He’s always believed that the best way to identify a cottonmouth is to poke at it. If the inside of its mouth is white, whack off its head. Otherwise, the critter’s nothing more than a harmless water snake.
He may as well poke at the truth and see what he finds. While sitting at his desk, he picks up the phone and discovers Marino doesn’t care who finds him—he has what Dr. Lanier calls a bring-’em-on attitude. He envisions Marino as the type who would ride a Fat Boy Harley, probably without a helmet. The cop’s answering machine doesn’t say he can’t answer the phone because he’s not in or is on the other line, which is what most professional, polite people record as greetings. The recorded gruff male voice says, “Don’t call me at home,” and offers another number for the person to try.
Dr. Lanier tries the other number. The voice that answers sounds like the recorded one.
“Detective Marino?”
“Who wants to know?”
He’s from New Jersey and doesn’t trust anyone, probably doesn’t like hardly anyone, either.
Dr. Lanier introduces himself, and he’s careful about what he says, too. In the trust and like department, Marino’s met his match.
“We had a death down here about eight years ago. You ever heard of a woman named Charlotte Dard?”
“Nope.”
Dr. Lanier gives him a few details of the case.
“Nope.”
Dr. Lanier gives him a few more.
“Let me ask you something. Why the hell would I know anything about some drug overdose in Baton Rouge?” Marino’s not at all nice about it.
“Same question I have.”
“Huh? What is this? Are you some asshole bullshitting me?”
“A lot of people think I’m an asshole,” Dr. Lanier replies. “But I’m not bullshitting you.”
He debates whether he should tell Marino about the letter from Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. He decides that no useful purpose would be served. He’s already found out what he needed to know: Marino is clueless about Charlotte Dard and annoyed at being bothered by some coroner.
“One other quick question, and then I won’t take up any more of your time,” Dr. Lanier says. “You have a long history with Dr. Kay Scarpetta . . . .”
“What’s she got to do with this?” Marino’s entire demeanor changes. Now he’s just plain hostile.
“I understand she’s doing private consulting.” Dr. Lanier had read a brief mention of it on the Internet.
Marino doesn’t respond.
“What do you think of her?” Dr. Lanier asks the question that he feels sure will trigger a volcanic temper.
“Tell you what, asshole. I think enough of her not to talk about her with some shitbag stranger!”
The call ends with a dial tone.
In Sam Lanier’s mind, he couldn’t have gotten a stronger validation of Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s character. She’s welcome down here.
SCARPETTA WAITS IN LINE at the Marriott’s front desk, her head throbbing, her central nervous system shorted out by wine so terrible it ought to have a skull and crossbones on the label.
Her malady, her malaise, is far more serious than she ever let on to Nic, and with each passing minute, her physical condition and mood worsen. She refuses to diagnose her illness as a hangover (after all, she barely had two glasses of that goddamn wine), and she refuses to forgive herself for even considering an alcoholic beverage sold in a cardboard box.
Painful experience has proven for years that when she suffers such merry misadventures, the more coffee she drinks, the more awful she’s going to feel, but this never stops her from ordering a large pot in her room and flying by the seat of her pants instead of trusting her instruments, as Lucy likes to say when her aunt ignores what she knows and does what she feels and crash-lands.
When she finally reaches the front desk, she asks for her bill and is handed an envelope.
“This just came in for you, ma’am,” the harried receptionist says as he tears off the printout of her room charges and hands it to her.
Inside the envelope is a fax. Scarpetta walks behind the bellman pushing her cart. It is loaded with bags and three very large hard cases containing carousels of slides that she has not bothered to convert to PowerPoint presentations because she can’t stand them. Showing a picture of a man who has blown off the top of his head with a shotgun or a child scalded to death does not require a computer and special effects. Slide presentations and handouts serve her purposes just as well now as they did when she started her career.
