Four Scarpetta Novels

by Patricia Cornwell

  She nods, uncertainty, then fear contorting her face.

  “Make it quick. Please,” she whispers between convulsions, sobs and hiccups jerking her body. “If you aren’t going to let me go. Make it quick.”

  Bev returns with the towel and hands it to Jay. Water drips on the bed and trickles down his bare, muscular arm. Bev runs her fingers through his hair and kisses the back of his neck, then presses close to him as he opens the woman’s blouse.

  “Ah. No bra,” he says. “She wasn’t wearing one?” He cranes his head around, demanding an answer in a soft voice that by now has become scary.

  Bev slides her hands down his sweaty chest.

  The woman’s eyes are wide with the same glassy terror that Bev saw in the boat. She trembles violently, her naked breasts quivering. A drop of saliva slips out of the side of her mouth, and Jay stands up, disgusted.

  “Get the rest of her clothes off and clean her up,” he orders Bev. “You touch her again, you know what I’ll do to you.”

  Bev smiles. Theirs is a well-rehearsed, long-running drama.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Scarpetta is still in Florida.

  Once again, she was about to leave and was waylaid, this time by FedEx delivering two packages, one from the Polunsky Prison Information Office, the other a thick package containing Charlotte Dard’s case, mostly copies of autopsy and lab reports and histological slides.

  Scarpetta places a slide of the left ventricular free wall on the compound microscope’s stage. If she could add up the hours she’s spent looking at slides throughout her career, the number would be in the tens of thousands. Although she respects the histologist, whose devotion is to the minuscule structures of tissues and the tales their cells can tell, she has never been able to comprehend sitting inside a tiny lab day in and day out, surrounded by sections of heart, lung, liver, brain and other organs, and injuries and stigmata of diseases that are cut into sections and turn rubbery inside bottles of a fixative such as formalin. Each tissue section is embedded in paraffin wax or a plastic resin and shaved into slices thin enough for light to pass through them. After they are mounted on glass slides, they are stained with a variety of dyes that were developed by the nineteenth-century textile industry.

  Mostly, Scarpetta sees a lot of pinks and blues, but there are a perfusion of colors used, depending on the tissue and the cellular structure and possible defects that need to give up their secrets to her at the other end of the lens. Dyes, like diseases, are often named for whoever discovered or invented them, and this is where histology becomes unnecessarily complicated, if not annoying. It isn’t enough for dyes or dyeing techniques to be called blue or violet; they must be Cresyl blue, Cresyl violet, or Perl’s Prussian blue, or Heidenhain’s haematoxylin (purplish red), or Masson’s trichrome (blue and green), or Bielschowsky (neutral red), or her favorite mundanity: Jones’s methenamine silver. A typical egocentric pathological legacy is a van Gieson staining of a Schwann cell nuclei from a Schwannoma, and Scarpetta fails to understand why German naturalist Theodor Schwann would have wanted a tumor named after him.

  She peers into the lens at the contraction bands in the pink-stained tissue shaved from a section of Charlotte Dard’s heart at autopsy. Some fibers are missing their nuclei, indicating necrosis, or the death of tissue, and other slides reveal pink-and-blue-stained inflammation and old scarring, and narrowing of the coronary arteries. The Louisiana woman was only thirty-two when she dropped dead at the door of a motel room in Baton Rouge, dressed to go out, keys in hand.

  It was suspected eight years ago, at the time of her death, that her family pharmacist illegally gave her the powerful pain medication OxyContin, found in her pocketbook. She didn’t have a prescription for the drug. In a letter to Scarpetta, Dr. Lanier suggests that this pharmacist might have fled to Palm Desert, California. Dr. Lanier doesn’t indicate what he bases this possibility on or offer further details for his reopening Charlotte Dard’s case.

  It is a mess for multiple reasons: The case is old; there is no evidence the drug came from the pharmacist, and even if it did, unless he premeditated killing her with OxyContin, he is not guilty of first-degree murder; at the time of Charlotte Dard’s death, he would not talk to the police but through his attorney claimed that a family friend with a ruptured disk must have given Charlotte Dard OxyContin, and she accidentally overdosed on it.

