Trace ks-13 Read online

  "You weren't there."

  "She told me over the phone."

  Henri stares at her bare feet, which are up on the chair cushion. "You asked her what she had on?"

  She's got hazel eyes, short black hair." Benton tries to dislodge what Henri is repressing or pretends to be repressing, and it is time to discuss the physical evidence recovery kit. "There was no seminal fluid, Henri.

  No evidence of sexual assault. But Brenda found fibers adhering to your skin. It appears you had on some sort of lotion or body oil. Do you remember if you put on lotion or body oil that morning?"

  "No," she quietly replies. "But I can't say I didn't."

  "Your skin was oily," Ben ton says. "According to Brenda. She detected.1 fragrance. A nice fragrance like a pertumed body lotion.'

  "He didn't put it on me."

  "He?"

  "It must have been a he. Don't you think it was a he?" she says in a hoprfu! rone1 tku imgs off key, the way voice.-)»ound \iicn people are trying to fool themselves or others. "It couldn't have been a she. A woman. Women don't do things like that."

  "Women do all sorts of things. Right now we don't know if it was a man or a woman. Several head hairs were found on the mattress in the bedroom, black curly ones. Maybe five, six inches long."

  "Well, we'll know soon enough, right? They can get DNA from the hair and find out it's not a woman," she says.

  "I'm afraid they can't. The kind of DNA testing they're doing can't determine gender. Possibly race, but not gender. And even race will take at least a month. Then you think you might have put on the body lotion yourself."

  "No. But he didn't. I wouldn't have let him do it. I would have fought him if I'd had a chance. He probably wanted to do it."

  "And you didn't put the lotion on yourself?"

  "I said he didn't and I didn't and that's enough. It's none of your business."

  Benton understands. The lotion has nothing to do with the attack, assuming Henri is telling the truth. Lucy enters his thoughts, and he feels sorry for her and is angry with her at the same time.

  "Tell me everything," Henri says. "Tell me what you think happened to me. You tell me what happened and I'll agree or disagree." She smiles.

  "Lucy came home," Benton says, and this is old information now. He resists revealing too much too soon. "It was a few minutes past noon, and when she unlocked the front door, she noticed immediately that the alarm wasn't armed. She called out to you, you didn't answer, and she heard the back door that leads out to the pool bang against the doorstop, and she ran in that direction. When she got into the kitchen, she discovered the door leading out to the pool and the sea-wall was wide open."

  Henri stares wide-eyed past Benton, out the window again. "I wish she'd killed him."

  "She never saw whoever it was. It's possible the person heard her pull up in the driveway in her black Ferrari and ran…"

  "He was in my room with me and then had to go down all those stairs," Henri interrupts, staring off with wide eyes, and at this moment, it feels to Benton that she is telling the truth.

  "Lucy didn't park in the garage this time because she was only stopping by to check on you," Benton says. "So she was in the front door quickly, came in the front door as he was running out the back door. She didn't chase him. She never saw him. At that moment, Lucy's focus was you, not whoever had gotten into the house."

  "I disagree," Henri says, almost happily.

  "Tell me."

  "She didn't drive up in her black Ferrari. It was in the garage. She had the California blue Ferrari. That's the one she parked out front."

  More new information, and Benton remains calm, very easygoing. "You were sick in bed, Henri. Are you sure you know what she drove that day?"

  "I always know. She wasn't driving the black Ferrari because it got damaged."

  "Tell me about the damage."

  "It got damaged in a parking lot," Henri says, studying her bruised toe again. "You know, the gym up there on Atlantic, way up there in Coral Springs. Where we go to the gym sometimes."

  "Can you tell me when this happened?" Benton asks, calmly, not showing the excitement he feels. The information is new and important and he senses where it leads. "The black Ferrari got damaged while you were in the gym?" Benton prods her to tell the truth.

  "I didn't say I was in the gym," she snaps, and her hostility confirms his suspicions.

  She took Lucy's black Ferrari to the gym, obviously without Lucy's permission. No one is allowed to drive the black Ferrari, not even Rudy.

