Patricia Cornwell - Chaos

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

First published in the United States by William Morrow,

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers , 2016

Copyright © Cornwell Entertainment, Inc. 2016

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌ins Publishers Ltd 2016

Cover photograph © Elly De Vries / Arcangel

Patricia Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008150655

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008150648

Version: 2018-09-24

To Staci

—In Memory of Tram—

THERE IS LOVE IN ME THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU’VE NEVER SEEN. THERE IS RAGE IN ME THE LIKES OF WHICH SHOULD NEVER ESCAPE.

—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Patricia Cornwell

About the Publisher

CHAOS

From the Ancient Greek ( or kháos)

A vast chasm or void

Anarchy

The science of unpredictability

TWILIGHT

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

Beyond the brick wall bordering Harvard Yard, four tall chimneys and a gray slate roof with white-painted dormers peek through the branches of hardwood trees.

The Georgian building is a welcome sight no more than fifteen minutes ahead as the crow flies. But walking wasn’t smart. I was foolish to refuse a ride. Even in the shade it feels like an oven. The atmosphere is stagnant, nothing stirring in the hot humid air.

Were it not for the distant sounds of traffic, the infrequent pedestrian, the vapor trails overhead, I might believe I’m the only human left on a post-apocalyptic earth. I’ve never seen the Harvard campus this deserted except maybe during a bomb scare. But then I’ve also not been witness to such extreme weather in this part of the world, and blizzards and arctic blasts don’t count.

New Englanders are used to that but not temperatures edging past a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The sun is molten in a bone-scrubbed sky that the heat has bleached the blue out of as I’ve heard it described. The greenhouse effect. Global warming. God’s punishment. The Devil’s in his workshop. Mercury in retrograde. El Niño. The end times.

These are some of the explanations for one of the worst heat waves in Massachusetts’s history. Business at my headquarters, the Cambridge Forensic Center, has gone through the roof, and that’s the paradox of what I do. When things are bad they’re normal. When they’re worse they’re good. It’s a gift and a curse that I have job security in this imperfect world, and as I take a shortcut through the center of the campus in the stifling heat, I tweak the talk I’m going to give at the Kennedy School of Government tomorrow night.

Cleverness, a play on words, provocative stories that are real, and maybe my sister Dorothy isn’t the hopeless tool I’ve always believed. She says that I have to be entertaining if I’m to get an auditorium full of jaded Ivy League intellectuals and policy makers to listen. Maybe they’ll even walk around in my shoes for once if I share the dark side, the underbelly, the scary basement no one wants to enter or acknowledge.

As long as I’m not expected to repeat insensitive jokes, certainly not the ones I constantly hear from the cops, rather dreadful slogans that end up on T-shirts and coffee cups. I’m not going to say our day begins when yours ends even if it’s true. Although I suppose it’s all right to quip that the more dire the straits the more necessary I am. Catastrophes are my calling. Dreadful news gets me out of bed. Tragedy is my bread and butter, and the cycle of life and death remains unbroken no matter our IQ.

This is how my sister thinks I should explain myself to hundreds of influential students, faculty, politicos and global leaders tomorrow night. In my opinion I shouldn’t need to explain myself at all. But apparently I do, Dorothy said over the phone last night while our elderly mother was ranting loudly in the background to her thieving South American housekeeper, whose name—no kidding—is Honesty. Apparently Honesty is stealing vast amounts of jewelry and cash again, hiding Mom’s pills, eating her food and rearranging her furniture in the hope she’ll trip and break a hip.

Honesty the housekeeper isn’t doing any such thing and never did or would, and sometimes having a nearly photographic memory isn’t to my advantage. I recall last night’s telephonic drama, including the parts in Spanish, hearing every word of it in my head. I can replay Dorothy’s rapid-fire self-assured voice advising me all the while about how not to lose an audience since clearly I will if left to my own devices. She told me:

Walk right up to the podium and scan the crowd with a deadpan face, and say: “Welcome. I’m Doctor Kay Scarpetta. I take patients without appointments and still make house calls. Wouldn’t you just die to have my hands all over you? Because it can be arranged.” And then you wink.