  Several copies of letters sent eight years ago to Dr. Lanier are from the pharmacist’s attorney, Rocco Caggiano.

  BEYOND THE WINDOW IN FRONT of Scarpetta’s desk, shadows crawl over sand dunes as the sun moves.

  Palm fronds rattle lightly, and a man walking his yellow lab on the beach leans into a headwind. Far off on the hazy blue horizon, a container ship forges south, probably to Miami. If Scarpetta is too caught up in her work, she will forget the time and where she is and soon will miss another flight to New York.

  Dr. Lanier answers his phone and is hoarse as he says, “Hello.”

  “You sound terrible,” Scarpetta says sympathetically.

  “I don’t know what I caught, but I feel like hell. Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “What meds are you taking? I hope it’s decongestants and a cough suppressant with an expectorant, and that you’re staying away from antihistamines. Try the daytime or nondrowsy formulas that don’t list antihistamines or doxylamine succinate on the label—unless you want to dry yourself out and get a bacterial infection. And stay away from alcohol. It lowers your immunities.”

  He blows his nose. “I’m a real medical doctor, just so you know. And an addictionologist, meaning I do know a thing or two about drugs.” He says this without a trace of defensiveness. “Thought you might be relieved to hear that.”

  Scarpetta is embarrassed for making assumptions. Coroners are elected officials and unfortunately, nationwide, many of them are not physicians.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you, Dr. Lanier.”

  “You didn’t. By the way, your sidekick Pete Marino thinks you walk on water.”

  “You checked me out.” She is nonplussed. “Good. Now hopefully we can get down to business. I’ve been through Charlotte Dard’s case.”

  “An oldie but goodie, and I don’t mean that literally. There’s nothing good about it. Hold on. Let me get something to write with. Unquestionably, there’s a Bermuda Triangle for pens, and in my home it’s my beloved wife. All right.”

  “Mrs. Dard’s case is definitely perplexing,” Scarpetta begins. “As you know from her tox reports, oxymorphone—the metabolite of OxyContin—is only four milligrams per liter of blood, which puts her in the low lethal range. Her gastric is negative, and the level in her liver’s no higher than the level in her blood. In other words, death from an overdose of OxyContin is equivocal. Clearly, her drug level isn’t as critical as her clinical findings.”

  “I agree. My thought all along. If you interpret her tox in light of the histological findings, it’s possible she didn’t need as high a level for an accidental overdose. Although her reports and body diagrams don’t indicate any cutaneous stigmata of past intravenous drug abuse,” he adds. “So I’m guessing she was a pill-popper but didn’t shoot up.”

  “Certainly she was a chronic drug abuser,” Scarpetta says. “Her heart tells us that. Patchy necrosis and fibrosis of varying age, and chronic ischemia, plus an absence of coronary artery disease or cardiomegaly. Basically, a coke heart.”

  It is a catch-all phrase that does not necessarily mean the person was a cocaine addict. Drugs such as narcotics, synthetic narcotics, OxyContin, hydrocodone, Percocet, Percodan and whatever else the addict can get his or her hands on will destroy the heart just as completely as cocaine will. Elvis Presley is a sad example.

  “I need to ask you about blackouts,” Dr. Lanier says, after a pause.

  “What about them?” This must be what he so urgently wanted to talk to her about. “I saw nothing in the case file you sent me that mentions blackouts.”

  She checks her irritation. As a
private consultant, she is limited by the medicolegal information presented to her, and the absence of pertinent findings—or the presence of incorrect findings—is intolerable. Until she gave up working her own cases or supervising those worked by her other forensic pathologists throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, she did not have to rely on the competence or veracity of virtual strangers.

  “Charlotte Dard suffered occasional blackouts,” Dr. Lanier explains. “Or at least this is what I was told at the time.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Her sister. It appears,” he goes on, “or let me qualify this by saying it is alleged, that she suffered from retrograde amnesia . . .”

  “I certainly would think her family would know that, unless no one was ever home.”

