Patricia Cornwell - The Bone Bed

Please don’t let there be nothing but gloves and protective clothing in here.

But the size seems right. A Pelican case, what feels like a large toolbox. The cases we keep disposable clothing and sheets in are more like utility dry boxes with steel bar latches. I’m pretty sure. I’m trying so hard to think straight. My heart is flying like a terrified bird.

“You’re a cold-blooded bitch, and I could have let you die, which is what you really wanted. And that’s why I didn’t. A squash for a brain, nothing but a fruit or a vegetable lying there or sitting up in the chair, staring. And you can’t speak for yourself anymore, not the silver-tongued phony anymore, the virtuous do-gooder anymore. I’ve let you live because I enjoy seeing you this way. For the first time, I actually enjoy coming to see you. Pissing yourself, shitting in the bed. Getting uglier, more sour-smelling, more revolting every day. Who’s the hero now?”

I work up the lid several inches, feeling inside the case without opening it all the way because it’s heavy and I don’t want to make noise. I feel convoluted foam inside.

“I know you’re awake!” he yells, and I freeze. “Tell me the password for your phone!”

I slowly, gently move my fingers inside the case and feel marking pens and a stapler. Evidence packaging supplies, and I know I’ve found the right one. I feel the looped steel handles of small scissors and pull them out, and I begin to cut the netting, and the SUV is going much slower. I see tall streetlights and broken windows and corrugated aluminum siding flowing past the tops of the dark tinted windows, some of the buildings we pass boarded up.

Moving as little as I possibly can, I work my arms and head out of the netting, and then my feet are free of it, and they feel frozen, as if they’ve turned to stone. I slip my hand back inside the case, feeling for the metal handle.

“Wake up!”

Plastic and glass, and I recognize pillboxes and vials, and a steel scalpel handle. He is going very slowly over rough pavement in a dark, deserted area with old abandoned warehouses.

“I know you’re awake. I didn’t give you that much,” he repeats. “I’m going to stop in a minute and get you out, and it’s no good for you to try anything. Another little nap and then I’m going to show you something you’ve never seen before. I think you’ll be fascinated.”

I find the foil pouch of disposable scalpel blades.

“The perfect crime,” he says. “And I came up with it, not you.”

I slowly, quietly peel open the pouch.

“A way to put someone to sleep that can’t be detected. Not by anyone. An environmentally friendly way. You will go out green .” That mirthless laugh again. “They all go out green . Except the bone lady didn’t. Really too bad. I honestly don’t feel good about that one. This didn’t have to happen, you know. It’s all your fault. Showing up and poking your nose in what’s none of your business? Timing’s everything, and yours is up.”

I lock a blade into the handle and steel against steel makes a soft click, and I worry that he heard it.

“Well, well, what’s this?”

He stops the car suddenly. His door opens.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” he says, as he gets out.

He heard me safety-lock the blade, and I don’t know which door he’s going to open, it occurs to me on a fresh rush of panic. I don’t know if he’ll open a back door or the tailgate, and I’ll have to move very fast because he’s going to see I’m not in the net anymore.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I’ll go for his head, his neck, his face, his eyes, but it will be hard to see him. Where we are is very dark, and the interior light in my car is off. He turned it off to get me in and out without anyone seeing, and it enters my mind that he hasn’t shut the engine off, and he must have left his door open because the car is beeping. The engine is rumbling loudly, and it sounds different, as if he’s got his foot on the gas but not like that either, and he’s not inside the car. I don’t understand what I’m hearing, and I grip the steel handle in a way I’ve never gripped a scalpel before.

Like a knife for slashing, for stabbing.

“This is private property,” he says, and I realize he’s not talking to me.

I sit up and have the scalpel ready, and I notice a lot of trucks, white trucks of different sizes with Crystal Carbon2 and a logo painted on them, and in the distance are runway lights and Logan’s air traffic control tower.

We’re directly across the harbor from the airport, on a peninsula of the Marine Industrial Park where the U.S. Naval Hospital Ship Comfort is dry-docked, its white stack with the red cross on it proud against the black sky, and then I see him in the headlights, washed out by the glare, scowling, enraged. He’s holding a small bottle, and a rag that’s as big as a diaper, and he’s backing away from the SUV and the bottle smashes to the pavement and the rag flutters off like a ghost as he runs.

I open the back door and step out unsteadily, my bare feet numb, and the tarmac we’re parked on suddenly is a confusion of strobing emergency lights, cars marked and unmarked roaring in, and he is running toward an old brick warehouse on the water, and Marino and Lucy are on top of him.

He falls, tumbles headlong, as if he’s diving into the asphalt, or maybe Lucy kicked his feet out from under him, I can’t tell. But Marino is all over him, punching and yelling, and then a young woman appears as if she’s been conjured up. For an instant, I wonder if I’m dreaming again.

forty

SHE MATERIALIZES OUT OF FLASHING BRIGHT LIGHTS and darkness, emerging from behind my SUV, where I realize a black Maserati is parked, its big engine rumbling throatily. She asks if I’m all right, and I tell her I’m fine, and I don’t know her and I do.

“He might just kill him. All right, Marino. That’s enough. Not that I blame him.” She’s staring in the direction of the warehouse, and I’m staring at her face. “You sure you’re okay? Let’s get you in the back of a cruiser and I’ll find something for your feet.”

She’s cut her hair quite short, and it looks more blond than brown, still very pretty but older, mid-thirties, about Lucy’s age. When I saw her last she was barely twenty, and she puts an arm around me and walks me to Sil Machado’s Crown Vic as he’s boiling out of it. I climb into the backseat and sit with the door wide open, and I rub my feet.

“I guess someone will explain things,” I say to Janet.

The last time I saw her must have been fifteen years ago, when she and Lucy were sharing an apartment in Washington, D.C. Lucy was ATF and Janet was FBI. I always liked her. They were good together, and nothing’s been all that good for Lucy ever since.

“I notice you don’t seem to have a gun handy, don’t seem to be looking to arrest anyone,” I say to her, “and I’m sorry if I’m bleary. If only my head would fall off. Maybe then it would stop hurting.”

“I’m not with the Bureau anymore, not even a cop,” Janet says. “A lawyer, one of those awful people, only worse. I specialize in environmental law, so I’m pretty much hated.”

“Just don’t adopt a pig. Lucy’s been threatening it. And it will be me taking care of it when she’s out of town, which is often.”

“I guess you don’t know what he did with your shoes.”

“There should be a box of boot covers in the back.” I point at the SUV I was just held hostage in, and it occurs to me that all the CFC vehicles are equipped with satellite locators. “The ones with PVC soles so I can walk around in them,” I say to her. “You followed me here. But why?”