Patricia Cornwell - Trace

"I don't know. Probably."

"Where to?"

"I'm not sure," Lucy says.

"Okay. What are you working on?"

"A stalking case," Lucy replies.

"Those are very hard."

"No kidding. This one especially. But I can't talk about it."

You never can.

"You don't talk about your cases," Lucy says.

"Usually not."

"So then what else is new?"

"Not a thing. When am I going to see you? I haven't seen you since September."

"I know. What have you been doing in the big bad city of Richmond?" Lucy asks. "What are they fighting over up there these days? Any new monuments? Maybe the latest artwork on the flood wall?"

"I've been trying to figure out what's going on with the death of this girl. Last night I was supposed to have dinner with Dr. Fielding. You remember him."

"Oh sure. How is he? I didn't know he was still there."

"Not so good," Scarpetta replies.

"Remember when he used to take me to his gym and we'd lift weights together?"

"He doesn't go to the gym anymore."

"Damn. I'm shocked. Jack not go to the gym? That's like… Well, I don't know what it's like. It's not like anything, I guess. I'm shocked beyond words. See what happens when you leave? Everything and everybody fall apart."

"You won't be flattering me this morning. I'm not in a very good mood," Scarpetta replies.

Lucy feels a twinge of guilt. It is her fault Scarpetta isn't in Aspen.

"Have you talked to Benton?" Lucy asks casually.

"He's busy working."

"That doesn't mean you can't call him." Guilt grips Lucy's stomach hard.

"Right now it does mean that."

"He told you not to call him?" Lucy imagines Henri in Benton's town home. She would eavesdrop. Yes, she would, and Lucy feels sick with guilt and anxiety.

"I got to Jack's house last night and he didn't answer the door." Scarpetta changes the subject. "I have this funny feeling he was home. But he didn't come to the door."

"What did you do?"

"I left. Maybe he forgot. Certainly, he's got his share of stress. Definitely, he's preoccupied."

"That's not what this is about. He probably didn't want to see you. Maybe it's too late for him to see you. Maybe everything's too screwed up. I took it upon myself to do a little background check on Dr. Joel Marcus," Lucy then says. "I know you didn't ask me to. But you probably wouldn't have asked, am I right?"

Scarpetta doesn't answer.

"Look, he probably knows a hell of a lot about you, Aunt Kay. You may as well know something about him," she says, and she is stung. She can't help the way she feels, and she is angry and hurt.

"All right," Scarpetta says. "I don't feel this is necessarily the right thing to do, but you may as well tell me. I'd be the first to say I'm not having an easy time working with him."

"What interests me most," Lucy says, feeling a little better, "is how little there is on him. This guy's got no life. He was born in Charlottesville, father was a public school teacher, mother died in an automobile accident in 1965, went to Univcrsitv of Virginia for undor grad and medical school, so he's from Virginia and trained there but he never worked in the Virginia medical examiner system until he was appointed chief four months ago."

"I could tell you he never worked in the Virginia medical examiner system before last summer," Scarpetta replies. "You didn't need to launch some expensive background check or hack into the Pentagon or whatever you did for me to know that. I'm not sure I should be listening to this."

"His being appointed chief, by the way," Lucy says, "is totally bizarre, makes no sense. He was a private pathologist in some little hospital in Maryland for a while, and he didn't do a forensic fellowship or pass his boards until he was in his early forties and, by the way, he flunked his boards the first time he took them."

"Where did he do his fellowship?"

"Oklahoma City," Lucy replies.

"I'm not sure I should be listening to this."

"Was a forensic pathologist for a while in New Mexico, don't know what he did from 1993 to 1998 except get divorced from a nurse. No kids. In 1999 he moved to St. Louis and worked in that medical examiner's office until he moved to Richmond. He drives a twelve-year-old Volvo and he's never owned a house. You might be interested to know that the house he is renting now is in Henrico County, not too far from Willow Lawn Shopping Center."

"I don't need to hear this," Scarpetta says. "That's enough."

"He's never been arrested. Thought you'd want to know that. Only a few traffic violations, nothing dramatic."

"This isn't right," Scarpetta says. "I don't need to hear this."

"No problem," Lucy replies in the voice she gets when her aunt has just trampled her spirit and hurt her feelings. "That's about it anyway. I could find out a hell of a lot more, but preliminarily, that's it."

"Lucy, I know you're trying to help. You're amazing. I wouldn't want you after me. And he's not a nice man. And God knows what his agenda is, but unless we find out something that directly impacts his ethics or competence or something that might make him dangerous, then I don't need to know about his life. Do you understand? Please don't dig up anything else."

"He's dangerous all right," Lucy says in the voice she gets. "Put a loser like him in a position of power and he's dangerous. Good God. Who the hell hired him? And why? I can't imagine how much he must hate you."

"I don't want to talk about this."

"The governor's a woman," Lucy goes on. "Why the hell would a woman governor appoint a loser like him?"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Of course, half the time, politicians don't do the picking. They just sign off on stuff, and she probably had bigger things to think about."

"Lucy, did you call me just to upset me? Why are you doing this? Please don't. I'm having a hard enough time."

Lucy is silent.

"Lucy? Are you there?" Scarpetta asks.

"I'm here."

"I hate the phone," Scarpetta says. "I haven't seen you since September. I think you're avoiding me."

He is sitting in his living room, the newspaper open in his lap, when he hears the garbage truck coming.

The engine has a deep diesel sound. The truck stops at the end of the driveway, and the whining of a hydraulic lift is added to the diesel throbbing, and trash cans thud against the metal sides of the huge garbage truck. Then the big men sloppily drop the empty cans at the end of the driveway and the truck rumbles on down the street.

Dr. Marcus sits in his big stuffed leather chair in his living room, dizzy and barely able to breathe, his heart thudding with terror as he waits. Garbage collection is on Mondays and Thursdays around eight thirty in his upper-middle-class neighborhood of Westham Green, just west of the city in Henrico County. He is always late for staff meeting on the two days that the garbage collectors come, and not so long ago, he didn't go to work at all on the two days that the big truck and the big dark men on it came.

They call themselves sanitation engineers now, not garbage collectors, but it doesn't matter what they call themselves or what is politically correct or what anybody calls the big dark men in their big dark clothes and big leather gloves. Dr. Marcus is terrified of garbage collectors and their trucks, and his phobia has gotten worse since he moved here four months ago, and he will not go out of the house on garbage collection days until the truck and its men have come and gone. He is doing better since he began seeing the psychiatrist in Charlottesville.

Dr. Marcus sits in the chair and waits for his heart to slow down and the dizziness and nausea to subside and his nerves to stop firing, and then he gets up, still in his pajamas, robe, and slippers. There is no point in geuiug dressed until after garbage collection because he sweats so profusely as he anticipates the hideous guttural sound and heavy steel clanking of the big truck and its big dark men that by the time they are gone, he is soaking wet and shivering with cold, his fingernails blue. Dr. Marcus walks the length of the oak floor in his living room and looks out the window at the green Supercans sloppily left on the corner of his driveway, and he listens for the hideous noise to make sure the truck is nowhere near and not heading back this way, even though he knows the garbage route in his neighborhood.