The fax is from her secretary, Rose, who must have called about the same time Scarpetta was miserably making her way from the elevator to the lobby. All Rose says is that Dr. Sam Lanier, the coroner of East Baton Rouge Parish, very much needs to speak to her. Rose includes his home, office and cell telephone numbers. Immediately, Scarpetta thinks of Nic Robillard, of their conversation not even an hour ago.
She waits until she is inside her taxi before calling Dr. Lanier’s office number. He answers himself.
“How did you know who my secretary is and where to reach her?” she asks right off.
“Your former office in Richmond was kind enough to give me your number in Florida. Rose is quite charming, by the way.”
“I see,” she replies as the taxi drives away from the hotel. “I’m in a taxi on the way to the airport. Can we make this quick?”
Her abruptness is more about her annoyance with her former office than with him. Giving out her unlisted phone number is blatant harassment—not that it hasn’t happened before. Some people who still work at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office remain loyal to their boss. Others are traitors and bend in the direction that power pulls.
“Quick it will be,” Dr. Lanier says. “I’m wondering if you would review a case for me, Dr. Scarpetta—an eight-year-old case that was never successfully resolved. A woman died under suspicious circumstances, apparently from a drug overdose. You ever heard of Charlotte Dard?”
“No.”
“I’ve just gotten information—don’t know if it’s good or not—but I don’t want to discuss it while you’re on a cell phone.”
“This is a Baton Rouge case?” Scarpetta digs in her handbag for a notepad and pen.
“Another story for another day. But yes, it’s a Baton Rouge case.”
“Your case?”
“It was. I’d like to send you the reports, slides and all the rest. Looks like I’d better dig back into this thing.” He hesitates. “And as you might suspect, I don’t have much of a budget . . .”
“Nobody who calls me has consultants built into the budget,” she interrupts him. “I didn’t either when I was in Virginia.”
She tells him to FedEx her the case and gives him her address.
She adds, “Do you happen to know an investigator in Zachary named Nic Robillard?”
A pause, then, “Believe I talked to her on the phone a few months back. I’m sure you know what’s going on down here.”
“I can’t help but know. It’s all over the news,” Scarpetta cautiously replies over the noise of the taxi and rush-hour traffic.
Neither her tone nor her words betray that she has any personal information about the cases, and her trust of Nic slips several notches as she frets that perhaps Nic called Dr. Lanier and talked about her. Why she might have done that is hard to say, unless she simply volunteered that Scarpetta could be a very useful resource for him, should he ever need her. Maybe he really does need her for this cold case he’s just told her about. Maybe he’s trying to develop a relationship with her because he’s not equipped to handle these serial murders by himself.
“How many forensic pathologists work for you?” Scarpetta asks him.
“One.”
“Did Nic Robillard call you about me?” She doesn’t have time for subtlety.
“Why would she?”
“That’s no answer.”
“Hell no,” he says.
AN AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT rattles in a dusty wi
ndow, the afternoon hotter than usual for April, as Jay Talley hacks meat into small pieces and drops them into a bloody plastic bucket below the scarred wooden table where he sits.
The table, like everything else inside his fishing shack, is old and ugly, the sort of household objects people leave at the edges of their driveways to be picked up by garbage collectors or spirited away by scavengers. His work space is his special place, and he is patient as he repeatedly adjusts torn bits of clothing that he jams under several of the table legs in his ongoing attempt to keep the table level. He prefers not to chop on a surface that moves, but balance is virtually impossible in his warped little world, and the graying wood floor slopes enough to roll an egg from the kitchenette right out to the dock, where some planks are rotted, others curled like dull dead hair flipped up at the ends.
Swatting at sea gnats, he finishes a Budweiser, crushes the can and hurls it out the open screen door, pleased that it sails twenty feet past his boat and plops into the water. Boredom gives pleasure to the most mundane activities, including checking on the crab pots suspended below floats in the murky freshwater. It doesn’t matter that crabs aren’t found in freshwater. Crawfish are, and they’re in season, and if they don’t pick the pots clean, something bigger usually comes along.
