The first bug she plants is the size of a cigarette butt, a wireless microphone-audio transmitter she custom-mounts in a waterproof plant-green plastic tube that looks like nothing. Most bugs should be disguised to look like something, but now and then a bug should simply look like nothing. She places the green tube inside the bright ceramic pot of the lush green silk plant on the coffee table. She quickly walks to the back of the house and plants another nothing-looking green bug in another green silk plant that is on a table inside the eat-in kitchen, and she hears the woman’s feet on the stairs.
45.
INSIDE BENTON’S town home, in the third-floor bedroom that he uses as an office, he sits at the desk in front of his laptop computer and waits for Lucy to activate her hidden video camera that is disguised as a pen and connected to a cellular interface that looks like a pager. He waits for her to activate the high-sensitivity audio transmitter disguised as a mechanical pencil. On the desk to the right of his laptop is a modular audio intelligence monitoring system built into a briefcase. The briefcase is open, the tape recorder and receivers inside on standby.
It is twenty-eight minutes past ten A.M. in Charleston and two hours earlier than that here in Aspen. He stares at the black screen of his laptop, sitting patiently at his desk and wearing headphones, as he waits. He has been waiting for almost an hour. Lucy called him when she landed in Charleston late yesterday her time and told him she had the appointment. Dr. Paulsson is overbooked, she added. She told the lady who answered the phone that it was urgent. Lucy had to get a flight physical right away because her medical certificate expired in two days. Why had she waited until the last minute? the woman at Dr. Paulsson’s office wanted to know.
Lucy described her theatrics to Benton, proud of them. She said she faltered and sounded scared. She stammered a bit and replied that she just hadn’t been able to get around to it, that the helicopter owner she worked for had been flying her all over the place and she just hadn’t been able to get around to the flight physical. And, well, she’d been having personal problems, she told the woman, and if she didn’t get her physical, she wouldn’t be legal to fly and she might lose her job, and the last thing she needed on top of everything else was to lose her job. The woman put Lucy on hold. When she got back to her, she said Dr. Paulsson would fit her in at ten A.M. the next morning, which is now this morning, and he was doing her quite a favor because he was cancelling his weekly doubles match because of her predicament. Lucy had better not change the appointment and she had better show up, because of the huge favor the important, busy Dr. Paulsson was doing for her.
So far, all is well and according to plan. Lucy has an appointment. She is at the flight surgeon’s house now. Benton waits at his desk and looks out the window at a snow sky that is lower and denser than it was not even half an hour ago. It is supposed to start snowing again by dark and snow all night. He is getting tired of snow. He is getting tired of his town home. He is getting tired of Aspen. Ever since Henri invaded his life, he has been getting tired of just about everything.
Henri Walden is a sociopath, a narcissist, a stalker. She is a waste of his time. His post-incident stress counseling is a joke to her, and he might feel sorry for Lucy were he not angry with her for allowing Henri to do so much damage. Henri lured her and used her. Henri got what she wanted. Maybe she didn’t plan on being attacked inside Lucy’s Florida home, maybe there are a lot of things she didn’t plan on, but in the end Henri looked for Lucy and found her and took what she wanted from her, and now she is making a mockery of him. He has sacrificed his Aspen vacation with Scarpetta so some sociopathic failed-actress-failed-investigative-agent named Henri can mock and infuriate him. He gave up his time with Scarpetta, and he could not afford to give up that time. He couldn’t. Already things were bad. Maybe now they will be over. He wouldn’t blame her. The thought is unbearable, but he wouldn’t blame her.
Benton picks up a transmitter that looks like a small police radio. “Are you up?” he says to Lucy.
If she’s not, she won’t pick up the transmission through the tiny wireless receiver inside her ear canal. The earpiece is invisible but she’ll have to be clever about wearing it. Certainly, she can’t have it on when Dr. Paulsson checks inside her ears, so Lucy will have to be very quick and shrewd. Benton warned her that the one-way receiver would be helpful but risky. I’d like to be able to talk to you, he told her. It would be extremely helpful if I could cue you. But you know the risks. At some point during the examination, he’s going to discover it. She said she would rather not be cued. He said he would rather she was.
