Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

Scarpetta sat at her desk, really an improvised work station surrounding her on three sides, and nearby were two metal file cabinets that served as a stand for her printer and a fax machine. Behind her was a table for her Olympus BX41 microscope, attached to a fiber-optic illuminator and a video camera so she could view slides and evidence on a monitor while capturing the images electronically or printing them on photographic paper. Within easy reach was an assortment of old friends: Cecil Textbook of Medicine, Robbins Pathology, The Merck Manual, Saferstein, Schlesinger, Petraco, and a few other things she’d carried in from home to keep her company. A dissecting kit from her medical-school days at Johns Hopkins and other collectibles reminded her of the long tradition in forensic medicine that preceded her. Brass scales and a mortar and pestle. Apothecary bottles and jars. A Civil War field surgical kit. A compound microscope from the late eighteen-hundreds. An assortment of police caps and pins.

She tried Benton’s cell phone. It went straight to voicemail, which usually meant he had it turned off, was someplace he couldn’t use it, in this instance, the men’s prison ward at Bellevue, where he was a consulting forensic psychologist. She tried his office, and her heart felt lighter when he answered.

“You’re still there,” she said. “Want to share a cab?”

“You trying to pick me up?”

“Rumor has it you’re pretty easy. I need about an hour, need to talk to Dr. Edison first. What’s it look like for you?”

“An hour should work.” He sounded subdued. “I need to have a conference with my chief, too.”

“You okay?” She wedged the phone between her shoulder and chin, and logged in to her e-mail.

“There may be a dragon I need to slay.” His familiar voice, baritone and soothing, but she detected the flinty edge of anxiety and anger. She’d detected it a lot of late.

“I thought you were supposed to be helping dragons, not slaying them,” she said. “You probably won’t tell me about it.”

“You’re right. I won’t,” he replied.

He was saying he couldn’t. Benton must be having problems with a patient, and it seemed to be a trend. For the past month, Scarpetta had gotten the impression he was avoiding McLean, the Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was on staff and where they had their home. He’d been acting more stressed and distracted than usual, as if something was really eating at him, something he didn’t want to say, suggesting that legally he couldn’t. Scarpetta knew when to inquire and when to leave it alone, having grown accustomed long ago to how little Benton could share.

The lives they led, filled with secrets like rooms that held as much shadow as light. Their long pilgrimage together was mapped by independent detours and destinations not always known to each other, but as difficult as it was for her, in many ways it was worse for him. There were few occasions when it was unethical for her to have case discussions with her forensic psychologist husband and seek his opinion and advice, but rarely could she return the favor. Benton’s patients were alive and enjoyed certain rights and privileges that Scarpetta’s dead patients didn’t. Unless someone was a danger to himself or others or convicted of a crime, Benton couldn’t discuss the person with Scarpetta without violating patient confidentiality.

“At some point we need to talk about when we’re going home.” Benton had turned to the topic of the holidays and a life in Massachusetts that was becoming increasingly distant. “Justine’s wondering if she should decorate the house. Maybe string a few white lights in the trees.”

“Good idea if it looks like someone’s there, I suppose,” Scarpetta said, skimming through e-mail. “Keeps the burglars away, and based on everything I hear, burglaries and robberies are going through the roof. Let’s do some lights. In the boxwoods, maybe just on either side of the front door and in the garden.”

“I take that as a no to doing anything else.”

“With what’s going on here,” she said, “I have no idea where we’ll be in a week. I’ve got a really bad case, and people are fighting.”

“I’m making a note of it. Lights to scare away the burglars. The rest, why bother.”

“I’ll pick up a few amaryllises for the apartment, maybe a tiny fir tree we can replant,” she said. “And hopefully we can get home for a few days if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want. Maybe we should just plan on staying here. Then it’s not a question anymore. How about that? Deal? Have we decided? Put together a dinner or something? Jaime and Lucy. And Marino, I guess.”

“You guess.”

“Sure. If you want him.”

Benton wasn’t going to say he wanted Marino. He didn’t. No point in pretending.

“Deal,” she said, but she didn’t feel good about it. “We’ll stay in New York.” She started feeling really bad about it, now that it was decided.

She thought of their two-story bungalow-style house, built in 1910, a simple harmony of timber, plaster, and stone that reminded her daily of how much she adored Frank Lloyd Wright. For an instant she missed her big kitchen with its commercial-grade stainless-steel appliances. She missed the master bedroom with its deep-set skylights and exposed-brick flue.

“Either way. Here or home,” she added. “As long as we’re together.”

“Let me ask you something,” Benton said. “You haven’t gotten any unusual communications, like maybe a greeting card, maybe something sent to your office in Massachusetts or the OCME here in New York or maybe to CNN?”

“A greeting card? From anybody in particular?”

“Just wondering if you’ve gotten anything unusual.”

“E-mails, e-cards, mostly what I get from strangers is sent to CNN, and fortunately, other people go through it.”

“I don’t mean fan mail, exactly. I mean like a talking or singing card. Not an e-card. A real one,” he said.

“Sounds like you have someone in mind.”

“It’s just a question.” He had someone in mind. A patient. Maybe the dragon he had to slay.

“No,” she said, opening an e-mail from the chief. Good. He was in his office, would be until five.

“We don’t need to discuss it.” Meaning Benton wasn’t going to discuss it. “Call me when you’re ready to leave and I’ll meet you out front,” he said. “I’ve missed you today.”

Benton pulled on a pair of cotton examination gloves and removed a FedEx pouch and a Christmas card from the plastic evidence bag he had tucked them in earlier today.

It disturbed him that the unseemly holiday greeting had been sent to him here at Bellevue. How could Dodie Hodge, who had been discharged from McLean five days ago, know Benton was at Bellevue right now? How did she have any idea where he was, for that matter? Benton had considered a number of possibilities, had been obsessing about them all day, the specter of Dodie bringing out the cop in him, not the mental health practitioner.

He supposed it was possible she had seen the commercials on TV about Scarpetta’s live appearance on The Crispin Report tonight and had assumed Benton would accompany his wife, especially this close to the holidays. Dodie might then deduce that if he was going to be in the city, he’d drop by Bellevue, at least check his mail. It was also possible that her psychiatric condition was deteriorating now that she was home, that her insomnia had worsened, or that she simply wasn’t getting the fix of excitement she craved. But no explanation Benton had come up with satisfied him, and as hours had passed, he’d become more unsettled and vigilant, not less. He worried that Dodie’s disturbing gesture was out of character, not what he would have predicted, and that she might not have acted alone. And he worried about himself. It seemed she had awakened certain inclinations and behaviors in him that were unacceptable to his profession. Not that he’d been himself of late. Because he hadn’t been.