Last month, a large log turned into an alligator gar weighing at least a hundred pounds. It moved like a torpedo, speeding off with a trotline and its makeshift float of an empty Clorox bottle. Jay sat calmly in his boat and tipped his baseball cap to the carnivorous creature. Jay doesn’t eat what he catches in the pots, but out here in the middle of this hellish nowhere he now calls home, his only acceptable fresh choices are catfish, bass, turtles and as many frogs as he can gig at night. Otherwise, his food comes in bags and cans from various grocery stores on the mainland.
He brings down a meat cleaver, cutting through muscle and bone. More pieces of foul flesh land in the bucket. It doesn’t take long for meat to rot in this heat.
“Guess who I’m thinking about right now,” he says to Bev Kiffin, his woman.
“Shut up. You just say that to get to me.”
“No, ma chérie, I say it because I’m remembering fucking her in Paris.”
Jealousy flares. Bev can’t control herself when she is forced to think of Kay Scarpetta, who is fine-looking and smart—plenty fine-looking, and smart enough for Jay. Rarely does it occur to Bev that she has no good reason to compete with a woman Jay fantasizes about chopping up and feeding to the alligators and crawfish in the bayou outside their door. If Bev could cut Scarpetta’s throat, she sure as hell would, and her own dream is to one day get her chance. Then Jay wouldn’t talk about the bitch anymore. He wouldn’t stare out at the bayou half the night, thinking about her.
“How come you have to always talk about her?”
Bev moves closer to him and watches sweat trickle down his perfectly sculpted, smooth chest, soaking the waistband of his tight cutoff jeans. She stares at his muscular thighs, the hair on them fine and shiny as gold. Her fury heats to flashover and erupts.
“You got a damn hard-on. You chop away and get a stiff dick! Put down that meat ax!”
“It’s a cleaver, honey. If only you weren’t so stupid.” His handsome face and blond hair are wet with sweat, his cold blue eyes bright against his tan.
She bends over and cups her thick, stubby hand around the bulge between his thighs as he calmly spreads his legs wide and leans back in the chair long enough for her to get started on his zipper. She wears no bra, her cheap flower-printed blouse halfway unbuttoned, offering him a view of heavy, flaccid breasts that arouse nothing beyond his need to manipulate and control. He rips open her blouse, buttons lightly clattering against wood, and begins fondling her the way she craves.
“Oh,” she moans. “Don’t stop,” she begs, moving his head closer.
“Want more, baby?”
“Oh.”
He sucks her, disgusted by her salty, sour taste, and shoves her hard with his bare feet.
The thud of her body hitting the floor, her shocked gasp, are familiar sounds in the fishing shack.
BLOOD SEEPS FROM A SCRAPE on Bev’s dimpled left knee, and she stares at the wound.
“How come you don’t want me no more, baby?” she says. “You used to want me so bad I couldn’t keep you off me.”
Her nose runs. She shoves back her short, frizzy, graying brown hair and pulls her torn blouse together, suddenly humiliated by her ugly nakedness.
“Want is when I want.”
He resumes the blows with the meat cleaver. Tiny bits of flesh and bone fly out from the thick, shiny blade and stick to the stained wooden table and to Jay’s sweaty bare chest. The sweet, sour stench of rotting flesh is heavy in the stifling air, and flies drone in lazy zigzags, lumbering airborne like fat cargo planes. They hover over the gory mother lode inside the bucket, their black and green swarming bodies shimmering like spilled gasoline.
Bev collects herself off the floor. She watches Jay hacking and tossing flesh into the bucket, flies darting up and greedily dive-bombing back to their feast. They buzz loudly, bumping against the side of the bucket.
“And now we’re supposed to eat off that table.” Hers is an old line. They never eat off it. The table is Jay’s private space and she knows not to touch it.
He swats furiously at the sea gnats. “Goddamn, I hate these fucking things! When the fuck are you going shopping? And next time, don’t come back here with only two bottles of insect repellent and no pups.”
