Patricia Cornwell - Trace

He had never known just how brilliant a strategist he was before that moment, but since he had never criticized Scarpetta, because he didn't know her. he was justified in enthusiastically recommending her as a consultant. Because he had never uttered a negative word about her, he could call her himself, which is what he did that day, just the day before yesterday. Soon he would know Scarpetta, oh yes he would, and then he could criticize her and humiliate her and do whatever he liked to her.

He would blame her for everything that went wrong with Gilly Paulsson and the OCME and anything else that might come up, and the governor would forget that Dr. Marcus had declined to have coffee with her. Should she ask him again and should she choose eight-thirty on a Monday or Thursday, Dr. Marcus will simply tell her scheduler that the OCME staff meeting is at eight-thirty, and could the governor do coffee later, because it is very important that he preside over staff meeting. Why he didn't think of that the first time he's not sure, but he'll know what to say next time.

Dr. Marcus picks up the phone in his living room and looks out at the empty street, relieved that garbage collection is of no concern for three more days, and he is feeling very good as he thumbs through a small black address book he has kept for so many years that half the names and numbers in it have been crossed out. He dials a number and looks out at his street and watches an old blue Chevrolet Impala drive by, and he remembers when his mother used to get her old white Impala stuck in the snow at the bottom of the hill, the same hill every winter, when he was growing up in Charlottesville.

"Scarpetta," she answers her cell phone.

"Dr. Marcus here," he says in his practiced, authoritative, but pleasant enough voice, and he has many voices but at the moment he has chosen his pleasant-enough one.

"Yes," she replies. "Good morning. I hope Dr. Fielding briefed you on our reexamination of Gilly Paulsson."

"I'm afraid he did. He told me your opinion," he says, savoring the words "your opinion" and wishing he could see her reaction, because the words "your opinion" are ones a calculating defense attorney would say. A prosecutor, on the other hand, would say "your conclusion" because that is a validation of experience and expertise, whereas to say "your opinion" is a veiled insult.

"I'm wondering if you've heard about the trace evidence," he then says, thinking of the e-mail he got yesterday from the ever inappropriate Junius Eise.

"No," she says.

"It's quite extraordinary," he says ominously. "That's why we're having a meeting," Dr. Marcus says, and he set up the meeting yesterday but is telling her about it only now. "I'd like you to come by my office this morning at nine-thirty." He watches the old blue Impala pull into a driveway two houses down, and he wonders why it is stopping there and who it belongs to.

Scarpetta hesitates as if his last-minute suggestion doesn't suit her, then she replies, "Of course. I'll be there in half an hour."

"May I ask what you did yesterday afternoon? I didn't see you at my office," he inquires, watching an old black woman get out of the old blue Impala.

"Paperwork, a lot of phone calls. Why, did you need something?"

Dr. Marcus feels slightly giddy and dizzy as he watches the old black woman and the old blue Impala. The great Scarpetta is asking him if he needed something, as if she works for him. But she does work for him. Right now she does. This he finds hard to believe.

"I don't need anything from you at the moment," he says. "I'll see you at the meeting," and he hangs up, and it gives him great pleasure to hang up on Scarpetta.

The heels of his lace-up old-fashioned brown shoes click against the oak floors as he walks into the kitchen and puts on a second pot of decaffeinated coffee. Most of the first pot went to waste because he was too worried about the garbage truck and the men on it to remember the coffee, and it began to smell cooked and he poured it down the sink. So he puts on the coffee and walks back into the living room to check on the Impala.

Through the same window he usually looks out, the one across from his favorite big leather chair, he watches the old black woman pull bags of groceries from the back of the Impala. She must be the housekeeper, he thinks; and it irks him that a black housekeeper would drive the same car his mother did when he was growing up. That was a nice car once. Not everybody had a white Impala with a blue stripe down the side, and he was proud of that car except when it got stuck in the snow at the bottom of the hill. His mother wasn't a good driver. She shouldn't have been allowed to drive that Impala. An Impala is named for a male African antelope that can leap great distances and is easily startled, and his mother was nervous enough when she was just on her own two feet. She didn't need to be behind the wheel of anything named after a male African antelope that was powerful and easily spooked.

The old housekeeper moves slowly, gathering up plastic bags of groceries from the back of the Impala, and moving in an old tired waddle from the car to a side door of the house, then back to the car, gathering up more bags, then closing the car door with her hip. That was a fine car once, Dr. Marcus thinks, staring out his window. The housekeeper's Impala must be forty years old and it seems to be in good shape, and he can't remember the last time he's seen a '63 or '64 Impala. That he should see one today strikes him as significant but he doesn't know what the significance is, and he returns to the kitchen to get his coffee. If he waits another twenty minutes, his doctors will be busy with autopsies and he won't have to talk to anyone, and his pulse picks up speed again as he waits. His nerves start firing again.

At first he blames his racing heart and shakiness and twitching on the trace of caffeine in decaffeinated coffee, but he's had only a few sips, and he realizes something else is happening. He thinks of the Impala across the street and becomes more agitated and out of sorts, and he wishes the housekeeper had never driven up, today of all days, when he was home because of garbage collection. He returns to the living room and sits down in his big leather chair and leans back, trying to relax, and his heart is pounding so violently he can see the front of his white shirt moving, and he takes deep breaths and closes his eyes.

He's lived here four months and never seen that Impala before. He imagines the thin blue steering wheel that has no airbag, and the blue dash on the passenger's side that isn't padded and has no airbag, and old blue seat belts that go around the lap because there aren't shoulder harnesses. He imagines the interior of the Impala, and it isn't the Impala across the street he imagines, but the white one with the blue stripe down the side that his mother drove. His coffee is forgotten and cold on the table by his big leather chair, and he sits back with his eyes shut. Several times Dr. Marcus gets up and looks out the window, and when he doesn't see the blue Impala anymore, he sets the alarm, locks his house, and walks into the garage, and it occurs to him with a stab of fear that maybe the Impala doesn't exist and was never there at all, but it was. Of course it was.

A few minutes later he drives slowly down his street and stops in front of the house several doors down and stares at the empty driveway where he saw the blue Impala and the old black housekeeper carrying in groceries. He sits in his Volvo, which has the highest safety rating of just about any car made, and he stares at the empty driveway, then finally turns into it and gets out. He is old-fashioned but neat in the long gray coat and gray hat and black pigskin gloves that he has worn in cold weather since before he lived in St. Louis, and he knows he looks respectable enough as he rings the front doorbell. He pauses, then rings it again, and the door opens.