“Lucy? Are you up?” he broadcasts again. “I’m not hearing or seeing you, so I’m checking.”
The video is suddenly activated and he watches images fill the screen of his laptop, and he hears Lucy’s footsteps. A picture of wooden stairs in front of her bobs up and down as she climbs the stairs, and in the headphones he hears her feet. He hears her breathe.
“I got you loud and clear,” he says into the transmitter, holding it close to his lips. The voice and video and recorder lights have switched from standby to active.
Lucy’s fist intrudes into the picture and is very clear and loud as she knocks on a door. Benton sits at his desk, watching, and the door opens and a lab coat fills the screen, and he sees a male neck, then the face of Dr. Paulsson sternly greeting Lucy, backing away from her, telling her to have a seat, and as she moves, the pen camera sweeps around the small, stark examination room and the whitepaper-covered examination table comes into view.
“Here’s the old form. And the second one I filled out,” Lucy says, handing forms to him. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t mess up your system. I’m not good with forms. Flunked forms, you know, in high school.” She laughs nervously as Dr. Paulsson seriously scans the forms, both of them.
“Loud and clear,” Benton says into the transmitter.
Her hand passes over his computer screen as she passes her hand in front of the pen, acknowledging that she hears him through the tiny receiver in her ear.
“Did you go to college?” Dr. Paulsson asks her.
“No, sir. I wanted to, but…”
“That’s too bad,” he replies, unsmiling, and he wears small rimless glasses and is a very attractive man. Some people might call him handsome. He is taller than Lucy but not much, maybe several inches taller, maybe around five-foot-ten or -eleven, and he is slender and looks strong based on what Benton is able to see. He is able to see only what the pen camera picks up from the breast pocket of Lucy’s flight suit.
“Well, I don’t need to go to college to fly a helicopter,” Lucy says with uncertainty. She is doing an excellent job of acting insecure and intimidated and basically invalidated by life.
“My secretary mentioned you’ve been going through personal problems,” Dr. Paulsson says, still looking over her forms.
“A little bit.”
“Tell me what’s been going on,” he says.
“Uh, just the usual boyfriend stuff,” she says nervously, sheepishly. “I was supposed to get married and it didn’t work out. You know, with my schedule. I’ve been gone the last five months out of six if you added it up, I bet.”
“So your boyfriend couldn’t handle your absenteeism and bolted,” Dr. Paulsson says, placing her paperwork on a countertop where there is a computer. Lucy is doing a fine job of turning her body to capture him on the video camera concealed as a pen.
“Good,” Benton transmits, glancing at his closed, locked door. Henri went out for a walk, but he has locked his door because he isn’t sure that she won’t just walk in. She hasn’t learned about boundaries because to her nothing is out of bounds.
“We broke up,” Lucy replies. “I’m all right. But that and everything else…It’s been stressful, but I’m fine.”
“That’s why you waited until the last minute to come in for a physical?” Dr. Paulsson asks, moving closer to her.
“I guess so.”
“That’s not very
smart. You can’t fly without your medical. There are flight surgeons all over the country, you should have taken care of it. What if I couldn’t have seen you today? I had one emergency appointment this morning for the son of a friend of mine and the rest of the day off, but I made an exception for you. What if I’d said no? Your medical expires tomorrow, assuming the date you put down is correct.”
“Yes, sir. I know it was stupid to wait. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate…”
“I’m very pressed for time. So let’s move along and get you out of here.” He retrieves a blood pressure cuff from the counter and tells her to roll up her right sleeve, and he wraps the cuff around her upper arm and begins to pump. “You’re very strong. Do you work out a lot?”
“I try to,” she replies in a shaky voice as he brushes a hand against her breast, and Benton feels the violation as he watches it on his laptop more than a thousand miles away in Aspen, Colorado. No one looking at Benton would see a reaction, not even a spark in his eyes or a tightening of his lips. But he feels the violation as much as Lucy does.