  "Tell me about the damage," Benton says.

  "Someone scratched it, like with a car key, something like that. Scratched a picture on it." She ^rarrs clown at her feet, picking at her yellowish big toe.

  "What was the picture?"

  "She wouldn't drive it after that. You don't take out a scratched Ferrari."

  "Lucy must have been angry," Benton says.

  "It can be fixed. Anything can be fixed. If she'd killed him, I wouldn't have to be here. Now I'll have to worry the rest of my life that he's going to find me again."

  "I'm doing my best to make sure you'll never have to worry about that, Henri. But I need your help."

  "I may never remember." She looks at him. "I can't help it."

  "Lucy ran up three flights of stairs to the master bedroom. That's where you were," Benton says, watching her carefully, making sure she can handle what he is saying, even though she has heard this part before. All along, he has feared that she might not be acting, that none of what she says and does is an act. What if it isn't? She could break with reality, become psychotic, completely decompensate and shatter. She listens, but her affect isn't normal. "When Lucy found you, you were unconscious, but your breathing and heart rate were normal."

  "I didn't have anything on." She doesn't mind that detail. She likes reminding him of her naked body.

  "Do you sleep in the nude?"

  "I like to."

  "Do you remember if you'd taken off your pajamas before you got back into bed that morning?"

  "Probably I did."

  "So he didn't do it? The attacker didn't. Assuming it's a he."

  "He didn't need to. I'm sure he would have, though."

  "Lucy says that when she saw you last, at about eight A.M., you were wearing red satin pajamas and a tan terry-cloth robe."

  "I agree. Because I wanted to go outside. I sat in a lounge chair by the pool, in the sun.

  More new information, and he asks, "What time was this?"

  "Right after Lucy left, I think. She drove off in the blue Ferrari. Well, not right after," she corrects herself in a flat tone and stares out at the snow-covered, sun-dazzled morning. "I was mad at her."

  Benton slowly gets up and places several logs on the fire. Sparks fly up the chimney and flames greedily lick the bone-dry pine. "She hurt your feelings," he says, drawing the mesh curtain shut.

  "Lucy isn't nice when people get sick," Henri replies, more focused, more poised. "She didn't want to take care of me."

  "What about the body lotion?" he asks, and he has figured out the body lotion, he's pretty sure he has, but it is smart to make absolutely sure.

  "So what? Big deal. That's a favor, now isn't it? You know how many people would love to do that? I let her as a favor. She'll only do so much, only what suits her, then she gets tired of taking care of me. My head hurt and we were arguing."

  "How long did you sit out by the pool?" Benton says, trying not to get distracted by Lucy, trying not to wonder what the hell she was thinking when she met Henri Walden, and at the same time he is all too aware of how impressive and bewitching sociopaths can be, even to people who should know better.

  "Not long. I didn't feel good."

  "Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?"

  "I guess half an hour."

  "Did you see any other people? Any boats?"

  "I didn't notice. So maybe there weren't any. What did Lucy do when she was in the room with me?"

  "She cal
led nine-one-one, continued checking your vital signs while she waited for the rescue squad," Benton says. He decides to add another detail, a risky one. "She took photographs."

  "Did she have a gun out?"

  Yes.

  "I wish she'd killed him."

  "You keep saying 'he.'"

  "And she took pictures? Of me?" Henri says.

  "You were unconscious but stable. She took pictures of you before you were moved."

  "Because I looked like I had been attacked?"

  "Because your body was in an unusual position, Henri. Like this." He straightens out his arms and holds them over his head. "You were facedown with your arms stretched out in front of you, palms down. Your nose was bleeding, and you had bruises, as you know. And your right big toe was broken, although that wasn't discovered until later. You don't seem to remember how it got broken."

  "I might have stubbed it going down the stairs," she says.

  "You remember that?" he asks, and she has remembered nothing or admitted nothing about her toe before now. "When might this have happened?"

