Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“What I’m hearing is you’ve begun to fear it,” Dr. Clark said, taking off his glasses, cleaning them with his gray silk tie. “Any chance that events of late are making you anxious and disproportionately suspicious of those around you?”

“Any particular events you’re thinking of?”

“Why don’t you tell me,” Dr. Clark said.

“I’m not paranoid.”

“Which is what all paranoid people say.”

“I’ll interpret that as your special vintage of dry humor,” Benton said.

“How are you doing? Besides this? Been a lot going on, hasn’t there,” Dr. Clark said. “A lot happening all at once this past month.”

“There’s always a lot going on.”

“Kay’s been on TV and in the public eye.” Dr. Clark put his glasses back on. “So has Warner Agee.”

Benton had been anticipating for a while that Dr. Clark was going to say something about Agee. Benton probably had been avoiding Dr. Clark. Not probably. He had been. Until today.

“It’s occurred to me that you must have a reaction to seeing Warner in the news, this man who sabotaged your career with the FBI, sabotaged your entire life because he wanted to be you,” Dr. Clark said. “Now he’s publicly playing the role of you-metaphorically speaking-taking on the persona of the forensic expert, the FBI profiler, at last his chance for stardom.”

“There are a lot of people who make claims that are exaggerated or untrue.”

“Have you read his bio on Wikipedia?” Dr. Clark asked. “He’s cited as one of the founding fathers of profiling and your mentor. It says during the period you were at the FBI Academy, the unit chief of Behavioral Science, and just beginning your adulterous affair, and I quote, with Kay Scarpetta, he worked a number of notorious cases with her. Is it true he worked with Kay? It’s my understanding Warner was never a profiler for the FBI or anyone else.”

“I didn’t realize you considered Wikipedia a reliable source,” Benton said, as if Dr. Clark was the one spreading these lies.

“I took a look because often the anonymous individuals who contribute alleged factual information to online encyclopedias and other Internet sites also happen to have a vested and not so unbiased interest in the subject they’re stealthily writing about,” Dr. Clark said. “Curiously, it appears that in the past few weeks, his bio has been heavily edited and expanded. I wonder by whom?”

“Perhaps by the person it’s about.” Benton’s stomach was tight with resentment and rage.

“I imagine Lucy could find that out or already knows and could have this misinformation removed,” Dr. Clark said. “But maybe she hasn’t thought to check on certain details the way I have because you haven’t shared with her what you’ve shared with me about your past.”

“There are better things to spend our time on than limited individuals desperately seeking attention. Lucy doesn’t need to waste her forensic computer investigative resources on Internet gossip. You’re right. I haven’t told her everything I’ve told you.” Benton couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this threatened.

“If you hadn’t called me this afternoon, it wouldn’t have been long before I would have trumped up some reason to talk to you so we could get it out on the table,” Dr. Clark said. “You have every reason to want to destroy Warner Agee. I have every reason to hope you’ll get over wanting that.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with what we were talking about, Nathan.”

“Everything has to do with everything, Benton.” Watching him, reading him. “But let’s return to the subject of your former patient Dodie Hodge, because I have a feeling she’s connected anyway. I’m struck by a number of things. The first being the card itself, the obvious suggestion of domestic violence, of a man degrading a woman by calling her a whore, the wife chasing the husband with the intent of beating him with a rolling pin, the sexual overtones. In other words, one of those jokes that isn’t funny. What is she saying to you?”

“Projection.” Benton had to will his fury toward Warner Agee to leave the room. “It’s what she’s projecting,” he heard himself say in a reasonable tone.

“All right. What is she projecting, in your view? Who is Santa? Who is Mrs. Claus?”

“I’m Santa,” Benton said, and the wave was passing. It had seemed as big as a tsunami and then receded and was almost gone. He relaxed a little. “Mrs. Claus is hostile toward me for something she perceives I did that was unkind and degrading. I, Santa, said, ‘ho, ho, ho,’ and Mrs. Claus interpreted it as my calling her a whore.”

“Dodie Hodge perceives that she is falsely accused, degraded, unappreciated, trivialized. Yet she knows her perception is false,” Dr. Clark said. “That’s the histrionic personality disorder kicking in. The obvious message of the card is poor Santa is about to take a drubbing because Mrs. Claus grossly misunderstood what he said, and obviously Dodie gets the joke or she wouldn’t have picked the card.”

“Assuming she picked it.”

“You keep alluding to that. To the possibility she might have had some help. Possibly an accomplice.”

“The technical part of it,” Benton said. “Knowing about the recorders, ordering them, assembling the damn thing. Dodie’s impulsive and seeks instant gratification. There’s a degree of deliberation that is inconsistent with what I saw when she was at the hospital. And when did she have time? As I said, she was discharged just this past Sunday. The FedEx was sent yesterday, Wednesday. How did she know to send it here? The handwritten address on the FedEx label is odd. The whole thing is odd.”

“She craves drama, and the singing card is dramatic. You don’t think that’s consistent with her histrionic proclivities?”

“You yourself pointed out she didn’t witness the drama,” Benton said. “Drama’s no fun if there’s no audience. She didn’t see me open the card, doesn’t know for a fact I did. Why not give it to me before she was discharged, do it in person?”

“So someone else put her up to it. Her accomplice.”

“The lyrics bother me,” Benton said.

“Which part?”

“Stick mistletoe where it ought to go and hang an angel from your tree,” Benton said.

“Who’s the angel?”

“You tell me.”

“It could be Kay.” Dr. Clark held his gaze. “ ‘Your tree’ could be a reference to your penis, to your sexual relationship with your wife.”

“And an allusion to a lynching,” Benton said.

The chief medical examiner of New York City was bent over his microscope when Scarpetta lightly knocked on his open door.

“You know what happens when you absent yourself from a staff meeting, don’t you?” Dr. Brian Edison said without looking up as he moved a slide on the stage. “You get talked about.”

“I don’t want to know.” Scarpetta walked into his office and sat in an elbow chair on the other side of his partner’s desk.

“Well, I should qualify. The topic of discussion wasn’t about you, per se.” He swiveled around so he faced her, his white hair unruly, his eyes intense, hawklike. “But tangentially. CNN, TLC, Discovery, every cable network under the sun. You know how many calls we get each day?”

“I’m sure you could hire an extra secretary for that alone.”

“When in fact we’re having to let people go. Support staff, technicians. We’ve cut back on janitorial services and security,” he said. “Lord knows where it will end if the state does what it threatens and slashes our budget by another thirty percent. We’re not in the entertainment business. Don’t want to be, can’t afford to be.”