Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

Pas la police…

Perhaps we were trying to make his modus operandi far too complicated.

Pas de problйme… Le Loup-Garou.

Perhaps it was as simple as a raging, murderous lust he could not control. Once the monster in him was aroused by someone, there was no escape. I was certain if he were still in France, Dr. Stvan would be dead. Perhaps when he fled to Richmond, he thought he could control himself for a while. And maybe he did for three days. Or maybe he had been watching Kim Luong the entire time, fantasizing until he couldn't resist the evil impulse any longer.

I hurried back to my taxi and the windows were so fogged up I could not see through them as I pulled open the back door. Inside, the heater was blasting, my driver half asleep. He sat up with a start and swore.

Concorde flight 2 left Charles de Gaulle airport at eleven and arrived in New York at 8:45 A.M., Eastern Standard time, which was before we'd left; in a sense. I walked into my house mid-afternoon terribly out of, sorts, my body confused about time, my emotions screaming. The weather was getting bad, with predictions of freezing rain and sleet again, and I had errands to run. Marino went home. He had that big truck, after all.

Ukrops grocery store was mobbed because whenever sleet or snow was predicted, Richmonders lost their minds. They envisioned starving to death or having nothing to drink, and by the time I got to the bread section, there wasn't a single loaf left. There was no turkey or ham in the deli. I bought whatever I could, because I expected Lucy to stay with me for a while.

I headed home a little past six and didn't have the energy to negotiate a peace settlement with my garage. So I parked my car out front. Wispy white clouds over the moon looked exactly like a skull, then shifted and were formless, rushing on as the wind blew harder,'trees shivering and whispering. I felt achy and woozy as if I might be getting sick, and I got increasingly worried when once again Lucy didn't call or come home.

I assumed she was at MCV, but when I contacted the Orthopedic Unit, I was told she hadn't been there since yesterday morning. I began to get frantic. I paced the great room and thought hard. It was almost ten o'clock when I got back in my car and drove toward downtown, tension stringing me so tight I thought I might snap.

I knew it was possible Lucy had gone on to D.C., but I couldn't imagine her doing that without at least leaving me a note. Whenever she disappeared without a word, it never meant anything good. I turned off on the Ninth Street exit and drove through downtown's vacant streets and wandered through several levels of the hospital's parking deck before I found a space. I grabbed a lab coat off the backseat of my car.

The orthopedic unit was in the new hospital, on the second floor, and when I got to the room I slipped my lab coat on and opened the door. A couple I assumed was Jo's parents were inside, sitting by the bed, and I walked over to them. Jo's head was bandaged, her leg in traction, but she was awake and her eyes immediately fixed on me.

"Mr. and Mrs. Sanders?" I said. "I'm Dr. Scarpetta."

If my name meant anything to them, they didn't acknowledge it, but Mr. Sanders politely stood and shook my hand.

"Nice to meet you," he said.

He wasn't at all what I'd envisioned. I suppoqed after Jo's description of her parents' rigid attitudes, I expected stern faces and eyes that judged everything they saw. But Mr. and Mrs. Sanders were overweight and frumpy, not formidablelooking in the least. They were very polite, even shy, as I asked them about their daughter. Jo continued to stare at me, a look in her eyes that called out to me to help.

"Would you mind if I speak to the patient in private for a moment?" I asked them.

"That would be fine," Mrs. Sanders said.

"Now, Jo, you do what the doctor says;" Mr. Sanders told his daughter in a dispirited way.

They went out and the instant I shut the door, Jo's eyes filled with tears. I bent over and kissed her week.

"You've had all of us worried sick," I said.

"How's Lucy?" she whispered as sobs began to shake her and tears flowed.

I placed tissues in a hand that was tethered by IV tubes.

"I don't know. I don't know where she is, Jo. Your parents told her you didn't want to see her and..:'

Jo started shaking her head.

"I knew they'd do that," she said in a dark, depressed tone. "I knew they would. They told me she didn't want to see me. She was too upset, because of what happened. I didn't believe them. I know she would never do something like that. But they ran her off and now she's gone. And maybe she believes what they said."

"She feels what happened to you is her fault," I said. "It's very possible the bullet in your leg came from her gun:"

"Please bring her to me. Please."

"Do you have any idea where she might be?" I asked. "Is there any place she might go when she's upset like this? Maybe back to Miami?"

"I'm sure she wouldn't go there."

I sat down in a chair by the bed and blew out a long, exhausted breath.

"A hotel maybe?" I asked. "A friend?"

"Maybe New York;" Jo said. "There's a bar in Greenwich Village. Rubyfruit."

"You think she went to New York?" I asked, dismayed.

"The owner's name is Ann, a former cop;" her voice shook. "Oh, I don't know. I don't know. She scares me when she runs away. She doesn't think right when she gets like that."

"I know. And with all that's gone on, she can't be thinking right anyway. Jo, you should be getting out of here in another day or so if you behave," I said with a smile. "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't want to go home. You'll find her, won't you?"

"Would you like to stay with me?" I asked.

"My parents aren't bad people," she muttered as morphine dripped. "They don't understand. They think… Why is it wrong…?"

"It's not," I said. "Love is never wrong."

I left the room as she drifted.

Her parents were outside the door. Both looked exhausted and sad.

"How is she?" Mr. Sanders asked.

"Not too well," I said.

Mrs. Sanders began to cry.

"You have a right to believe the way you do," I said. "But preventing Lucy and Jo from seeing each other is the last thing your daughter needs right now. She doesn't need more fear and depression. She doesn't need to lose her will to live, Mr. and Mrs. Sanders."

Neither of them replied.

"I'm Lucy's aunt," I said.

"She's about back in this world anyway, I guess," Mr. Sanders said.. "Can't keep anybody from her. We were just trying to do what's best:' "Jo knows that," I replied. "She loves you."

They didn't say good-bye but watched me as I got on the elevator. I called Rubyfruit the minute I got -home and asked for Ann over the loud noise of voices and a band.

"She's not in great shape," Ann said to me, and I knew what that meant.

"Will you take care of her?" I asked.

"I already am," she said. "Hold on. Let me get her."

"I saw Jo," I said when Lucy got on the phone.

"Oh," was all. she said, and it was obvious from one word that she was drunk.

"Lucy!"

"I don't want to talk right now," she said.

"Jo loves you," I said. "Come home."

"Then what do I do?"

"We bring her to my house from the hospital and you take care of her," I said. "That's what you do."

I barely slept. At 2:00 A.M. I finally got up and went into the kitchen to fix a cup of herbal tea. It was still raining hard, water running off the roof and splashing on the patio, and I couldn't seem to get warm. I thought about the swabs and hair and photographs of bite marks locked inside my briefcase, and it almost seemed the killer was inside my house.

I could feel his presence, as if those parts of him emanated evil. I thought about the awful irony. Interpol summoned me to France and after all was said and done, the only legal evidence I had was an Advil bottle filled with water and silt from the Seine.