Patricia Cornwell - Depraved Heart

So now Carrie continues what she’s started. Of course she would, and I remember my husband Benton’s recent warnings about bonding with her, about talking to her in my mind and settling into the easy belief that she doesn’t plan to finish what she started. She doesn’t want to kill me because she’s planned something worse. She doesn’t want to rid the earth of me or she would have this past June. Benton is a criminal intelligence analyst for the FBI, what people still call a profiler. He thinks I’ve identified with the aggressor. He suggests I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome. He’s been suggesting it a lot of late. Every time he does we get into an argument.

“Doc? How we doing in here?” The approaching male voice is carried by the papery sounds of plasticized booties. “I’m ready to do the walk-through if you are.”

“Not yet,” I reply as Karen Carpenter continues to sing in my earpiece.

Workin’ together day to day, together, together …

He lumbers into the foyer. Peter Rocco Marino. Or Marino as most people refer to him, including me. Or Pete although I’ve never called him that and I’m not sure why except we didn’t start out as friends. Then there’s bastardo when he’s a jerk, and asshole when he’s one of those. About six-foot-three, at least 250 pounds with tree trunk thighs and hands as big as hubcaps, he has a massive presence that confuses my metaphors.

His face is broad and weathered with strong white teeth, an action hero jaw, a bullish neck and a chest as wide as a door. He has on a gray Harley-Davidson polo shirt, Herman Munster–size sneakers, tube socks, and khaki shorts that are baggy with bulging cargo pockets. Clipped to his belt are his badge and pistol but he doesn’t need credentials to do whatever he wants and get the respect he demands.

Marino is a cop without borders. His jurisdiction may be Cambridge but he finds ways to extend his legal reach far beyond the privileged boundaries of MIT and Harvard, beyond the luminaries who live here and the tourists who don’t. He shows up anywhere he’s invited and more often where he’s not. He has a problem with boundaries. He’s always had a problem with mine.

“Thought you’d want to know the marijuana is medical. I got no idea where she got it.” His bloodshot eyes move over the body, the bloody marble floor, and then land on my chest, his favorite place to park his attention.

It doesn’t matter if I have on scrubs, Tyvek, a surgical gown, a lab coat or am bundled up for a blizzard. Marino is going to help himself and openly stare.

“Bud, tinctures, what looks like foil-wrapped candies.” He hunches a big shoulder to wipe sweat dripping off his chin.

“So I heard.” I watch what’s playing out in my phone’s display, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is all there is, just Lucy’s empty dorm room with the light caught in the slats of the blinds and Mister Pickle looking misunderstood and isolated on the bed.

“It’s in a really old wooden box I found hidden under a bunch of shit in her bedroom closet,” Marino says.

“I’ll get there but not now. And why would she hide medical marijuana?”

“Because maybe she didn’t get it legally. Maybe so the housekeeper wouldn’t steal it. I don’t know. But it will be interesting to see what her tox is, how high her THC is. That could explain why she decided to climb up a ladder and monkey with lightbulbs in the middle of the night.”

“You’ve been talking to Hyde too much.”

“Maybe she fell and that’s really all that happened. It’s a logical thing to consider,” Marino says.

“Not in my opinion. And we don’t know if it was the middle of the night. I frankly doubt it. If she died at midnight or later that would put her death at eight hours or less by the time she was found. And I’m certain she’s been dead longer than that.”

“With it so hot in here it isn’t possible to know how long she’s been dead.”

“Almost true but not quite,” I reply. “I’ll figure it out as we get deeper into the investigation.”

“But we can’t this minute say exactly how long. And that’s a big problem because her mother’s going to demand answers. She’s not someone you guess with.”

“I don’t guess. I estimate. In this case I’m estimating more than twelve hours and less than forty-eight,” I reply. “That’s as good as it’s going to get right now.”

“A powerhouse like her? A huge producer like Amanda Gilbert’s not going to be happy with an answer like that.”

“I’m not worried about the mother.” I’m getting annoyed with Hollywood this, Hollywood that. “But I am worried about what really happened here because what I’m seeing doesn’t add up. The time of death is a free-for-all. The details are arguing with each other. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite so confusing, and maybe that’s the point.”

“Whose point?”

“I don’t know.”

“The high yesterday was ninety-three. The low last night was eighty-two.” I feel Marino’s eyes on me as he adds, “The housekeeper swears she last saw Chanel Gilbert yesterday around four P.M.”

“She swore that to Hyde before we got here. Then she left,” I remind him of that.

It’s not our habit to take another person’s word for anything if we can help it. Marino should have talked to the housekeeper himself. I’m sure he will before the day is out.

“She said she saw Chanel pass her on the driveway, heading to the house in the red Range Rover that’s out there now,” Marino repeats what he’s been told. “So assuming she died at some point after four o’clock yesterday afternoon and was already in bad shape this morning by quarter of eight? That works with what you estimate? Twelve hours or maybe longer.”

“It doesn’t work,” I say to him as I watch my phone. “And why do you continue to refer to her dying in the middle of the night?”

“The way she’s dressed,” Marino says. “Naked with nothing but a silk robe on. Like she was ready for bed.”

“With no gown or pajamas on?”

“A lot of women sleep naked.”

“They do?”

“Well maybe she did, and what the hell are you looking at on your phone?” He confronts me in his usual blunt way that more often than not is plain rude. “Since when are you glued to your phone at a scene? Is everything all right?”

“There may be a problem with Lucy.”

“What’s new?”

“I hope it’s nothing.”

“It usually is.”

“I need to check on her.”

“That’s nothing new either.”

“Please don’t trivialize this.” I look at my phone and not him.

“Thing is I don’t know what this is. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know yet. But something’s wrong.”

“Whatever you think.” He says it as if he doesn’t care about Lucy but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Marino was the closest thing she had to a father. He taught her how to drive, how to shoot, not to mention how to deal with bigoted rednecks because that’s what Marino was when we first met in Virginia long ago. He was a chauvinistic homophobe who would try to steal Lucy’s girlfriends until he finally saw the error in his ways. Now despite his disparagements and insults, despite how he might pretend otherwise, he is Lucy’s biggest defender. In his own way he loves her.

“Do me a favor and tell Bryce I need Rusty and Harold here right away. Let’s get the body to my office now.” I tilt my phone so Marino can’t see the video playing on it, so he can’t see the empty FBI Academy dorm room with its small green stuffed bear that he’s sure to recognize.

“But you got the truck.” He has an accusing tone in his voice as if I’m keeping something from him, which I am.