Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

She downshifted back to third after hitting sixty in three seconds flat. Easy goes it on the access road, and hold your horses on Route 120. You can cruise half asleep at a hundred on the Parkway. She wasn’t going to tell Berger that Marino wasn’t going to make it to the interview.

“Slow down,” Berger objected.

“Dammit. I’ve told Aunt Kay about being on live TV.” Taking corners as if she intended to powerslide through them, the manet tino controller set to race mode, the power assist shut off. “Same thing you worry about. If you’re on live TV, people know where you are. It was obvious she was in the city tonight, and there are plenty of ways we can make it harder for people to do shit like this to her. She should make it hard as hell for people to do shit like this to her.”

“Let’s don’t blame the victim. It’s not Kay’s fault.”

“I’ve told her repeatedly to stay away from Carley Crispin, for fuck’s sake.” Lucy flicked her high beams at some fool creeping in front of her, gunned around him, kicking grit in his eyes.

“It’s not her fault. She thinks she’s helping,” Berger said. “God knows there’s so much garbage out there. Juries, especially. Everybody’s an expert. Slowly but surely, smart people like Kay have to set the record straight. We all do.”

“Helping Carley. That’s probably the only person Aunt Kay is helping. And you don’t set the record straight with somebody like that. Obviously. Look what just happened. We’ll see how many people are still taking taxis in the morning.”

“Why are you so hard on her?”

Lucy drove fast and didn’t answer.

“Maybe the same reason you’re so hard on me,” Berger said, looking straight ahead.

“What reason might that be? I see you, what? Two nights a week? I’m sorry you hated your birthday.”

“Every one of them,” Berger said, the way she sounded when she was trying to ease the tension. “Wait until you’re past forty. You’ll hate your birthdays, too.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

Lucy drove faster.

“I’m assuming Marino’s on his way to your loft?” Berger asked.

“He said he might be a little late.” One of those lies that wasn’t quite one.

“I don’t feel good about this.” Berger was thinking about Hannah Starr, about Hap Judd. Preoccupied, obsessed, but not with Lucy. No matter how much Berger reassured her or apologized, things had changed.

Lucy tried to remember exactly when. Summer, maybe, when the city started announcing budget cuts and the planet began wobbling on its axis. Then, in the past few weeks, forget it. And now? Gone. It was feeling gone. It was feeling over. It couldn’t be. Lucy wasn’t going to let it go. Somehow she had to stop it from leaving her.

“I’ll say it again. It’s all about the outcome.” Lucy reached for Berger’s hand, pulled it close, and stroked it with her thumb. “Hap Judd will talk because he’s an arrogant sociopath, because he’s got nothing but self-interest, and he believes it’s in his self-interest.”

“Doesn’t mean I feel comfortable,” Berger said, lacing her fingers in Lucy’s. “About a shade away from entrapment. Maybe not even a shade away.”

“Here we go again. We’re fine. Don’t worry. Eric had an eighth of White Widow on him for pain management. Nothing wrong with medical marijuana. As for where he got it? Maybe from Hap. Hap’s a pothead.”

“Remember who you’re talking to. I don’t want to know anything about where Eric-or you-get your so-called medical marijuana, and I’m assuming you don’t have any, have never had any.” Berger had said this before, repeatedly. “I’d better not find out you’re growing it indoors somewhere.”

“I’m not. I don’t do stuff like that anymore. Haven’t lit up in years. I promise.” Lucy smiled, downshifting onto the exit ramp for I-684 South, Berger’s touch reassuring her, bolstering her confidence. “Eric had a few J’s. Just happened to be enjoying himself when he just happened to run into Hap, who just happens to frequent the same places, is a creature of habit. Not smart. Makes you easy to find and befriend.”

“Yes, so you’ve said. And I continue to say the following: What if Eric decides to talk to somebody he shouldn’t? Like Hap’s lawyer, because he’ll get one. After I’m done with him, he will.”

“Eric likes me and I give him work.”

“Exactly. You trust a handyman.”

“A stoner with a record,” Lucy said. “Not credible, no one would believe him if it came down to that. Nothing for you to worry about, I promise.”

“There’s plenty for me to worry about. You induced a famous actor…”

“Not exactly Christian Bale, for Christ’s sake,” Lucy said. “You never even heard of Hap Judd before all this.”

“I’ve heard of him now, and he’s famous enough. More to the point, you encouraged him to break the law, to use a controlled substance, and you did it on behalf of a public servant so you could gain evidence against him.”

“Wasn’t there, not even in New York,” Lucy said. “You and I were in Vermont Monday night when Hap and my handyman had so much fun.”

“So, that’s really why you wanted to steal me away during a workweek.”

“I didn’t decide your birthday was December seventeenth, and it wasn’t my intention for us to get snowed in.” Stung again. “But yes, it made sense to have Eric cruise various bars while we were out of town. Especially while you were out of town.”

“You didn’t just ask him to cruise various bars, you supplied the illegal substance.”

“Nope. Eric bought the stuff.”

“Where’d he get the money?” Berger said.

“We’ve been through all this. You’re making yourself crazy.”

“The defense will claim entrapment, outrageous government conduct.”

“And you’ll say Hap was predisposed to do what he did.”

“Now you’re coaching me?” Berger laughed ruefully. “Don’t know why I bothered going to law school. In summary, let’s be honest, you had ideas implanted in Hap’s mind that could get him indicted for something we can never prove. You basically got him stoned and had your snitch handyman lure him into a conversation about Park General Hospital, which you got suspicious about because you hacked into Hap’s e-mail account and God knows what else. Probably the goddamn hospital’s, too. Jesus God.”

“I got their info fair and square.”

“Please.”

“Besides, we don’t need to prove it,” Lucy said. “Isn’t that the point? To scare the shit out of Mr. Hollywood so he’ll do what’s right?”

“I don’t know why I listen to you,” Berger said, holding Lucy’s hand tighter and tucking it against her.

“He could have been honorable. He could have been helpful. He could have been a normal law-abiding citizen, but guess what, he’s not,” Lucy said. “He’s brought this upon himself.”

Searchlights swept a crisscross of steel bracing at the top of the George Washington Bridge, where a jumper was holding on to cables. He was a big man, maybe in his sixties, the wind whipping his pants legs, his bare ankles fish-belly white in the blazing light, his face dazed. Marino couldn’t stop his attention from wandering to the live feed on the flat-screen TV across the room from him.

He wished the cameras would hold steady on the jumper’s face. He wanted to see what was there and what was missing. Didn’t matter how many times he’d witnessed situations like this. For each desperate person it was different. Marino had watched people die, watched them realize they were going to live, watched people kill and be killed, had looked them in the face and witnessed the moment of recognition that it was over or it wasn’t. The look was never exactly the same. Rage, hate, shock, grief, anguish, terror, scorn, amusement, combinations of them, and nothing. As different as people are different.