Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

“I sure as hell don’t know why Jaime would mention that to you,” Marino replies, as we loudly creep to a halt in front of the hotel.

“I’m wondering who or what Anna Copper or Anna Copper LLC is,” I ask again.

“A limited liability company she’s been using of late when she doesn’t want her name on something.”

“Such as the apartment she’s rented here in Savannah.”

“I’m really surprised she would mention it to you. I would figure she’d assume you’re the last person who’d appreciate hearing about that LLC,” Marino says.

A valet cautiously approaches the driver’s window, as if he’s not sure what to make of the chugging, backfiring van or if he wants to park it.

“It’s better I drive this thing into the garage myself,” Marino tells him.

“I’m sorry, sir, but no one is allowed to drive anything in there. Only authorized personnel can access underground parking.”

“Well, you don’t want to be driving this. How about I park it right over there by that big palm tree and I’ll get it first thing in the morning so I can take it in for repairs.”

“Are you a guest here?”

“A regular VIP. I left the Bugatti at home. Too much luggage.”

“We’re not really supposed to—”

“It’s about to die. You don’t want it dying with you in it.”

The van chugs and moves in fits and starts as Marino parks off to one side of the brick drive. “Anna Copper is an LLC that Lucy created about a year ago, I guess,” he says. “It was her idea, and she didn’t exactly do it for a nice reason. It happened after she and Jaime had a disagreement. Well, by then they’d probably been having a lot of them.”

“Is it Lucy’s LLC or Jaime’s?” I ask, as he turns off the engine and we sit in the silent dark. The air blowing through our open windows is still very warm for almost two a.m.

“Jaime’s. Lucy basically created a smoke screen for Jaime to hide behind. It was supposed to be funny in a mean sort of way. Lucy went on one of these Internet legal sites, and next thing you know, Anna Copper LLC was filed, and when she got the paperwork in the mail, she wrapped it up in a big fancy box with a bow and gave it to Jaime.”

“This is according to Jaime? Or did Lucy tell you?”

“Lucy did. It was a while back when she told me, around the time she moved to Boston. So I was surprised when I realized Jaime is actually using that LLC.”

“And the reason you found out?”

“Paperwork, a billing address. When I was helping set up her security system I had to know certain information,” Marino says, as we get out of his van. “That’s the name she’s using on everything down here, and I admit it’s a little unusual — at least, I think it is. She’s a damn lawyer. It wouldn’t take her five minutes to create a new LLC. Why would she use one that has certain memories associated with it? Why not forget the past and move on?”

“Because she can’t.”

Jaime can’t give up Lucy, or at least the idea of Lucy, and I wonder if Benton is thinking the same thing. When he text-messaged me that Anna Copper’s “rep is tarnished,” I wonder if he was referring to Jaime. If so, he must have run a check on her apartment building and come across a resident named Anna Copper LLC, and then run another check and realized who it was. He likely wouldn’t accept it as an accident of fate that Jaime has resurfaced in our lives, and he might know something about the trouble she got into that caused her to abandon her life in New York.

We walk through the bright lobby, where at this hour there is a solitary clerk at the desk, only a few people in the bar. When we reach the glass elevator, Marino taps the button several times, as if it will make the doors open faster.

“Shit,” he says. “I left the damn groceries in the van.”

“Did Lucy ever tell you what Anna Copper means? Where she got the name?”

“All I remember is it had something to do with Groucho Marx,” he says. “You want me to drop off some water for you?”

“No, thanks.” I’m getting into the tub. I’m making phone calls. I don’t want Marino stopping by my room.

I board the elevator and tell him I’ll see him in the morning.

It was still hot when the sun came up, and by eight a.m. I’m sweltering in black field clothes and black ankle-high boots as I sit on a bench in front of the hotel, drinking a venti iced coffee I got at a nearby Starbucks.

The bell in the City Hall tower rings in the first day of July, deep, melodious peals echoing in brassy reverberations as I watch a cabdriver watching me. Rawboned and weathered, with pants hitched up and a beard as scruffy as Spanish moss, he reminds me of characters I’ve seen in Civil War photographs. I imagine he hasn’t migrated far from the birthplace of his ancestors and still shares traits in common with them, like so many people I notice in cities and towns insulated from the outside world.

I’m reminded of what Kathleen Lawler said about genetics. No matter what we strive to become in life, we’re still who and what the forces of biology shape us to be. Hers is a fatalistic explanation, but she’s not completely wrong, and as I recall her comments about predetermination and DNA, I have a feeling she wasn’t referring only to herself. She was also alluding to her daughter. Kathleen was warning me, perhaps attempting to intimidate me, about Dawn Kincaid, with whom she claims to have no contact, yet according to a number of sources, it simply isn’t true. Kathleen knows more than she’s letting on, has secrets she keeps that likely are related to why Tara Grimm moved her into segregation at the same time I was lured down here. I believe Jaime Berger has caused real trouble.

She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with, because she isn’t as rationally motivated or as in touch with herself as she believes. While her selfish reasoning may very well have been precipitated by her clashes with New York police and politicians, most of what drives her is related to my niece, and now none of us have ended up in a good place, certainly not a safe one. Not Benton, not Marino, not Lucy, not me, and least of all Jaime, although she might not see it or believe it if I pointed it out. She’s completely deluded herself, and I’m along for the ride and reminded of what an old Diener used to tell me during my Richmond days:

You have to live where you wake up, even if somebody else dreamed you there .

When I woke up this morning after very little sleep, I realized I can’t afford to waiver in my resolve. Too much is at stake, and I don’t trust Jaime’s analysis of most matters or have faith in her approach, but I will do what I can to help. I’m involved not because I volunteered. I was drafted, practically abducted, and that’s of no consequence anymore. My sense of urgency isn’t about Lola Daggette or Dawn Kincaid and her mother, Kathleen Lawler.

It’s not about nine-year-old murders or the recent ones in Massachusetts, although these cases and those involved in them are critically important, and I will make investigative sense of them as best I can. What overrides all of it is Jaime’s meddling with the people closest to me. I feel she has endangered Lucy, Marino, and Benton. She has threatened our relationships, which have always been intricate and complicated, held in place by fragile threads. The network that we are is sturdy only when each of us is.

These people Jaime trifles with are my family, my only family, really. I don’t count my mother or my sister, I’m sorry to confess. I can’t rely on them, and frankly wouldn’t think of entrusting myself to their care, not even on their better days, the few they have. There was a time when I was happy to widen my inner circle to include Jaime, but what I won’t permit is for her to range about on the perimeter and dislodge the rest of us from our moorings or change who we are to one another. She abandoned Lucy in a way that was cold and unfair, and now Jaime seems determined to redefine Marino’s career, his very identity. In short order, she has managed to inflame his jealousy of Benton again and imply that my husband has betrayed me and is indifferent to my safety and happiness.