“He’s touching you,” Benton transmits, for the taped record. “He’s begun touching you now.”
“Yes,” Lucy seems to be answering Dr. Paulsson but she is answering Benton, and she moves her hand across the camera lens, verifying her affirmative response. “Yes, I work out a lot,” she says.
46.
“ONE-THIRTY over eighty,” Dr. Paulsson says, touching her again as Velcro rips and he removes the cuff. “Is it usually that high?”
“No, not at all,” Lucy says, acting shocked. “It is? I mean, you would know. But it’s usually about one-ten over seventy. Almost too low, usually.”
“You nervous?”
“I never have liked going to doctors,” she says, and since she is sitting on the table and lower than he is, she leans back a little. She wants Benton to see Dr. Paulsson’s face as he talks to her and tries to intimidate and manipulate her. “Maybe I’m a little nervous.”
He places his hands on her neck, high under her jaw. His skin is warm and dry as he palpates the soft areas under her ears, and her hair is over her ears. He couldn’t possibly see the hidden receiver. He tells her to swallow, feeling her lymph nodes and taking his time as she sits upright and continues to will herself into a state of anxiety, knowing he can feel her pulse beating hard in her neck.
“Swallow,” he says again, feeling for her thyroid, checking to see if her trachea is midline, and it flits through her thoughts that she knows all about physical examinations. Whenever she had one as a child she asked her Aunt Kay questions and wasn’t satisfied until she knew the reason for the examining doctor’s every touch and remark.
He begins palpating her lymph nodes again, pressing in closer to her, and his breath is light on the top of her head.
“Getting nothing but the lab coat,” Benton’s voice sounds clearly in her left ear.
Nothing I can do about it, she thinks.
“Have you been feeling tired lately, feeling not so great?” Dr. Paulsson asks in his matter-of-fact, intimidating way.
“No. Well, I mean, I’ve been working so hard, traveling so much. Maybe just a little tired,” she stumbles, pretending she is as frightened as she sounds while he presses up against her knees, and she feels him. He is hard against one knee then the other, and the camera can’t capture what she feels, unfortunately.
“I need to go to the ladies’ room,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ll be quick.”
He backs off and suddenly the room is there again. It is as if the cover has been removed from a hole in the earth and she is allowed to climb out. She slips down from the table and walks quickly to the doorway while he steps over to the computer and picks up her form, the one she filled in correctly. “There’s a cup in a plastic bag on the sink,” he says as she leaves the room.
“Yes, sir.”
“Just leave it on top of the toilet when you’re finished.”
But she doesn’t use his toilet, merely flushes it and says “Sorry” for Benton’s benefit. That’s all she says as she removes the receiver from her ear and tucks it into a pocket. She doesn’t leave her urine in a cup on top of the toilet, because she has no intention of leaving any part of her biological self. Although it is unlikely that her DNA is on a database, she never assumes that it isn’t. Over the years, she has employed stringent measures to make sure her DNA and fingerprints aren’t on any database in this country or abroad, but she is programmed to live with worst-case scenarios foremost in her mind, so she doesn’t leave urine for this doctor, who soon enough will be quite motivated to go after P. W. Winston. Since entering his house, she has wiped off the surfaces she has touched, leaving no prints that might identify Lucy Farinelli, former FBI, former ATF.
She returns to the examination room, willing herself to anticipate the worst. Her pulse reacts accordingly.
“Your lymph nodes seem slightly enlarged,” Dr. Paulsson says, and she knows he is lying. “When is the last time…Well, you said you don’t like going to the doctor, so you probably haven’t had a thorough physical in quite a while. Not bloodwork, either, I am to assume?”
“They’re enlarged?” Lucy says, reacting with the expected panic.
“You’ve been feeling okay of late? No extreme fatigue? No fever? Nothing like that?” He steps close to her again and sticks the otoscope in her left ear, his face very close to her cheek.