  “Problem is, her husband Jason Dard’s a rather shady character. Nobody around here knows much, maybe nothing about him, except he’s rich as hell and lives on an old plantation. I wouldn’t call Mrs. Guidon a reliable witness. Although she certainly could be telling the truth about her sister’s condition prior to her death.”

  “I’ve read the police narrative, which is brief. Tell me what you know,” Scarpetta says.

  After a coughing bout, Dr. Lanier replies, “The hotel where she died is in a not-so-nice part of the city, in my jurisdiction. A housekeeper found her body.”

  “What about blood tests? In the paperwork you sent me, all I got were postmortem levels. So I don’t know whether she might have had the elevated GGTP or CDT associated with alcohol abuse.”

  “Since I first contacted you, I have managed to track down premortem blood test results, because she was in the hospital about two weeks before her death. Misfiled, I’m embarrassed to say. I’ve got a particular clerk I’d pay heaven and earth to get rid of. But she’s the sort to sue for one thing or another. The answer to your question is no—no elevated GGTP or CDT.”

  “In the hospital for what?”

  “Tests after her most recent blackout. So, obviously, she had one of these blackouts two weeks before she died. Again, I say allegedly.”

  “Well, if she didn’t have elevated GGTP or CDT, it would seem to me that we can rule out alcohol as the cause of her blackouts,” Scarpetta replies. “And Dr. Lanier, I can’t offer you a second opinion if I’m not supplied with all of the information.”

  “Be nice if I was supplied all the information, too. Don’t get me started on the police down here.”

  “What was Mrs. Dard’s behavior during her blackouts?”

  “Supposedly violent, throwing things, trashing the house or wherever she was staying. On one occasion, she vandalized her Maserati by smashing the windows, doors and hood with a hammer. She poured bleach all over the leather seats.”

  “A record of this with a body shop?”

  “It happened in May of 1995 and required two months to repair the damage, then her husband traded it in on a new one for her.”

  “That wasn’t her last blackout, though.” Scarpetta flips to another page in her legal pad, writing quickly and illegibly.

  “No, the last one—two weeks before her death—was in the fall. September first, 1995. On that occasion, she took a razor of some sort to paintings valued at more than a million dollars. Supposedly.”

  “This was in her home?”

  “In a parlor, as I understand it.”

  “Witnessed?”

  “Only the aftermath, based on what I’m told. Again, this is according to what her sister and husband said way back when.”

  “Certainly her drug abuse could cause blackouts. Another possibility is temporal lobe epilepsy. Any record of her having suffered a head injury?”

  “None that I’m aware of, and no old fractures or scarring showed up on X ray and gross examination. Hospital records indicate that after her second blackout, which, as I’ve said, was September first, 1995, she went through the gamut of tests: MRI, PET scan and so on. Nothing. Of course, temporal lobe epilepsy doesn’t always show up, and maybe she did suffer some sort of head injury and we just don’t know about it. Hard to imagine. I’m inclined to think her drug abuse was to blame.”

  “Based on the information I have, I agree. Her findings correlate with chronic abuse and not from one single overdose of OxyContin. Sounds like the only answer as to manner of death is investigation.”

  “Jesus God. That’s the problem. The cops who worked the case didn’t do shit and sure as hell aren’t going to do shit now. Hell, everything’s a problem down here. Except the food.”

  “Mrs. Dard is probably a heart death with chronic drug abuse as a contributing factor,” Scarpetta tells him. “That’s the most I can offer you.”

  “Doesn’t help that we’ve got an idiot of a U.S. Attorney, Weldon Winn,” Dr. Lanier continues to complain. “Since this damn serial killer’s been on the loose, a lot of people are sticking their noses in everything. Politics.”

  “I presume you’re on the task force,” Scarpetta interrupts him.

  “No. They say I’m not needed, since no bodies have turned up.”

  “And if a body does turn up, you don’t need to know anything about the investigation? Even though it’s believed that each of the women was murdered? Everything you’re telling me goes from bad to worse,” Scarpetta says.

  “You’re absolutely right. I haven’t been invited to look at the scenes of their abductions. I haven’t looked at their homes, cars, not a single crime scene.”

  “Well, you should have,” Scarpetta replies. “When a person is abducted and assumed to be a homicide, the police should ask you to look at everything and know every detail. You should be fully informed.”

