Scarpetta can't get over Benton Wesley. She has tried. Several times she has dated perfectly acceptable men, only to recoil at their touch. A simple touch, and it isn't Benton's, and then she is reminded. Then she reviews her last images of him, burned, mutilated. She still regrets reading his autopsy report, and yet she doesn't. She regrets touching his ashes and scattering them, and yet she doesn't. It was crucial, it really was, she constantly tells herself when she remembers the feel of the silky, lumpy cremains, when she remembers returning him to the pure air and sea he loved.
She wanders out of the kitchen, clutching the same mug of coffee she has warmed up in the microwave at least four times since noon.
"Dr. Scarpetta, can I get you anything?" Rose calls out from a spare bedroom that serves as her office.
"Nothing would help," Scarpetta replies, halfway joking, as she heads in the direction of Rose's voice.
"Nonsense." It is her secretary's favorite rebuttal. "I told you if you went to work for yourself, you'd only be busier, if that was possible. And worn-out and overextended."
"And what did I tell you about retirement?"
Rose looks up from the autopsy report she is proofreading on her computer. She tabs to the space for brain and types 1,200 grams. Within normal limits and corrects a typo.
Nails click across the wooden floor like Morse code as Scarpettas bulldog hears voices and walks rather lazily, then pauses, then walks some more toward them, then sits.
"Come here, Billy-Billy," Scarpetta affectionately calls out.
He looks at her with drooping eyes.
"His name is Billy," Rose reminds her, although there is no point in doing so. "If you keep calling him Billy-Billy, he'll think he lives with an echo or has a split personality."
"Come here, Billy-Billy."
He gets up, takes his time. Click-click.
Rose is wearing a peach pantsuit. It is wool, as are all of Rose's suits. The house is on the beach. It is bloody hot and humid, and Rose doesn't hesitate to walk outside in a skirt and long-sleeved blouse and water the hibiscus, climb a ladder to pick bananas or key limes, or save baby frogs from drowning in the trap of the pool. It's a wonder that moths haven't carried off every bit of clothing Rose owns, but she is a proud woman, her dignity masking a fragile, gentle nature, and it is out of her respect for herself and her boss that she takes time each morning to make sure her choice of outfit for the day is pressed and clean.
If anything, she seems secretly pleased that her sense of style is dated, some of her suits so old that she was wearing them more than a decade ago when she first started working for Scarpetta. Rose hasn't changed her hair, either, still pinning it up in a fussbudget French twist and refusing to get rid of the gray. Good structure makes the building, and her bones are exquisite. At the age of sixty-seven, men find her attractive, but she hasn't dated since her husband died. The only man Scarpetta has ever seen her flirt with is Pete Marino, and she doesn't mean it and he knows it, but they have tormented each other since Scarpetta was appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia, what now seems as though it were another incarnation.
Billy is panting as he appears at the desk. He is not quite a year old, white with a large brown spot on the middle of his back, and his under-bite reminds Scarpetta of a backhoe. He sits at her feet, looking up.
"I don't have any…"
"Don't say that word!" Rose exclaims.
"I wasn't going to. I was going to spell it."
"He can spell now."
Billy suffers no language barrier with the words bye-bye and treat. He also recognizes no and sit but pretends he doesn't, stubbornness the right of his breed.
"You better not have been chewing on anything back there," Scarpetta warns him.
In the last month, Billy has taken a fancy to gnawing and ripping molding off doorframes and around the base of the walls, especially in Scarpetta's bedroom.
"This isn't your house, and I will have to pay for all repairs when I move out." She wags her finger at him.
"It would be worse if it was your house," Rose remarks as the dog continues to stare up at Scarpetta and wag his tail, which looks like a croissant.
She picks up a slim stack of mail from her desk and offers it to her boss.
"I've dealt with the bills. There are a couple personal letters. And the usual journals and so forth. And this, from Lucy."
She directs Scarpettas attention to a large manila envelope, her name and address neatly written in black Magic Marker, the return address Lucy's New York office, also written in Magic Marker. The envelope is marked Personal in large letters and underlined twice. It is a die-hard habit for Scarpetta to look at postmarks, and this one is puzzling.
"The postal code isn't for her part of the city," Scarpetta says. "Lucy always mails things from her office, and as a matter of fact, she always overnights mail to me. I can't remember a single time she's ever sent me anything by regular mail, not since she was in college."
Rose doesn't seem concerned. " A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,'" she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson. In fact, it is her favorite quote.
Rose shakes the envelope. "Doesn't sound like anything dangerous in there," she teases. "If you're feeling one of your bouts of paranoia coming on, I'll open it for you, but it's marked Personal… "
"Never mind." Scarpetta takes it and her other mail from Rose.
"And Dr. Lanier from Baton Rouge left a message." Rose pecks at the keyboard and corrects another typo. "It's regarding the Charlotte Dard case. He says you'll get it Monday, his reports and all that. He sounded stressed. He wants to know what you find, immediately."
She gives her boss a look that always reminds Scarpetta of a schoolteacher about to single out some unsuspecting student and put him or her on the spot. "I think somethings going on in this case, something worse than a drug overdose."
Scarpetta massages Billys soft, speckled ears. "Her cause of death isn't straightforward. That's plenty bad. What's worse, the case is eight years old."
"I don't understand why it's such a big deal right now, as if they don't have enough unsolved murders and suspicious deaths down there. Those abducted women. Lord."
"I don't know why it's suddenly become a priority, either," Scarpetta replies. "But the fact is, it has, and I feel obliged to do what I can."
"Because nobody else can be bothered."
"I can be bothered, can't I, Billy-Billy?"
"Well, let me tell you a thing or two, Dr. Echo. I think there's something the coroner down there has no intention of telling you."
"There had better not be," Scarpetta remarks as she walks off.
26
LUCY DESPERATELY NEEDS a ladies' room. Forget looking for a gas station or a rest stop. She pushes the Mercedes up to 160 kilometers per hour, despite Rudy's warning about speeding. Focusing on the dark road, she tries hard to concentrate and ignore her bladder. The drive seems to take twice as long as it should, but she makes excellent time and is ahead of schedule by thirty-five minutes. She redials Rudy's cell phone.
"On final," she says. "Just got to land this thing somewhere." "Shut up," Rudy orders someone in the room, as the TV plays loudly. "Don't make me tell you again."
27
ROCCO CAGGIANO'S FAVORITE form of relaxation is to sit for hours in beer gardens, drinking one Gross Bier after another.