  "When I went out by the pool. Her stone stairs. I think I missed a step or something, because of all the medicine and my fever and everything. I remember crying. I remember that. Because it hurt, really hurt, and I thought about calling her but why bother. She doesn't like it when I'm sick or hurt."

  "You broke your toe going down to the pool and thought of calling Lucy but didn't." He wants to make this clear.

  "I agree," she says, mockingly. "Where were my pajamas and robe?"

  "Neatly folded on a chair near the bed. Did you fold them and put them there?"

  "Probably. Was I under the covers?"

  He knows where she is going with this, but it is important that he tell her the truth. "No," he replies. "The covers were pulled down to the bottom of the bed, were hanging off the mattress."

  "I didn't have anything on and she took pictures," Henri says, and her face is expressionless as she looks at him with hard, flat eyes.

  "That figures. She would do something like that. Always the cop." "You're a cop, Henri. What would you have done?" "She would do something like that," she says.

  8

  Where are you?" Marino asks when he sees Lucy's number in the W display of his vibrating cell phone. "What's your location?" He always asks her where she is, even if the answer isn't relevant.

  Marino has spent his adult life in policing, and one detail a good cop never overlooks is location. It doesn't do a damn bit of good to get on your radio and scream Mayday if you don't know where you are. Marino considers himself Lucy's mentor, and he doesn't let her forget it even if she forgot it long years back.

  "Atlantic," Lucy's voice returns in his right ear. "I'm in the car." "No joke, Sherlock. You sound like you're in a damn garbage disposal." Marino never misses an opportunity to give her a hard time about her cars.

  "Jealousy is so unattractive," she says.

  He walks several steps away from the OCME coffee area, looking around, seeing no one and satisfied that his conversation isn't overheard. "Look, it ain't going so good up here," he says, peeking through the small glass window in the shut library door, seeing if anyone is

  70 * inside. No one is. "This joint's gone to hell." He keeps talking into his

  tiny cell phone, moving it back and forth between his ear and mouth, depending on whether he's listening or speaking. "I'm just giving you a heads-up."

  After a pause, Lucy replies, "You're not just giving me a heads-up. What do you want me to do?"

  "Damn. That car is loud." He paces, his eyes constantly moving beneath the brim of the LAPD baseball cap Lucy gave him as a joke.

  "Okay, so now you're starting to worry me," she says above the roar of her Ferrari. "I should have known when you said this was no big deal, it was going to turn out to be a big deal. Dammit. I warned you, I warned both of you not to go back there."

  "There's more to it than this dead girl," he replies quietly. "That's what I'm getting at. It ain't about that, not entirely. I'm not saying she ain't the main problem. I'm sure she is. But there's something else going on here. Our mutual friend," he refers to Benton, "is making that loud and clear. And you know her." Now he means Scarpetta. "She's gonna end up right in the middle of shit."

  "Something else going on? Like what? Give me an example." Lucy's tone changes. When she turns very serious, her voice gets slow and rigid, reminding Marino of drying glue.

  If there is trouble here in Richmond, Marino thinks, he's stuck, all right. Lucy will be all over him like glue, all right. "Let me tell you something, Boss," he goes on, "one of the reasons I'm still walking around is 'cause I got instincts."

  Marino calls her Boss as if he is comfortable with her being his boss, when of course he is anything but, especially if his remarkable instincts warn him that he is about to earn her disapproval. "And my instincts is screaming bloody murder right about now, Boss," he is saying, and a part or him knows damn well that Lucy and her aunt Kay Scarpetta see his insecurity when he starts trotting out bravado or bragging about his instincts or calling powerful women Boss or Sherlock or other less polite appellations. But he just can't help himself. So he makes matters worse. "And I'll add this to the mix," he continues, "I hate this stinking city. Goddamn, I hate this stinking place. You know what's wrong with this stinking place? They ain't got respect, that's what."

  "I'm not going to say I told you so," Lucy tells him so. Her voice is setting like glue very quickly now. "Do you want us to come?"

