Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“He’s moved on, and now you need to,” she was saying. “I want it to end. Whatever you have to do. End it. Don’t just pretend. I can see through it, even if I don’t say anything. We’re all in this together.”

“One big happy family,” Benton said.

“That’s what I mean. Your hostility, your jealousy. I want it to end.”

“Have a sip of your drink. You’ll feel better.”

“Now I’m feeling patronized and getting angry.” Her voice was shaking again.

“I’m not patronizing you, Kay.” Softly. “And you’re already angry. You’ve been angry for a long time.”

“I feel you’re patronizing me, and I’ve not been angry for a long time. I don’t understand why you’d say something like that. You’re being provocative.” She didn’t want to fight, hated fighting, but she was pushing things in that direction.

“I’m sorry if it feels I’m patronizing you. I’m not, honest to God. I don’t blame you for being angry.” He sipped his drink, staring at it, moving the ice around in it. “The last thing I want to be is provocative.”

“The problem is you really don’t forgive and you certainly don’t forget. That’s your problem with Marino. You won’t forgive him and you certainly won’t forget, and in the end, how does that help anything? He did what he did. He was drunk and drugged and crazy and he did something he shouldn’t have done. Yes, he did. Maybe I should be the one who doesn’t forgive or forget. It was me he goddamn manhandled and abused. But it’s the past. He’s sorry. So sorry, he avoids me. I go weeks and have no contact with him. He’s overly polite when he’s around me, around us, overly inclusive toward you, almost obsequious, and all it does is make things more uncomfortable. We’ll never get past this unless you allow it. It’s up to you.”

“It’s true I don’t forget,” he said grimly.

“Not exactly equitable when you consider what some of us have had to forgive and forget,” she said, so upset it frightened her. She felt as if she might explode like the package that was hauled away.

His hazel eyes looked at her, watching her carefully. He sat very still, waiting for whatever would come next.

“Especially Marino. Especially Lucy. The secrets you forced them to keep. It was bad enough for me but so unfair to them, having to lie for you. Not that I’m interested in dredging up the past.” But she couldn’t stop herself. The past was climbing up and halfway out her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to stop the past from spilling out of her and all over their life, Benton ’s and her life together.

He watched her, a softness, a sadness, in his eyes that was immeasurable, sweat collecting in the hollow of his neck, disappearing into the silver hair on his chest, trickling down his belly, soaking into the waistband of the polished-cotton gray pajamas she’d bought for him. He was lean and well-defined, with tight muscles and skin, still a striking man, a beautiful man. The bathroom was like a greenhouse, humid and warm from the long shower that had made her feel no less contaminated, no less filthy and foolish. She couldn’t wash away the peculiar-smelling package or Carley Crispin’s show or the CNN marquee or anything, and she felt powerless.

“Well, don’t you have a comment?” Her voice shook badly.

“You know what this is.” He got up from the chair.

“I don’t want us to argue.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I must be tired. That’s all. I’m tired. I’m sorry I’m so tired.”

“The olfactory system is one of the oldest parts of our brain, sends information that governs emotions, memory, behavior.” He was behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, both of them looking into the hazy mirror. “Individual odor molecules stimulating all sorts of receptors.” Kissing the back of her neck, hugging her. “Tell me what you smelled. Tell me in as much detail as you can.”

She couldn’t see anything in the mirror now, her eyes flooded with tears. She muttered, “Hot pavement. Petroleum. Burning matches. Burning human flesh.”

He reached for another towel and rubbed her hair with it, massaging her scalp.

“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly,” she said.

“You don’t need to know exactly. It’s what it made you feel, that’s what we need to know exactly.”

“Whoever left that package got what he wanted,” she said. “It was a bomb even if it turns out it’s not.”

Lucy hovered the Bell 407 helicopter at the hold line on taxiway Kilo, the wind shoving her around like huge hands as she waited for the tower to clear her to land.

“Not again,” she said to Berger, in the left seat, the copilot’s seat, because she wasn’t the sort to ride in back when given the choice. “I don’t believe where they put the damn dolly.”

Westchester County Airport ’s west ramp was crowded with parked planes, ranging from single-engine and experimental home-built on up to the super-midsize Challenger and ultra-long-range Boeing business jet. Lucy willed herself to stay calm, agitation and flying a dangerous combination, but it didn’t take much to set her off. She was volatile, couldn’t settle down, and she hated it, but hating something didn’t make it go away, and she couldn’t get rid of the anger. After all her efforts to manage it and some good things happening, happy things, which had made it easier, now the anger was back out of its bag, maybe more volatile than ever after too much time unattended and ignored. Not gone. She’d just thought it was. “Nobody more intelligent or physically gifted than you or more loved,” her Aunt Kay liked to say. “Why are you so aggravated all the time?” Now Berger was saying it. Berger and Scarpetta sounding the same. The same language, the same logic, as if their communications were broadcast over the same frequency.

Lucy calculated the best approach to her dolly, the small wooden platform on wheels parked too close to other aircraft, the tow bar pointed the wrong way. Best plan was a high hover altitude between the wingtips of the Learjet and the King Air at ten o’clock. They’d handle her rotorwash better than the little guys. Then directly over her dolly, a steeper angle of descent than she liked, and she’d have to land with a twenty-eight-knot wind gusting up the tail, assuming the air traffic controller ever got back to her. That much wind blowing up her ass and she had to worry about settling with power, setting down ugly and hard, and exhaust fumes were going to back up into the cabin. Berger would complain about the fumes, get one of her headaches, wouldn’t want to fly with Lucy again anytime soon. One more thing they wouldn’t do together.

“This is deliberate,” Lucy said over the intercom, her arms and legs tense, hands and feet firm on the controls, working the helicopter hard so it basically did nothing but hold its position some thirty feet above ground level. “I’m getting his name and number.”

“Tower has nothing to do with where dollies are parked.” Berger’s voice in Lucy’s headset.

“You heard him.” Lucy’s attention was outside the windscreen. She scanned the dark shapes of aircraft, a thick herd of them, noticing tie-down ropes anchored in the pavement, loosely coiled, frayed ends fluttering in her twenty-million-candlepower NightSun spotlight. “Told me to take the Echo Route. Exactly what I did, sure as hell didn’t disregard his instructions. He’s jerking me around.”

“Tower’s got bigger things to worry about than where dollies are parked.”

“He can do what he wants.”

“Let it go. Not worth it.” The rich timbre of Berger’s firm voice like fine hardwood. Rain-forest ironwood, mahogany, teak. Beautiful but unyielding, bruising.