Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“Nope.”

“I got a right to see where she works, since she seems to own you.”

“She don’t own me, and we’re not going in there. Nothing for you to see in there anyway, except books and a microscope.”

“Bet she’s got some good murder cases in that sitting room of hers.”

“Nope. We keep sensitive cases locked up. In another words, ones you’d think was good.”

“Every room’s for sitting , isn’t it? So why was it called a sitting room ?” She won’t shut up about it. “That’s stupid.”

“Back in the old days, it was called a sitting room to differentiate it from the parlor,” Marino explains, proudly looking a round his office, at his certificates on the paneled walls, at the big dictionary he never uses, at all the other untouched reference books Scarpetta has passed down to him when she gets the newest revised editions. And, of course, his bowling trophies — all neatly arranged and brassy-bright on built-in shelves. “The parlor was this real formal room right inside the front door, where you stuck people you didn’t want staying around very long, whereas the opposite is true of the sitting room, which is the same thing as a living room.”

“Sounds to me like you’re glad she got this place. No matter how much you complain about it.”

“Not half bad for an old joint. I’d rather have something new.”

“Your old joint’s not half bad, either.” She grabs him until he aches. “Fact, feels new to me. Show me her office. Show me where the Big Chief works.” She grabs him again. “You having a hard time because of her or me?”

“Shut up,” he says, moving her hand away, annoyed by her puns.

“Show me where she works.”

“I told you no.”

“Then show me the morgue.”

“No can do.”

“Why? Because you’re so fucking scared of her? What’s she gonna do? Call the morgue police? Show it to me,” she demands.

He glances up at a tiny camera in a corner of the hallway. No one will see the tapes. Shandy’s right. Who would bother? No reason. He gets that feeling again — a cocktail of spitefulness, aggression, and vengefulness that makes him want to do something awful.

Dr. Self’s fingers click-click on her laptop, new e-mails constantly landing (agents, lawyers, business managers, network executives, and special patients and very select fans).

But nothing new from him. The Sandman. She can scarcely stand it. He wants her to think he’s done the unthinkable, to torment her with anxiety, with terror, by making her think the unthinkable. When she opened his last e-mail on that fated Friday during her midmorning break at the studio, what he’d sent to her, the last thing he sent, was life-altering. At least temporarily.

Don’t let it be true.

How foolish and gullible she was to answer him when he sent the first e-mail to her personal address last fall, but she was intrigued. How was it possible he got her personal and very, very private e-mail address? She had to know. She wrote him back and asked. He wouldn’t tell her. They began a correspondence. He is unusual, special. Home from Iraq, where he had been profoundly traumatized. Bearing in mind that he would make a fabulous guest on one of her shows, she developed a therapeutic relationship with him online, having no idea he might be capable of the unthinkable.

Please don’t let it be true.

If only she could undo it. If only she’d never answered him. If only she hadn’t tried to help him. He’s insane, a word she rarely uses. Her claim to fame is that everyone is capable of change. Not him. Not if he did the unthinkable.

Please don’t let it be true.

If he did the unthinkable, he’s a hideous human being beyond repair. The Sandman. What does that mean, and why didn’t she demand he tell her, threaten that if he refused she’d have no further contact with him?

Because she’s a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists don’t threaten their patients.

Please don’t let the unthinkable be true.

Whoever he really is, he can’t be helped by her or anyone else on earth, and now he may have done what she never expected. He may have done the unthinkable! If he has, there’s only one way for Dr. Self to save her-SELF. She decided this at her studio on a day she’ll never forget when she saw the photograph he sent her and realized she could be in serious danger for a multitude of reasons, and this necessitated her telling her producers she had a family emergency she couldn’t divulge. She would be off the air, hopefully no longer than several weeks. They would have to fill in with her usual replacement (a mildly entertaining psychologist who is no competition but deludes himself into thinking he is). Which is why she can’t afford to be away longer than several weeks. Everyone wants to take her place. Dr. Self called Paulo Maroni (said it was another referral and was put straight through) and (in disguise) climbed into a limousine (couldn’t possibly use one of her own drivers) and (still disguised) boarded a private jet, and secretly checked herself into McLean, where she is safe, is hidden, and, she hopes, will find out soon enough that the unthinkable hasn’t happened.

It’s all a sick ruse. He didn’t do it. Crazy people make false confessions all the time.

(What if it’s not?)

She has to consider the worst-case scenario: People will blame her. They’ll say it’s because of her that the madman fixated on Drew Martin after she won the U.S. Open last fall and appeared on Dr. Self’s shows. Incredible shows and exclusive interviews. What remarkable hours she and Drew shared on the air, talking about positive thinking, about empowering oneself with the proper tools, about actually making a decision to win or lose and how this enabled Drew, at barely sixteen, to pull off one of the biggest upsets in tennis history. Dr. Self’s award-winning series When to Win was a phenomenal success.

Her pulse picks up as she returns to the other side of horror. She opens the Sandman’s e-mail again, as if looking at it again, as if looking at it enough, will somehow change it. There’s no text message, only an attachment, a horrifying high-resolution image of Drew naked and sitting in a gray mosaic tile tub sunk deep into a terra-cotta floor. The water level is up to her waist, and when Dr. Self enlarges the image, as she has so many times, she can make out the goose bumps on Drew’s arms, and her blue lips and fingernails, suggesting the water running out of an old brass spout is cold. Her hair is wet, the expression on her pretty face hard to describe. Stunned? Pitiful? In shock? She looks drugged.

The Sandman told Dr. Self in earlier e-mails that it was routine to dunk naked prisoners in Iraq. Beat them, humiliate them, force them to urinate on each other. You do what you got to do, he wrote. After a while it’s normal, and he didn’t mind taking pictures. He didn’t mind much until that one thing he did, and he has never told her what that one thing is, and she’s convinced it began his transformation into a monster. Assuming he’s done the unthinkable, if what he sent her isn’t a ruse.

(Even if it’s a ruse, he’s a monster for doing this to her!)

She studies the image for any sign of fakery, enlarging and reducing it, reorienting it, staring. No, no, no, she continues reassuring herself. Of course it’s not real.

(What if it is?)

Her mind chews on itself. If she’s held accountable, her career will be shot out of the air. At least temporarily. Her millions of followers will say it’s her fault because she should have seen it coming, should never have discussed Drew in e-mails with this anonymous patient who calls himself the Sandman and who claimed to watch Drew on TV and read about her and thought she seemed like a sweet girl but unbearably isolated, and was sure he would meet her and she would love him and have no more pain.