Patricia Cornwell - Trace

Pogue hands Edith a five-dollar bill and his fingers touch her fingers as he takes his change, and her fingers are cool and quick and soft, and he knows the skin on them is loose, the loose skin that women her age have. Outside in the humid night, he waits for traffic and crosses the street the same way he did minutes earlier. He lingers beneath the same black olive trees and palms, watching the front door of the Other Way Lounge. When no one comes or goes, he walks rapidly to his car and gets in.

"You should tell him," Marino says. "Even if it don't turn out the way you think, he ought to know what's going on."

"That's how people head off down the wrong path," Scarpetta replies.

"It's also how they get a head start."

"Not this time," she says.

"You're the boss, Doc."

Marino is stretched out on his bed inside the Marriott on Broad Street, and Scarpetta is sitting in the same chair she was sitting in earlier, but she has pulled it closer to him. He looks very big but less threatening in loose white cotton pajamas she found for him at a department store south of the river. Beneath the light, soft fabric his wounds are dark orange with Betadine. He claims his injuries aren't hurting as much, not nearly as much. She has changed out of her mud-spattered midnight blue suit and is wearing tan corduroys and a dark blue turtleneck sweater and loafers. They are in his room because she did not want him in her room, so she decided his room was safe enough, and they have eaten sandwiches sent up by room service and now they are just talking.

"But I still don't see why you can't just bounce it off him," Marino says, and he is fishing. His curiosity about her relationship with Benton is as pervasive as dust. She notices it constantly and it gets on her nerves, and there is no use trying to get rid of it.

"I'll take the soil samples to the labs first thing in the morning," she tells him. "We'll know in a hurry whether a mistake has been made. If one has, there is no point in my telling Benton about it. A mistake is not germane to the case. It would simply be a mistake. A bad one."

"You don't believe it, though." He looks at her from clouds of pillows she plumped behind him. His color is better. His eyes are brighter.

"I don't know what I believe," she says. "It makes no sense either way. If the trace evidence found on the tractor driver isn't a mistake, then how do you explain it? How could the same type of evidence turn up in Gilly Paulsson's case? Perhaps you have a theory."

Marino thinks hard, his eyes fixing on the window filled with blackness and the lights of downtown. "I can't think how," he says. "I swear to God, I can't come up with anything except what I said in the meeting. And that was just being a smartass."

"Who? You?" she asks dryly.

"Seriously. How could what's-his-name Whitby have the same trace on him that she did? In the first place, she died two weeks before he did. So why would he have it on him at all, especially two weeks after she got it on her? It don't look good," he decides.

Her spirit recoils and she feels a sickness that she has learned to recognize as fear. The only logical explanation at the moment is cross contamination or mislabeling. Either can happen more easily than people might think. All it takes is for one evidence bag or test tube to be placed in the wrong envelope or rack or the wrong label to be stuck on a sample. This can happen in five seconds of inattention or confusion and then the evidence suddenly came from a source that either makes no sense or, worse, answers a question that could set a suspect free or send him to court, to prison, to the death chamber. She thinks of dentures. She envisions the Fort Lee soldier trying to force the wrong dentures into the dead obese woman's mouth. That's all it takes, one lax moment like that.

"I still don't see why you don't bounce it off Benton," Marino says, reaching for a glass of water by the bed. "What would be wrong with my having a few beers? A few hairs of the dog?"

"What would be right with it?" She has file folders in her lap and is idly flipping through copies of reports, seeing if anything she already knows about Gilly and the tractor driver might suddenly tell her something new. "Alcohol interferes with healing," she says. "It's not been much of a friend to you anyway, has it?"

"Last night it wasn't."

"Order what you want. I'm not going to tell you what to do."

He hesitates and she senses that he wants her to tell him what to do, but she won't. She's done it before and it is a waste, and she doesn't want to be his co-pilot as he flies like a crazed mad bomber through life. Marino looks at the phone, his hands in his lap, and he reaches for the water.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, turning a page. "Need more Advil?"

"I'm okay. Nothing a few beers wouldn't fix."

"That's up to you." She turns another page, scanning the long list of Mr. Whitby's ruptured and lacerated organs.

"You sure she's not going to call the cops?" Marino asks.

She feels his eyes on her. They shine on her like the soft heat from a lamp and she doesn't blame him for feeling scared. The accusations alone would ruin him, that is the truth of the matter. He would be destroyed in law enforcement, and it is quite possible that a Richmond jury would find him guilty just because he is a man, a very big man, and Mrs. Paulsson is skilled at acting pitiful and helpless. The thought of her sharpens Scarpetta's anger.

"She won't," she says. "I called her bluff. Tonight she'll dream about all the magical evidence I carried out of her house. Most of all, she'll dream about the game. She doesn't want the cops or anyone else knowing about the little game or games that go on in her historic little house. Let me ask you something." She looks up from the papers in her lap. "Had Gilly been alive and home, do you think Suz, as you call her, would have done what she did last night? Conjecture, granted. But what's your instinct?"

"I think she does whatever the hell she wants," he replies in a dead tone, the flat tone of resentment and outrage restrained by shame.

"Do you remember if she was drunk?"

"She was high," he replies. "High as a kite."

"On alcohol or maybe something else in addition?"

"I didn't see her pop any pills or smoke nothing or shoot up. But there's probably a lot I didn't see."

"Someone is going to have to talk to Frank Paulsson," Scarpetta says, looking at another report. "Depending on what we find out tomorrow, we might see if Lucy would help."

Marino gets a look on his face and smiles for the first time in hours. "Holy shit. What an idea. She's a pilot. Let her loose on the pervert."

"Exactly." Scarpetta turns a page and takes a deep, quiet breath. "Nothing," she says. "Absolutely nothing that tells me anything more about Gilly. She was asphyxiated and had chips of paint and metal in her mouth. Mr. Whitby's injuries are consistent with his being run over by the tractor. For the hell of it, we should find out if there is any possibility he has some connection to the Paulssons."

"She would know," Marino says.

"You're not calling her." She does tell him what to do in this situation. He is not to call Suzanna Paulsson. "Don't push your luck." She looks up at him.

"I wasn't saying I would. Maybe she knew the tractor driver. Hell, maybe he was into the game. Maybe they have a perverts' club."

"Well, they aren't neighbors." Scarpetta looks at paperwork in Whitby's folder. "He lived over near the airport, not that it matters, necessarily. Tomorrow while I'm in the labs, maybe you can see what you can find out."

Marino doesn't answer her. He doesn't want to talk to any Richmond cops.

"You've got to walk into it," she says, closing the file folder.