Patricia Cornwell - Body of Evidence

"What's he going to do, Mark?" I asked. "Call me and demand a manuscript I don't have? So what?"

"I have a feeling he knows you don't have it," he said. "Problem is, it doesn't matter. Yes, he wants it. And he'll get it eventually, has to unless it's lost. He's the executor of her estate."

"That's cozy," I said.

"I just know he's up to something." He seemed to be talking to himself.

"Another one of his publicity schemes?" I offered a bit too breezily.

He sipped his wine.

"I can't imagine what," I went on. "Not anything involving me."

"I can imagine it," he said seriously.

"Then please spell it out," I said.

He did. "Headline: 'Chief Medical Examiner Refuses to Release Controversial Manuscript.' "

I laughed. "That's ridiculous!"

He didn't smile. "Think about it. A controversial autobiography written by a reclusive woman who ends up brutally murdered. Then the manuscript disappears and the medical examiner is accused of stealing it. The damn thing's disappeared from the morgue. Christ. When the book finally comes out, it will be a runaway bestseller and Hollywood will be fighting over the movie rights."

"I'm not worried," I said unconvincingly. "It's all so farfetched, I can't imagine it."

"Sparacino's a whiz at making something out of nothing, Kay," he warned. "I just don't want you ending up like Leon Jones."

He looked around for the waiter, his eyes freezing in the direction of the front door. Quickly looking down at his half-eaten prime rib, he mumbled, "Oh, shit."

It took every bit of my self-restraint not to turn around. I didn't look up or act the least bit aware until the big man was at our table.

"Well, hello, Mark. Thought I might find you here."

He was a soft-spoken man in his late fifties or early sixties, with a fleshy face made hard by small eyes as blue as they were lacking in warmth. Flushed, he was breathing hard, as if the exertion of merely carrying his formidable weight strained every cell in his body.

"On a whim, I decided to wander by and offer you a drink, old boy."

Unbuttoning his cashmere coat, he turned to me, offering his hand and a smile. "I don't believe we've met. Robert Sparacino."

"Kay Scarpetta," I said with surprising poise.

Somehow we had managed to drink liqueur with Sparacino for an hour. It was awful. He acted as if I were a stranger. But he knew who I was, and I was sure the encounter hadn't been accidental. In a city the size of New York, how could it have been accidental?

"You sure there's no way he knew I was coming?" I asked.

"I don't see how," Mark said.

I could feel the urgency in his fingertips as he steered me right on to Fifty-fifth Street. Carnegie Hall was empty, a few people strolling past on the sidewalk. It was getting close to one A.M., and my thoughts were floating in alcohol, nerves taut.

Sparacino had gotten more animated and obsequious with each Grand Marnier until he was finally slurring his words.

"He doesn't miss a trick. You think he's soused and won't remember a thing in the morning. Hell, he's on red alert even when he's sound asleep."

"You're not making me feel any better," I said.

We headed straight for the elevator, where we rode up in self-conscious silence, watching the floor light blink from number to number. Our feet were quiet on the carpeted hallway. Hoping my bag was there, I was relieved to see it on the bed when I stepped inside my room.

"Are you nearby?" I asked.

"A couple doors down." His eyes were darting around. "You going to offer me a nightcap?"

"I didn't bring anything…"

"There's a bar fully stocked. Take my word for it," he said.

We needed another drink like a hole in the head.

"What's Sparacino going to do?" I asked.

The "bar" was a small refrigerator filled with beer, wine, and jigger-sized bottles.

"He sees us together," I added. "What's going to happen?"

"Depends on what I tell him," Mark said.

I handed him a plastic cup of Scotch. "Let me ask it this way. What are you planning to tell him, Mark?"

"A lie."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

He pulled a chair close and began slowly swirling the amber liquor. Our knees were almost touching.

"I'll tell him I was trying to find out what I could from you," he said, "trying to help him out."

"That you were using me," I said, my thoughts breaking apart like a bad radio transmission. "That you were able to do that. Because of our past."

"Yes."

"And that's a lie?" I demanded.

He laughed, and I had forgotten how much I loved the sound of his laugh.

"I fail to see the humor," I protested. It was hot inside the room. I felt flushed from the Scotch. "If that's a lie, Mark, then what's the truth?"

"Kay," he said, still smiling, and his eyes wouldn't let me go. "I've already told you the truth."

He was silent for a moment. Then he leaned over and touched my cheek, and I was frightened by how much I wanted him to kiss me.

He leaned back in his chair. "Why don't you stay, at least until tomorrow afternoon? Maybe we should both go talk to Sparacino in the morning."

"No," I said. "That's exactly what he'd like me to do."

"Whatever you say."

Hours later, after Mark left, I lay awake staring up into the darkness, aware of the cool emptiness of the other side of the bed. In the old days Mark never stayed the night, and the next morning I would go around the apartment collecting various articles of clothing, dirty glasses, dishes, and wine bottles, and emptying the ashtrays. Both of us smoked then. We would sit up until one, two, three A.M., talking, laughing, touching, drinking, smoking. We also argued. I hated the debates, which all too often turned into vicious exchanges, blow for blow, tit for tat, Code section this for philosophical that. I was always waiting to hear him say he was in love with me. He never did. In the morning I had the same empty feeling I'd had as a child when Christmas was over and I helped my mother gather up the discarded gift paper strewn under the tree.

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories.

I had forgotten to request a wake-up call and didn't bother with the clock by the bed. Setting my mental alarm for six, I woke up exactly on time. I sat straight up and felt as bad as I looked. A hot shower and careful grooming did not hide the dark puffy circles under my eyes or my wan complexion. The bathroom lighting was brutally honest. I called United Airlines and was tapping on Mark's door at seven.

"Hi," he said, looking disgustingly fresh and chipper. "You change your mind?"

"Yes," I said. The familiar scent of his cologne rearranged my thoughts like bright shards of glass inside a kaleidoscope.

"I knew you would," he said.

"And how did you know that?" I asked.

"Never knew you to duck a fight," he said, watching me in the dresser mirror as he resumed knotting his tie.

Mark and I had agreed to meet at the Orndorff amp; Berger offices in the early afternoon. The firm's lobby was a heartless, deep space. Rising from black carpet was a massive black console beneath polished-brass track lighting, with a solid block of brass serving as a table between two black acrylic chairs nearby. Remarkably, there was no other furniture, no plants or paintings, nothing else but a few pieces of twisted sculpture desposited like shrapnel to break the vast emptiness of the room.