Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“I could hear you come in. Obviously, you parked your motorcycle in the bay again,” she says. “If it gets hit by a hearse or a van,” she reminds him, “the liability’s yours and I won’t feel sorry for you.”

“It gets hit, there’ll be an extra dead body wheeled in, whatever dumb-shit funeral home creepy-crawler didn’t look where he was going.”

Marino’s motorcycle, with its sound barrier — breaking pipes, has become yet one more point of contention. He rides it to crime scenes, to court, to emergency rooms, to law offices, to witnesses’ homes. At the office, he refuses to leave it in the parking lot and tucks it in the bay, which is for body deliveries, not personal vehicles.

“Has Mr. Grant gotten here yet?” Scarpetta says.

“Drove up in a piece-of-shit pickup truck with his piece-of-shit fishing boat, shrimp nets, buckets, other crap in back. One big son of a bitch, pitch-black. I’ve never seen black people as black as they are around here. Not a drop of cream in the coffee. Not like our ole stomping grounds in Virginia where Thomas Jefferson slept with the help.”

She’s in no mood to engage in his provocations. “Is he in my office, because I don’t want to make him wait.”

“I don’t get why you dressed up for him like you’re meeting with a lawyer or a judge or going to church,” Marino says, and she wonders if what he really hopes is that she dressed up for him, perhaps because she read Dr. Self’s e-mails and is jealous.

“Meeting with him is as important as meeting with anyone else,” she says. “We always show respect, remember?”

Marino smells like cigarettes and booze, and when “his chemistry’s off,” as Scarpetta understates it all too often these days, his deep-seated insecurities shift his bad behavior into high gear, a problem made quite threatening by his physical formidability. In his mid-fifties, he shaves off what is left of his hair, typically wears black motorcycle clothing and big boots, and, as of the past few days, a gaudy necklace with a silver dollar dangling from it. He is fanatical about lifting weights, his chest so broad he’s known to brag that it takes two x-rays to capture his lungs on film. In a much earlier phase of his life, based on old photographs she’s seen, he was handsome in a virile, tough way, and might still be attractive were it not for his crassness, slovenliness, and hard living that at this point in his life can’t be blamed on his difficult upbringing in a rough part of New Jersey.

“I don’t know why you still entertain the fantasy that you’ll fool me,” Scarpetta says, shifting the conversation away from the ridiculous subject of how she is dressed and why. “Last night. And clearly in the morgue.”

“Fool you about what?” Another gulp from the can.

“When you splash on that much cologne to disguise cigarette smoke, all you do is give me a headache.”

“Huh?” He quietly belches.

“Let me guess, you spent the night at the Kick ’N Horse.”

“The joint’s full of cigarette smoke.” He shrugs his massive shoulders.

“And I’m sure you didn’t add to it. You were smoking in the morgue. In the fridge. Even the surgical gown I put on smelled like cigarette smoke. Were you smoking in my locker room?”

“Probably drifted in from my side. The smoke, I mean. I might have carried my cigarette in there, in my side. I can’t remember.”

“I know you don’t want lung cancer.”

He averts his eyes the way he does when a certain topic of conversation is uncomfortable, and he chooses to abort it. “Find anything new? And I don’t mean the old lady, who shouldn’t have been sent here just because the coroner didn’t want to deal with a stinky decomp. But the kid.”

“I’ve put him in the freezer. There’s nothing more we can do right now.”

“I can’t stand it when it’s kids. I figure out who did that little kid down there, I’ll kill him, tear him to pieces with my bare hands.”

“Let’s don’t threaten to kill people, please.” Rose is in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. Scarpetta isn’t sure how long she’s been standing there.

“It ain’t no threat,” Marino says.

“That’s exactly why I mentioned it.” Rose steps into the kitchen, dressed as neat as a pin — her old-fashioned expression — in a blue suit, her white hair tucked back in a French twist. She looks exhausted, and her pupils are contracted.

“You lecturing me again?” Marino says to her with a wink.

“You need a good lecture or two. Or three or four,” she says, pouring herself a cup of strong black coffee, a “bad” habit she quit about a year ago and now, apparently, has resumed. “And in case you’ve forgotten”—she eyes him above the rim of her coffee mug—“you have killed people before. So you shouldn’t make threats.” She leans against the countertop and takes a deep breath.

“I told you. It ain’t no threat.”

“You sure you’re all right?” Scarpetta asks Rose. “Maybe you’re getting more than a little cold. You shouldn’t have come in.”

“I had a little chat with Lucy,” Rose says. To Marino, “I don’t want Dr. Scarpetta alone with Mr. Grant. Not even for a second.”

“Did she mention he passed his background check?” Scarpetta says.

“You hear me, Marino? Not for one second do you leave Dr. Scarpetta alone with that man. I don’t give a hoot about his background check. He’s bigger than you are,” says the ever-protective Rose, probably upon the ever-protective Lucy’s instructions.

Rose has been Scarpetta’s secretary for almost twenty years, following her from pillar to post, in Rose’s words, and through thick and thin. At seventy-three, she’s an attractive, imposing figure, erect and keen, daily drifting in and out of the morgue armed with phone messages, reports that must be signed right this minute, any matter of business she decides can’t wait, or simply a reminder — no, an order — that Scarpetta hasn’t eaten all day and take-out food — healthy, of course — awaits her upstairs and she will go eat it now and she won’t have another cup of coffee because she drinks too much coffee.

“He’s been in what appears to be a knife fight.” Rose continues to worry.

“It’s in his background check. He was the victim,” Scarpetta says.

“He looks very violent and dangerous, and is the size of a freighter. It concerns me greatly that he wanted to come here on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps hoping he’d find you alone,” she says to Scarpetta. “How do you know he isn’t the one who killed that child?”

“Let’s just hear what he has to say.”

“In the old days, we wouldn’t do it like this. There would be a police presence,” Rose insists.

“This isn’t the old days,” Scarpetta replies, trying not to lecture. “This is a private practice, and we have more flexibility in some ways and less in others. But in fact, part of our job has always been to meet with anyone who might have useful information, police presence or not.”

“Just be careful,” Rose says to Marino. “Whoever did this to that poor little boy knows darn well his body’s here and Dr. Scarpetta’s working on it, and usually when she works on something, she figures it out. He could be stalking her, for all we know.”

Usually Rose doesn’t get this overwrought.

“You’ve been smoking,” Rose then says to Marino.

He takes another big gulp of Diet Pepsi. “Should’ve seen me last night. Had ten cigarettes in my mouth and two in my ass while I was playing the harmonica and getting it on with my new woman.”

“Another edifying evening at that biker bar with some woman whose IQ is the same as my refrigerator. Sub-Zero. Please don’t smoke. I don’t want you to die.” Rose looks troubled as she walks over to the coffeemaker and starts filling the pot with water to make a fresh pot. “Mr. Grant would like coffee,” she says. “And no, Dr. Scarpetta, you can’t have any.”