  “Should doesn’t mean crap down here.”

  “How many of the abducted women are—or were—from your parish?”

  “So far, seven.”

  “And you haven’t been to a single scene of an abduction? I’m sorry to keep asking you the same questions. But I’m incredulous. And now those scenes no longer exist, am I right?”

  “Cases are as cold as an ice block,” he replies. “I guess the cars are still impounded, and at least that’s a good thing. But you can’t secure a parking lot or house forever, and I have no idea what’s happened with their homes.” He pauses to cough. “It’s going to happen again. Soon. He’s escalating.”

  THE SKY IS TURNING A dirty blue with haze, and the wind picks up.

  Scarpetta picks through paperwork as she talks to Dr. Lanier. Just now she finds a copy of the death certificate, folded up inside an envelope. The document isn’t certified and should not have been released by Dr. Lanier’s office. Only vital records would be authorized to send Scarpetta or any other requesting party a copy—a certified one. When Scarpetta was Chief, it would have been unthinkable for one of her clerks to make such an egregious error.

  She mentions the problematic copy of the death certificate, adding, “I’m not trying to interfere with how you run your office, but thought you should know . . .”

  “Goddamn!” he exclaims. “Let me guess which clerk. And don’t assume it was a mistake. Some people around here would love nothing better than to get me into serious trouble.”

  The maiden name on her death certificate is De Nardi, her father Bernard De Nardi, her mother Sylvie Gaillot De Nardi.

  Charlotte De Nardi Dard was born in Paris.

  “Dr. Scarpetta?”

  She vaguely hears his hoarse voice and coughing. Her mind locks on the abducted women, on Charlotte Dard’s suspicious death and the information blackout that keeps the coroner clueless. The Louisiana legal system is infamous for corruption.

  “Dr. Scarpetta? You there? Did I lose you?”

  Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is scheduled to die soon.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Lanier,” she finally says. “Let me ask you something. How did you hear about me?”

  “Oh, good. I thought we’d gotten disconnected. An indirect referral. A rather unorthodox one suggesting I contact Pete Marino. That led me to you.”r />
  “An unorthodox referral from whom?”

  He waits for another coughing fit to pass. “A guy on death row.”

  “Let me guess. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.”

  “I’m not surprised you would figure that out. I’ve been checking, I admit it. You have a pretty scary history with him.”

  “Let’s don’t go into that,” she says. “I also assume he’s the source of information about Charlotte Dard. And by the way, Rocco Caggiano, the lawyer who represented our mysterious pharmacist who allegedly fled to Palm Desert? He’s also Chandonne’s lawyer.”

  “Now that I didn’t know. You think Chandonne had something to do with Charlotte Dard’s death?”

  “I’m betting that he or someone either in his family or associated with it did,” she says.

  LUCY ISN’T SHOWERED, her usual demeanor in the office fractured by exhaustion and by post-traumatic stress that she will not acknowledge.

  Her clothes look slept in because they were—twice. Once in Berlin, when the flight was cancelled, and the next time in Heathrow, when she and Rudy had to wait three hours to board an eight-hour flight that landed them at Kennedy Airport not even an hour ago. At least they had no baggage to lose, their few belongings stuffed into one small carry-on duffel bag. Before leaving Germany, they showered and disposed of the clothing they had worn in room 511 of the Szczecin Radisson Hotel.

  Lucy wiped all prints off her tactical baton, and without a pause in her step, tossed it through the slightly open window of a dented Mercedes on the side of a quiet, narrow street crowded with parked cars. Certainly the Mercedes’s owner would puzzle over the baton and wonder who deposited it inside his or her front seat and why.

  “Merry Christmas,” Lucy muttered, and she and Rudy briskly walked off into the dawn.

  The morning was too dark and cool for blow flies, but with the afternoon, when Rudy and Lucy were long gone, the flies would awaken in Poland. More of the filthy winged insects would find Rocco Caggiano’s slightly open window and heavily drone inside to feed on his cold, stiff body. The flies should be busy depositing hundreds—maybe thousands—of eggs.