Cruel & Unusual Read online

  “It's Sunday. Where are the children, or aren't there any?” Lucy said as if the observation incriminated me in some way.

  “There are a few.” I turned on my street.

  “No bikes in the yards, no sleds or tree houses. Doesn't anybody ever go outside?”

  “This is a very quiet neighborhood.”

  “Is that why you chose it?”

  “In part. It's also quite safe, and hopefully buying a home here will prove to be a good investment.”

  “Private security?”

  “Yes,” I said as my uneasiness grew.

  She continued staring out at the large homes flowing past. “I bet you can go inside and shut the door and never hear from anyone never see anyone outside, either, unless they're walking their dog. But you don't have a dog. How many trick-or-treaters did you have on Halloween?”

  “Halloween was quiet,” I said evasively.

  In truth, my doorbell had rung only once, when I was working in my study. I could see in my video monitor the four trick-or-treaters on my porch, and picking up the handset, I started to tell them that I would be right there when I overheard what they were saying to each other.

  “No, there isn't a dead body in there,” whispered the tiny UVA cheerleader.

  “Yes, there is,” said Spiderman. “She's on TV all the time because she cuts dead people up and puts them in jars. Dad told me.”

  I parked inside the garage and said to Lucy, “We'll get you settled in your room and the first order of business after that is for me to build a fire and make a pot of hot chocolate. Then we'll think about lunch.”

  “I don't drink hot chocolate. Do you have an espresso maker?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “That would be perfect, especially if you have decaf French roast. Do you know your neighbors?”

  “I know who they are. Here, let me get that bag and you take this one so I can unlock the door and deactivate the alarm. Lord, this is heavy.”

  “Grans insisted I bring grapefruit. They're pretty good, but full of seeds.”

  Lucy looked around as she stepped inside my house. “Wow. Skylights. What do you call this style of architecture, besides rich?”

  Maybe her disposition would self-correct if I pretended not to notice.

  “The guest bedroom is back this way,” I said. “I could put you upstairs if you wish, but I thought you'd rather be down here near me.”

  “Down here is fine. As long as I'm close to the computer.”

  “It's in my study, which is next door to your room.”

  “I brought my UNDO notes, books, and a few other things.”

  She paused in front of the sliding glass doors in the living room. “The yard's not as nice as your other one.”

  She said this as if I had let down everyone I had ever known.

  “I've got plenty of years to work on my yard. It gives me something to look forward to.”

  Lucy slowly scanned her surroundings, her eyes finally resting on me. “You've got cameras in your doors, motion sensors, a fence, security gates, and what else? Gun turrets?” “No gun turrets.”

  “This is your Fort Apache, isn't it, Aunt Kay? You moved here because Mark's dead and there's nothing left in the world except bad people.”

  The comment ambushed me with terrific force, and instantly tears filled my eyes. I went into the guest bedroom and set down her suitcase, then checked towels, soap, and toothpaste in the bath. Returning to the bedroom, I opened the curtains, checked dresser drawers, rearranged the closet, and adjusted the heat while my niece sat on the edge of the bed, following my every move. In several minutes, I was able to meet her eyes again.

  “When you unpack, I'll show you a closet you can rummage through for winter things,” I said.

  “You never saw him the way everybody else did.”

  “Lucy, we need to talk about something else.”

  I switched on a lamp and made certain the telephone was plugged in.

  “You're better off without him,” she added with conviction.

  “Lucy . . “

  “He wasn't there for you the way he should have been. He never would have been there because that's the way he was. And every time things didn't go right, you changed.”

  I stood in front of the window and looked out at dormant clematis and roses frozen to trellises.

  “Lacy, you need to learn a little gentleness and tact. You can't just say exactly what you think.”

  “That's a funny thing to hear coming from you. You've always told me how much you hate dishonesty and games.”

  “People have feelings.”

  “You're right. Including me,” she said.

  “Have I somehow hurt your feelings?”

  “How do you think I felt?”

  “I'm not sure I understand.”

  “Because you didn't think about me at all. That's why you don't understand.”

  “I think about you all the time.”

  “That's like saying you're rich and yet you never give me a dime. What difference does it make to me what you've got hidden away?”

  I did not know what to say.

  “You don't call me anymore. You haven't come to see me once since he got killed.”

  The hurt in her voice had been saved for a long time. “I wrote you and you didn't write back. Then you called me yesterday and asked me to come visit because you needed something.”

  “I didn't mean it like that.”

  “It's the same thing Mom does.”

  I shut my eyes and lead my forehead against the cold glass. “You expect too much from me, Lucy. I'm not perfect.”

  “I don't expect you to be perfect. But I thought you were different.”