Bev disappears into the lavatory. It is no bigger than the head on a small boat, and there is no tank to chemically store and treat human waste, which slops through a hole into a washtub between pilings that support the shack. Once a day, she empties the tub into the bayou. Her persistent nightmare is that a water moccasin or alligator is going to get her while she sits on the wooden box toilet, and at especially uneasy times, she squats above it, peering down at the black hole, her fat thighs shaking from fear and the strain of supporting her weight.
She was fleshy when Jay first met her at a campsite near Williamsburg, Virginia, where his family business brought them together by accident, really. He needed a place, and hers was out of the way, an overgrown, garbage-strewn, densely wooded property with abandoned, rusting campers and a motel mostly patronized by prostitutes and drug dealers. When Jay appeared at Bev’s door, she was thrilled by his power and was instantly attracted to him. She came on to him the same way she did with all men, rough raw sex her only means of gratifying her lonely, angry needs.
The rain was driving down that night, reminding her of shiny nails, and she fixed Jay a bowl of Campbell’s vegetable beef soup and a grilled cheese sandwich while her young children hid and watched their mother involving herself with yet another stranger. Bev paid her little ones no mind at the time. She tries not to think about them now or wonder how big they’re getting. They are wards of the state and far better off without her. Ironically, Jay was nicer to them than she was. He was so different then, when he took her to bed that first night.
Three years ago she was more attractive and had not gained weight from eating snack foods and processed cheeses and meats that don’t spoil. She can’t do push-ups and squats all day long the way Jay does, and she gets no exercise. Behind the shack, grass flats thick with mussels and rich black muck stretch for miles. There is no dry ground to walk on except the pier. Maneuvering Jay’s boat through narrow waterways burns few calories.
A small outboard motor would do, but Jay will have nothing less than a 200-horsepower Evinrude with a stainless-steel prop to speed through channels, heading to his secret spots, and drift silently beneath cypress trees, waiting perfectly still like a possum if a helicopter or small plane flies low overhead. He helps Bev with nothing, his distinctive looks impossible to disguise because he is too vain to ruin his beauty. When he goes to shore, it is to get money at a family hideaway and not to run errands. Bev can venture out for provisions because she scarcely resemb
les her photograph on the FBI’s most-wanted list, her skin withered by the sun, her body overblown, her face puffy and hair cut short.
“Why can’t we close the door?” Bev asks as she walks out of the tiny, dirty bathroom.
He goes to the refrigerator, rounded and white with spots of rust, left over from the sixties. Swinging open the door, he grabs another beer.
“I like being hot,” he says, his footsteps heavy on the old planking.
“The air-conditioning’s going right out the door.” Hers is the usual complaint. “We only got so much gasoline for the generator.”
“Then you’ll just have to go out and get more. How many times do I have to tell you to get your fat ass out to get more?”
He stares at her, his eyes weird, the way they get when he is engrossed in his ritual. His arousal strains against his zipper, and soon he will relieve it—again, at a time of his choosing. Body odor and a rotten stench waft past her as he carries the bucket outside, flies storming after it in a loud buzzing blitzkrieg. He busies himself, pulling up crab pots by their yellow nylon ropes. He has dozens of pots. He simply tosses pieces too big to fit inside them into the water, where gators will drag them to the bottom and feed off them at their pleasure. Skulls pose the biggest problem, because they make identity certain. Another ritual of his is to pound skulls into dust, which he mixes with powdered white chalk that he stores in empty paint cans. Chalky, bony dust reminds him of the catacombs that wind twenty-five meters below the streets of Paris.
Now inside and flopping on the narrow bed against a wall, he puts his hands behind his head.
Bev slips out of her torn blouse, teasing him like a stripper. A master at the waiting game, he does not react as she brushes against his lips. She throbs unbearably. This might go on for a very long time, never mind her begging, and when he is ready, and only then, he bites, but not hard enough to leave a mark because he can’t abide the idea of being anything like Jean-Baptiste, his brother.