Patricia Cornwell - Trace

"You're jealous. I see what this is about." She smiles smugly. m.

.9

"Think what you want. But think about jail, Mrs. Paulsson. Think about crying rape and the evidence proving you to be a liar."

"I won't be crying rape, don't you worry," she says, her face turning harder. "Nobody rapes me anyway. Let them try. What a big baby. That's what 1 have to say about him. A baby. The thought he would be fun. Well, I thought wrong. You can have him, Miss Doctor or Lawyer or whatever you are."

The coffee is ready and Scarpetta asks about cups, and Mrs. Paulsson finds two in a cupboard and then two spoons. They sip coffee standing up, and then Mrs. Paulsson begins to cry. She bites her lower lip and tears spill out and stream down her face and she starts shaking her head.

"I'm not going to jail," she says.

"That would be what I prefer. I'd rather you didn't go to jail," Scarpetta says, sipping her coffee. "Why did you do it?"

"It's personal what people do with each other." She won't look at her.

"When you draw blood and bruise someone, it's not personal. It's a crime. Is rough sex a habit of yours?"

"You must be some kind of Puritan," she says, wandering to the table and sitting down. "I guess there must be a lot you've never heard of."

"You might be right. Tell me about the game."

"Get him to."

"I know what Marino has to say about your game, at least the one you played last night." Scarpetta sips her coffee. "You've played your games for a while, haven't you? Did they start with your ex-husband, with Frank?"

"I don't have to talk to you," she says from the table. "I don't see why I should."

"The rose we found in Gilly's dresser. You said Frank might know something about it. What did you mean?"

She will not answer, and she looks angry and full of hate as she sits at the table and cradles the coffee cup in both hands.

"Mrs. Paulsson, do you think Frank might have done something to Gilly?"

"I don't know who left the rose," she says, staring at the same spot on the wall she stared at when Scarpetta was here yesterday. "I know I didn't. I know it wasn't there before, not out in her room, not where I could see it. And I'd been in her drawers. I went in them the day before, putting away laundry and things. Gilly was bad about putting things away. I was always picking up after her. I never saw anything like it. She couldn't put something back to save her." She catches herself and falls silent, staring at the wall.

Scarpetta waits to see if she will say more. What must be a minute passes, and the silence is heavy.

"The worst thing was the kitchen," Mrs. Paulsson finally says. "Taking out food and just leaving it on the counter. Even ice cream. Can't tell you how much food I threw out." Her face collapses into grief. "And milk. Always pouring milk down the sink because she left it out half the day." Her voice rises and falls and shakes. "Do you know what it's like to pick up after somebody all the damn time?"

"Yes," Scarpetta says. "That's one reason I'm divorced."

"Well, he's not much better," she says, staring off. "Between the two of them that's all I did, pick up."

"If Frank did something to Gilly, what do you think it might have been?" Scarpetta asks, and she is careful not to ask questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no.

Mrs. Paulsson stares at the wall, not blinking. "In his own way he did something."

"I'm talking physically. Gilly is dead."

Her eyes fill with tears and she roughly wipes them with a hand as she stares at the wall. "He wasn't here when it happened. Not in this house, not that I know of."

"When what happened?"

"While I was gone to the drugstore. Whatever it was happened then." She wipes her eyes again. "The window was open when I came home. It wasn't when I left. The don't know if she opened it. I'm not saying Frank did it. I'm saying he has something to do with it. Everything he got near died or was ruined. Kind of funny to think that about someone who's a doctor. You should know."

"I'm going to go now, Mrs. Paulsson. I know this hasn't been an easy conversation, none of it has. You've got my cell phone number. If you think of anything that is important, I want you to call me."

She nods, staring and crying.

"Maybe someone's been in this house before whom we ought to know about. Someone besides Frank. Maybe someone Frank had over, someone he knew. Maybe someone who played the game."

She doesn't get up from her chair as Scarpetta moves to the doorway.

"Anyone at all who might come to your mind," Scarpetta says. "Gilly didn't die of the flu," she repeats. "We need to know what happened, exactly what happened to her. We will know. Sooner or later. I believe you'd rather have it sooner, wouldn't you?"

She just stares at the wall. "You can call me anytime," Scarpetta says. "I'm going to go now. If you need something, you can call me. I could use a couple of large trash bags if you have them."

"Under the sink. If they're for what I think, you don't need them," she mutters.

Scarpetta opens the cupboard under the sink and pulls four large plastic trash bags out of a box. "I'll take them anyway," she replies.

"Hopefully I won't need them."

She stops by the bedroom and collects the balled-up linens, the boots and the t-shirt, and places them inside the plastic bags. In the living';

The room she puts on her coat and steps back out into the rain, carrying four bags, two heavy with linens, the other two having nothing in them but a t-shirt and a pair of boots. Puddles on the brick walk splash over her shoes and cold water soaks her feet, and the rain is half frozen as it slaps down all around her.

Inside the Other Way Lounge it is very dark, and the women who work here have stopped giving Edgar Allan Pogue sidelong looks that at first were curious, then disdainful, and finally indifferent before stopping altogether. He picks at the stem of a maraschino cherry and takes his time tying it in a knot.

He drinks Bleeding Sunsets in the Other Way, a specialty of the house that is a mixture of vodka and Other Stuff, as he thinks of it, Other Stuff that is orange and red and drifts unevenly to the bottom of the glass. A Bleeding Sunset looks like a sunset until a few tilts of the glass mix the liquids and syrups and Other Stuff together, and then the drink is simply orangish. When the ice melts, whatever is left in his glass looks like those orange drinks he used to get as a kid. They were in plastic oranges and he drank them out of green straws that were supposed to look like stems, and the orange drink was diluted and boring, but the plastic orange it came in always promised that the drink would be fresh and delicious. He would beg his mother to buy him one of the plastic oranges every time they came to South Florida, and every time he got disappointed again.

People are like those plastic oranges and what's in them. People are one thing to look at and another thing to taste. He lifts his glass and swirls the orangish swill that is left in the bottom. He thinks about ordering another Bleeding Sunset as he calculates how much cash he has left and also takes into account his sobriety. He isn't a drunk. He has never been drunk in his life. He worries excessively about being drunk and can't drink a Bleeding Sunset or any other concoction without analyzing every ounce he swallows, worrying about the effect. He also worries about being fat, and alcohol is fattening. His mother was fat. She got fatter in time, and it was a shame because she had been pretty once. Tt runs in the family, she used to say. You keep eating like that and you'll see what I mean, she used to say. That's the way it starts, right around the middle, she used to say.

"I'll have one more," Edgar Allan Pogue says to whoever might be listening.