  “I don't know how to defend myself when you make a remark like that.”

  “You can't defend yourself!”

  I watched a gray squirrel hop along the top of the fence bordering the yard. Birds were pecking seeds off the grass.

  “Aunt Kay?”

  I turned to her and never had I seen her eyes look so dejected.

  “Why are men always mode important than me?”

  “They're not, Lucy,” I whispered. “I swear.”

  My niece wanted tuna salad and cap latte for lunch, and while I sat in front of the fire editing a journal article, she rummaged through my closet and dresser drawers. I tried not to think about another human being touching my clothes, folding something in a way I wouldn't or returning a jacket to the wrong hanger. Lucy had a gift for making me feel like the Tinman rusting in the forest. Was I becoming the rigid, serious adult I would have disliked when I was her age?

  “What do you think?” she asked when she emerged from my bedroom at half past one. She was wearing one of my tennis warm-up suits.

  “I think you spent a long time to come up with only that. And yes, it fits you fine.”

  “I found a few other things that are okay, but most of your stuff is-too dressy. All these lawyerly suits in midnight blue and black, gray silk with delicate pinstripes, khaki and cashmere, and white blouses. You must have twenty white blouses and just as many ties. You shouldn't wear brown, by the way. And I didn't see much in red, and you'd look good in red, with your blue eyes and grayish blond hair.”

  “Ash blond,” I said.

  “Ashes are gray or white. Just look in the fire. We don't wear the same size shoe, not that I'm into ColeHaan or Ferragamo. I did find a black leather jacket that's really cool. Were you a biker in another life?”

  “It's lambskin and you're welcome to borrow it.”

  “What about your Fendi perfume and pearls? Do you own a pair of jeans?”

  “Help yourself.” I started to laugh. “And yes, I have a pair of jeans somewhere. Maybe in the garage.”

  “I want to take you shopping, Aunt Kay.”

  “I'd have to be crazy.”

  “Please?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “If it's all right, I want to go to your club to work out for a while.
I'm stiff from the plane.”

  “If you'd like to play tennis while you're here, I'll see if Ted has any time to hit with you. My racquets are in the closet to the left. I just switched to a new Wilson. You can hit the ball a hundred miles an hour. You'll love it.”

  “No, thanks. I'd rather use the StairMaster and weights or go running. Why don't you take a lesson from Ted while I work out, and we can go together?”

  Dutifully, I reached for the phone and dialed Westwood's pro shop. Ted was booked solid until ten o'clock. I gave Lucy directions and my car keys, and after she left, I read in front of the fire and fell asleep.

  When I opened my eyes, I heard coals shift and wind gently touching the pewter wind chimes beyond the sliding glass doors. Snow was drifting down in large, slow flakes, the sky the color of a dusty blackboard. Lights in my yard had come on, the house so silent I was conscious of the clock ticking on the wall. It was shortly after four and Lucy had not returned from the club. I dialed the number for my car phone and no one answered. She had never driven in snow before, I thought anxiously: And I needed to go to the store to pick up fish for dinner. I could call the club and have her paged. I told myself that was ridiculous. Lucy had been gone barely two hours. She was not a child anymore. When it got to be four-thirty, I tried my car phone again. At five I called the club and they could not find her. I began to panic.

  “Are you sure she's not on the StairMaster or maybe in the women's locker room taking a shower? Or maybe she stopped by the mixed grill?” I again asked the young woman in the pro shop.

  “We've paged her four times, Dr. Scarpetta. And I've gone around looking. I'll check again. If I locate her, I'll have her call you immediately.”

  “Do you know if she ever showed up at all? She should have gotten there around two.”

  “Gosh. I just came on at four. I don't know.”

  I continued calling my car phone.

  “The Richmond Cellular customer you have dialed does not answer . . .”

  I tried Marino and he wasn't home or at headquarters. At six o'clock I stood in the kitchen staring out the window. Snow streaked down in the chalky glow of streetlights. My heart beat hard as I paced from room to room and continued calling my car phone. At half past six I had decided to file a missing person report with the police when the telephone rang. Running back to my study, I was reaching for the receiver when I noticed the familiar number eerily materializing on the Caller ID screen. The calls had stopped after the night of Waddell's execution I had not thought about them since. Bewildered, I froze, waiting for the expected hang up to. follow my recorded message. I was shocked when I recognized the voice that began to speak.

  “I hate to do this to you, Doc...” Snatching up the receiver, I cleared my throat and said in disbelief, “Marino?”

  “Yeah,- he said. “I got bad news.”

  4

  Where are you?” I demanded, my eyes riveted to the number on the screen.

