton noticed the absence of her large-carat diamond ring and matching wedding band. He had almost asked her about it last summer, after not seeing her for a number of years, but refrained when it became apparent that she never mentioned her multimillionaire husband or her stepchildren. She never made any reference to any aspect of her private life. Not even the cops were talking.

  Maybe there was nothing to talk about. Maybe her marriage was intact. Maybe she’d developed an allergy to metals or worried about being robbed. But if it were the latter, she should think twice about the Blancpain she had on. Benton estimated it was a numbered timepiece that cost in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.

  “Negative portrayals in the media, in the entertainment industry,” Berger went on. “Fools, dimwits. The movie Don’t Look Now. Folktale dwarfs, imperial court dwarfs. And rather apropos, the omnipresent dwarf who witnesses everything, from the triumph of Julius Caesar to the discovery of Moses in the bulrushes. Oscar Bane was witness to something, and at the same time accuses others of being witness to everything. His claims of being stalked, spied on, subjected to some sort of electronic harassment, and that the CIA might be involved and is torturing him with electronic and antipersonnel weapons as some sort of experiment or persecution.”