Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“And what about me? The asshole cheated on me. Nobody does that. All the guys I could have, and that fat fuck cheats on me?”

“Here’s what you do about it.” Dr. Self slips an envelope out of a pocket of her red silk robe. “You’re going to tell Benton Wesley.”

“You’re a piece of work.”

“It’s only fair he should know. Your cashier’s check. Before I forget.” She holds up the envelope.

“So now you’re going to play another little game with me.”

“Oh, it’s not a game, my dear. And I just happen to have Benton’s e-mail address,” Dr. Self says. “My laptop’s on the desk.”

Scarpetta’s conference room.

“Nothing unusual,” Lucy says. “Looked the same.”

“The same?” Benton asks. “The same as what?”

The four of them are gathered around a small table in what was a servants’ quarters, quite possibly occupied by a young woman named Mary, a slave set free who wouldn’t leave the family after the War. Scarpetta has gone to much trouble to know the history of her building. Right now she wishes she’d never bought it.

“I will ask again,” says Captain Poma. “Has there been a difficulty with him? Perhaps a problem with his job?”

Lucy says, “When doesn’t he have difficulty with any job?”

No one’s heard from Marino. Scarpetta has called him half a dozen times, maybe more, and he hasn’t called her back. On her way here, Lucy stopped by his fishing shack. His motorcycle was parked underneath it, but his truck was gone. He didn’t answer the door. He wasn’t there. She says she looked through a window, but Scarpetta knows better. She knows Lucy.

“Yes, I’d say so,” Scarpetta says. “I’d say he’s been unhappy. Misses Florida and is sorry he moved here, and probably doesn’t like working for me. This isn’t a good time to dwell on the trials and troubles of Marino.”

She feels Benton’s eyes on her. She makes notes on a legal pad and checks other notes she’s already made. She checks preliminary lab reports even though she knows exactly what they say.

“He hasn’t moved,” Lucy says. “Or if he did, he left all his stuff behind.”

“And you saw all this through a window?” Captain Poma says, and he’s very curious about Lucy.

He’s been watching her since everyone assembled in this room. He seems slightly amused by her, and her response is to ignore him. The way he looks at Scarpetta is the way he looked at her in Rome.

“Seems like a lot to see through a window,” he says to Scarpetta, even though he’s talking to Lucy.

“He hasn’t gone into his e-mail, either,” Lucy says. “He might suspect I’m monitoring it. Nothing between him and Dr. Self.”

“In other words,” Scarpetta says, “he’s off the radar screen. Completely.”

She gets up and pulls down window shades because it’s dark. It’s raining again, and has been since Lucy picked her up in Knoxville, when the mountains looked like they weren’t there because it was so foggy. Lucy had to divert wherever she could, flying very slowly, following rivers and finding lower elevations. It was luck, or perhaps God’s good grace, that they weren’t stranded. Search efforts have been halted, except those conducted on the ground. Lydia Webster hasn’t been found alive or dead. Her Cadillac hasn’t been seen.

“Let’s organize our thoughts,” Scarpetta says, because she doesn’t want to talk about Marino. She’s afraid Benton will sense how she feels.

Guilty and angry, and increasingly afraid. It appears Marino has pulled a disappearing stunt, got in his truck and drove away without a warning, without any effort to repair the damage he’s done. He’s never been facile with words, and he’s never made much effort to understand his complicated emotions, and this time what he needs to fix exceeds his capacity to cope. She’s tried to dismiss him, to not give a damn, but he’s like the persistent fog. Thoughts of him obscure what’s around her, and one lie becomes another. She told Benton her bruises are from the hatchback of her SUV accidentally shutting on her wrists. She hasn’t undressed in front of him.

“Let’s try to make some sense of what we know,” she says to everyone. “I would like to talk about the sand. Silica — or quartz, and limestone, and with high magnification, fragments of shells and coral, typical of sand in subtropical areas like this. And most interesting and perplexing of all, the components of gunshot residue. In fact, I’m just going to call it gunshot residue, because we can’t figure out any other explanation for barium, antimony, and lead to be present in beach sand.”

“If it’s beach sand,” Captain Poma says. “Maybe it isn’t. Dr. Maroni says the patient who came to see him claimed to have just returned from Iraq. I would expect gunshot residue in many areas of Iraq. Maybe he brought sand back from Iraq because he became demented over there, and the sand is a reminder.”

“We didn’t find gypsum, and gypsum’s common in desert sand,” Scarpetta says. “But it really depends on what area of Iraq, and I don’t believe Dr. Maroni knows the answer to that.”

“He didn’t tell me exactly where,” Benton says.

“What about his notes?” Lucy asks.

“It’s not in them.”

“Sand in different regions of Iraq has different compositions and morphology,” Scarpetta says. “It all depends on how sediment was deposited, and although a high saline content doesn’t prove the sand is from a beach, both samples we have — from Drew Martin’s body and Lydia Webster’s house — have a high saline content. In other words, salt.”

“I think what’s important is why sand is so important to him,” Benton says. “What does sand say about him? He calls himself the Sandman. Symbolic of putting people to sleep? Maybe. A type of euthanasia that might be related to the glue, to some medical component? Maybe.”

The glue. Two-octylcyanoacrylate. Surgical glue, primarily used by plastic surgeons and other medical practitioners to close small incisions or cuts, and in the military to treat friction blisters.

Scarpetta says, “The surgical glue might be what he had because of whatever it is he does and whoever he is. Not simply symbolism.”

“Is there an advantage?” Captain Poma asks. “Surgical glue instead of everyday superglue? I’m not so familiar with what plastic surgeons do.”

“Surgical glue is biodegradable,” she says. “It’s noncarcinogenic.”

“A healthy glue.” He smiles at her.

“You might say that.”

“Does he believe he’s relieving suffering? Maybe.” Benton resumes, as if ignoring them.

“You said it’s sexual,” Captain Poma points out.

He’s dressed in a dark blue suit and a black shirt and black tie and looks as if he stepped out of a Hollywood premiere or an ad for Armani. What he doesn’t look like is someone who belongs in Charleston, and Benton doesn’t seem to like him any more than he did in Rome.

“I didn’t say it was only sexual,” Benton replies. “I said there’s a sexual component. I will also say he may not be aware of it, and we don’t know if he assaults his victims sexually, only that he tortures them.”

“And I’m not sure we know that for a fact.”

“You saw the photographs he sent to Dr. Self. What do you call it when someone forces a woman to sit naked in a tub of cold water? And possibly dunks her?”

“I don’t know what I’d call it, because I wasn’t there when he did it,” Captain Poma says.

“Had you been, I suppose we wouldn’t be here, because the cases would be solved.” Benton’s eyes are like steel.

“I find it rather fantastic to think he’s relieving their suffering,” Captain Poma says to him. “Especially if your theory is correct and he tortures them. It would seem he causes suffering. Not relieves it.”