  “East End, and it's coming down like a bitch,” Marino said. “We got a DOA. White female. At a glance appears to be your typical CO suicide, car inside the garage, hose hooked up to the exhaust pipe. But the circumstances are a little weird. I think you better come.”

  “Where are you placing this call from?” I asked so adamantly that he hesitated. I could feel his surprise.

  “The decedent's house. Just got here. That's the other thing. It wasn't secured. The back was unlocked.”

  I heard the garage door. “Oh, thank God. Marino, hold on,” I said, flooded with relief.

  Paper bags crackled as the kitchen door shut.

  Placing my hand over the receiver, I called out, “Lucy, is that you?”

  “No, Frosty the Snowman. You ought to see it coming down out there! It's awesome!”

  Reaching for pen and paper, I said to Marino, “The decedent's name and address?”

  “Jennifer Deighton. Two-one-seven Ewing.” I did not recognize the name. Ewing was off Williamsburg Road, not too far from the airport in a neighborhood unfamiliar to me.

  Lucy walked into my study as I was hanging up the phone. Her face was rosy from the cold, eyes spark ling.

  “Where in God's name have you been?” I snapped.

  Her smile faded. “Errands.”

  “Well, we'll discuss this later. I've got to go to a scene.”

  She shrugged and returned my irritation. “So what else is new?”

  “I'm sorry. It's not as if I have control over people dying.” Grabbing coat and gloves, I hurried out to the garage. I started the engine, buckled up, adjusted the heat, and studied my directions before remembering the automatic door opener attached to the visor. It's amazing how quickly an enclosed space will fill with fumes.

  “Good God,” I said severely to no one but my own distracted self as I quickly opened the garage door.

  Poisoning by motor vehicle exhaust is an easy way to die. Young couples necking in the backseat, engine running and heater on, drift off in each other's arms and never wake up. Suicidal individuals turn cars into small gas chambers and leave their problems for others to solve. I had neglected to ask Marino if Jennifer Deighton lived alone.

  The snow was already several inches deep, the night lit up by it. There was no traffic in my neighborhood and very little when I got on the downtown expressway. Christmas music played nonstop on the radio as my thoughts flew in a riot of bewilderment and alighted, one by one, on fear. Jennifer Deighton had been calling my number and hanging up, or someone using her telephone had. Now she was dead. The overpass curved above the east end of downtown, where railroad tracks crisscrossed the earth like sutured wounds, and concrete parking decks were higher than many of the buildings. Main Street station hulked out of the milky sky, tile roof frosted white, the clock in its tower a bleary Cyclops eye.

  On Williamsburg Road I drove very slowly past a deserted shopping center, and just before the city turned into Henrico County, I found Ewing Avenue. Houses were small, with pickup trucks and old model American cars parked out front. At the 217 address, police cars were in the drive and on both sides of the street. Pulling in behind Marino's Ford, I got out with my medical bag and walked to the end of the unpaved driveway where the single-car garage was lit up like a Christmas creche. The door was rolled up, police officers gathered inside around a beat-up beige Chevrolet. I found Marino squatting by the back door on the driver's side, studying a section of green garden hose leading from the exhaust pipe through a partially opened window. The interior of the car was filthy with soot, the smell of fumes lingering on the cold, damp air.

  “The ignition's still switched on,” Marino said to me. “The car ran out of gas.”

  The dead woman appeared to be in her fifties or early sixties. She was slumped over on her right side behind the steering wheel, the exposed flesh of her neck and hands bright pink. Dried bloody fluid stained the tan upholstery beneath her head. From where I stood, I could not see her face. Opening my medical bag, I got out a chemical thermometer to take the temperature inside the garage, and put on a pair of surgical gloves. I asked a young officer if he could open the car's front doors.

  “We were just about to dust,” he said.

  “I'll wait.”

  “Johnson, how 'bout dusting the door handles so the doc here can get in the car.”

  He fixed dark Latin eyes on me. “By the way, I'm Tom Lucero. What we got here is a situation that doesn't completely add up. To begin with, it bothers me there's blood on the front seat.”

  “There are several possible explanations for that,” I said. “One is postmortem purging.”

  He narrowed his eyes a little.

  “When pressure in the lungs forces bloody fluid from the nose and mouth,” I explained.

  “Oh. Generally, that doesn't happen until the person's started to decompose, right?”

  “Generally.”

  “Based on what we know, this lady's been dead maybe twenty-four hours and it's cold as a morgue fridge in here.”

 
“True,” I said. “But if she had her heater running, that in addition to the hot exhaust pouring in would have heated up the inside of the car, and it would have stayed quite warm until the car ran out of gas.”