  "No," he says, and it gripes him that he can't tell Lucy what he thinks without her assuming she should do something about it. "Right now, I'm just giving you a heads-up, Boss," he says, wishing he hadn't called Lucy and told her anything. It was a mistake to call hen he thinks. But if she finds out her aunt is having a hard time and he didn't say a word, Lucy will be all over him.

  When he first met her she was ten years old. Ten. A pudgy little runt with glasses and an obnoxious attitude. They hated each other, then things changed and she hero-worshipped him, and then they became friends, and then things changed again. Somewhere along the line, he should have put a stop to progress, to all the changing, because about ten years ago things were just right and he felt good teaching her to drive his truck and ride a motorcycle, how to shoot, how to drink beer, how to tell if someone's lying, the important things in life. Back then he wasn't afraid of her. Maybe fear isn't the right word to describe what he feels, but she has power in life and he doesn't, and half the time when he gets off the phone after talking to her, he feels down in the dumps and bad about himself. Lucy can do whatever she likes and still have money and order people around, and he can't. Not even when he was a sworn police officer could he flaunt power the way she does. But he's not afraid of her, he tells himself. Hell no, he's not.

  "We'll come if you need us," Lucy says over the phone. "But it's not a good time. I'm into something down here and it's not a good time."

  "I told you I don't need you to come," Marino says grumpily, and being grumpy has always been the magic charm that forces people to worry more about him and his moods than about themselves and their

  72 moods. "I'm telling you what's going on and that's it. I don't need you.

  There's nothing for you to do."

  "Good," Lucy says. Grumpy doesn't work with her anymore. Marino keeps forgetting that. "I've got to go."

  9

  Lucy touches the paddle shift with her left index finger and the engine kicks up a thousand rpm with a roar as she slows down. Her sonaradar chirps and the front alert flashes red, indicating police radar somewhere up ahead.

  "I'm not speeding," she says to Rudy Musil, who sits in the passenger's seat, near the fire extinguisher, and he is looking at the speedometer. "Only going six miles over."

  "I didn't say anything," he replies, glancing in his side-view mirror.

  "Let me see if I'm right." She keeps the car in third and just a little over forty miles per hour. "The cop car's going
to be at the next intersection looking for us yahoos who can't wait to hit the coast and haul ass."

  "What's going on with Marino? Let me guess," Rudy says. "I need to pack a suitcase."

  Both of them keep up their constant scans, checking mirrors, noting other cars, aware of every palm tree, pedestrian, and building on this flat stretch of strip malls. Traffic is moderate and relatively polite at the

  74 * moment on Atlantic Boulevard in Pompano Beach, just north of Fort

  Lauderdale.

  "Yup," Lucy says. "Tally ho." Her sunglasses are fixed straight ahead as she passes a dark blue Ford LTD that has just turned right off Powerline Road, an intersection with an Eckerd's drugstore and the Discount Meat Market. The unmarked Ford slides in behind her in the left lane.

  "You got him curious," Rudy says

  "Well, he's not paid to be curious," she says aggressively as the unmarked Ford follows her, and she knows damn well the cop is hoping she'll do something that gives him cause to turn on his lights and check out the car and the young couple in it. "Look at that. People passing me in the right lane, and that guy over there's got an expired inspection sticker." She points. "And the cop's more interested in me."

  She stops checking on him in the rearview mirror and wishes that Rudy would lighten his mood. Ever since she opened an office in Los Angeles, he has been out of sorts. She's not sure how, but clearly she's miscalculated his ambitions and needs in life. She assumed that Rudy would love a highrise on "Wilshire Boulevard with a view so immense that on a clear day one can see Catalina Island. She was wrong, terribly wrong, as wrong as she has ever been about anything she has ever assumed about him.

  A front is rolling in from the south, the sky divided into layers that vary between thick smoke to sunlit pearly gray. Cooler air pushes away rain that at times today was pounding, leaving puddles that blast the undercarriage of Lucy's low-slung car. Just ahead, a flock of migrating seagulls swirl over the road, flying low and in crazy directions, and Lucy drives on, the unmarked car dogging her rear.