“I haven’t felt sick,” she replies, and he moves the scope to her other ear and looks.
He sets down the otoscope and picks up the ophthalmoscope. He peers into her eyes, his face inches from hers, then he gets the stethoscope. Lucy lets herself be afraid even though she is more angry than afraid. In fact, she isn’t afraid at all, she realizes as she sits on the edge of the examination table, and paper crinkles softly whenever her weight shifts even slightly.
“If you’ll just unzip your flight suit and pull it down to your waist,” he says in the same matter-of-fact tone.
Lucy just looks at him. Then she says, “I think I need to use the ladies’ room again. I’m sorry.”
“Go ahead,” he says rather impatiently. “But I’m running late.”
She hurries to the bathroom and is in and out in less than a minute, the toilet flushing in her wake, the receiver back in her ear.
“Sorry,” she says again. “I drank a big Diet Coke right before I got here. Mistake.”
“Pull down your flight suit,” he orders her.
She hesitates. Now the challenge comes, but she knows what to do. Unzipping her flight suit, she pulls it down to her waist, manipulating the position of the pen so it is angled just right, the wire connected to the cellular interface taped on the inside of the flight suit and not visible.
“Not quite so vertical,” Benton’s voice is in her ear. “Angled down maybe ten degrees.”
She subtly adjusts the top of the flight suit that is around her waist, and Dr. Paulsson says, “Your sports bra, too.”
“I have to take it off?” she asks timidly, scared. “I never have before…”
“Miss Winston. I really am in a hurry. Please.” He tucks the stethoscope earpieces into his ears, his face stern as he moves close, waiting to listen to her heart and lungs, and she pulls her sports bra over her head and sits very still, frozen on top of the whitepaper-lined table.
He presses the stethoscope under one breast, then the other, touching her as she sits very still. She is breathing rapidly, her heart racing, registering her anger, not fear, but she knows he thinks she is afraid, and she wonders what images Benton is picking up. Subtly, she adjusts the flight suit around her waist, touching the pen camera as Dr. Paulsson touches her and pretends he has no interest in what he is seeing and feeling.
“Ten degrees down, to the right,” Benton instructs her.
Subtly, she adjusts the pen, and Dr. Paulsson leans her forward and moves over her back with the stethoscope. “Deep breaths,” he is saying, and he is quite skilled at doin
g his job while he manages to touch and brush against and even cup his hands around, as he presses against her, hard. “Do you have any scars or birthmarks? I’m not seeing any.” He runs his hands over her, looking.
“No sir,” she says.
“You must have something. From an appendectomy, maybe? Anything?”
“No.”
“That’s enough,” Benton says in Lucy’s ear, and she detects anger in his calm tone.
But it’s not enough.
“I need you to get up now and stand on one foot,” Dr. Paulsson says.
“Can I dress?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s enough,” Benton’s voice sounds in her ear.
“Stand up,” Dr. Paulsson orders her.
Lucy sits on the table and pulls up her flight suit, working her arms into the sleeves and zipping it up, but not bothering with her bra because she doesn’t have time. She stares at him, and suddenly she is no longer acting nervous or afraid and he sees the change in her and his eyes react. She gets off the table and steps close to him.
“Sit down,” she tells him.
“What are you doing?” His eyes widen.
“Sit down!”
He doesn’t move, staring at her. As is typical of every bully she’s ever met, he looks scared. She moves in to frighten him more, pulling the pen out of her breast pocket, lifting it up so he can see the attached wire. “Freq test,” she says to Benton, because he can check the concealed transmitters she planted in the waiting area and the kitchen downstairs.
“Clear,” he comes back.
Good, she thinks. He isn’t picking up on any sounds downstairs. “You don’t even want to know how much trouble you’re in,” Lucy says to Dr. Paulsson. “You don’t even want to know who’s watching and listening to all of this in real time, live. Sit down. Sit down!” She returns the pen to her pocket, its hidden lens looking right at him.
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