Trace

by Patricia Cornwell

  He moves unsteadily, fumbles with a chair, rolls it out from the counter, and sits, looking at her, his face white. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  “I’m your destiny, motherfucker,” Lucy says to him, and she tries to will her rage back into its cage, but it is easier for her to will herself to seem scared than it is for her to will her rage into submission. “You do this sort of shit with your daughter? With Gilly? You molest her too, you son of a bitch?”

  He stares at her, his eyes wild.

  “You heard me. You heard me loud and clear, asshole. The FAA’s going to hear soon enough, too.”

  “Get out of my office.” He is thinking of grabbing her, she can see it in the tensed muscles of his body, in his eyes.

  “Don’t try it,” Lucy warns him. “Don’t think of moving out of that chair until I tell you to. When was the last time you saw Gilly?”

  “What is this about?”

  “The rose,” Benton cues her.

  “I’m the one asking questions,” Lucy tells Dr. Paulsson, and a part of her wants to tell Benton the same thing. “Your ex-wife is spreading stories around. Did you know that, Dr. Homeland Security Snitch?”

  He wets his lips, his eyes wide and frantic.

  “She’s making a pretty good case for you being the reason Gilly’s dead. Did you know that?”

  “The rose,” Benton sounds in her ear.

  “She says you came to see Gilly not long before she suddenly died. You brought her a rose. Oh, we know about it. Everything in that poor little girl’s room has been gone through, trust me.”

  “A rose was in her room?”

  “Get him to describe it,” Benton says.

  “You tell me,” Lucy says to Dr. Paulsson. “Where’d you get the rose?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t waste my time.”

  “You’re not going to the FAA…”

  Lucy laughs and shakes her head. “Oh, assholes like you are cut out with a cookie cutter. You really think you’ll get away with your shit, you really think it. Talk to me about Gilly. Then we’ll talk about the FAA.”

  “Turn it off.” He indicates the camera pen.

  “You tell me about Gilly, I’ll turn it off.”

  He nods.

  She touches the pen and pretends she’s turning it off. His eyes are scared and don’t trust her.

  “The rose,” she repeats.

  “I swear to God, I don’t know anything about a rose,” he replies. “I would never hurt Gilly. What is she saying? What is that bitch saying?”

  “Yes, Suzanna.” Lucy stares at him. “She has a lot to say. The way she tells it, you’re the reason Gilly’s dead. Murdered.”

  “No! Good God, no!”

  “You play soldier with Gilly, too? You dress her up in camouflage and boots, asshole? You let perverts in your house to play your sick little games?”

  “Oh God,” he groans, shutting his eyes. “That bitch. It was between us.”

  “Us?”

  “Suz and me. Couples do things.”

  “And who else? You have other people over playing your games?”

  “It was my private home.”

  “What a pig you are,” Lucy says menacingly. “Doing shit like that in front of a little girl.”

  “Are you FBI?” He opens his eyes, and they look dead with hate, like shark eyes. “You are, aren’t you. I knew it would happen. I should have known. As if my life has to do with anything. I knew it. I’ve been set up.”

  “I see. The FBI forced you to make me take my clothes off for a routine flight physical.”

  “It has nothing to do with anything. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I beg to differ,” she replies sarcastically. “It matters all right. You’re going to find out just how much it matters. I’m not the FBI. You aren’t that lucky.”

  “This is all about Gilly?” He is more relaxed in the chair, defeated and barely moving. “I loved my daughter. I haven’t seen her since Thanksgiving and that’s the God’s truth.”

  “The puppy,” Benton cues her, and Lucy considers ripping the receiver out of her ear.

  “You think someone killed your daughter because you’re a snitch for Homeland Security?” Lucy knows better, but she is going to get him. “Come on, Frank. Tell the truth! Don’t make it worse for yourself!”

  “Someone killed her,” he repeats. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “Who came to your house to play the game? You know Edgar Allan Pogue? The guy living behind your house? Living where Mrs. Arnette used to live?”

  “I knew her,” he says. “She was a patient of mine. Hypochondriac. Damn pain in the ass, really.”

  “This is important,” Benton says, as if Lucy doesn’t know. “He’s confiding. Be his friend.”

  “Your patient in Richmond?” Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson, and the last thing she wants is to be his friend, but she softens, acts interested. “When?”

  “When? Oh God. Forever ago. Actually, I bought our Richmond house from her. She owned a number of houses in Richmond. At the turn of the century, her family owned the whole damn block, was one big estate, got divided up for members of her family, eventually for sale. I bought our house from her, for a bargain. Some bargain.”

  “Sounds like you didn’t like her much,” Lucy says, as if she and Dr. Paulsson get along fine, as if he wasn’t molesting her a few minutes ago.

  “She’d come by the house, my office, whenever she wanted. Pain in the ass. Always complaining.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Died. Eight, ten years ago. Long time ago.”

  “Of what?” Lucy asks. “What did she die of?”

  “She’d been sick, had cancer. She died at home.”

  “Details,” Benton says.

  “What do you know about it?” Lucy asks. “She alone when she died? She have a big funeral?”

  “Why are you asking all this?” Dr. Paulsson sits in the chair, looking at her. But he is feeling better because she is friendly. It’s obvious.

  “It might be related to Gilly. I know things you don’t. Let me ask the questions.”

  “Careful,” Benton warns her. “Keep him close.”

  “Well, ask me then,” Dr. Paulsson says snidely.

  “Did you go to her funeral?”

  “I don’t remember her having one.”

  “She must have had a funeral,” Lucy says.

  “She hated God, blamed him for all her aches and pains, for nobody wanting to be around her, which was understandable if you knew her. What a disgusting old lady. Just intolerable. Doctors don’t get paid enough to treat people like her.”

  “She died at home? She was that sick with cancer and died all alone at home?” Lucy asks. “She was in hospice?”

  “No.”

  “She’s a wealthy woman and dies all alone at home, no medical care, nothing?”

  “More or less. Why does all this matter?” His eyes move around the examination room, and he is alert and more confident.

  “It matters. You’re making things better for yourself. A lot better,” Lucy assures him and threatens him at the same time. “I want to see Mrs. Arnette’s medical records. Show them to me. Pull her up on your computer.”

  “I would have purged her record. She’s dead.” His eyes mock her. “Funny thing about dear Mrs. Arnette is she donated her body to science because she didn’t want a funeral, because she hated God, and that was that. I guess some poor med student had to work on the old bitch. I used to think about that from time to time and feel sorry for the poor med student whose luck of the draw was to get her withered, ugly old body.” He is calmer and more sure of himself, and the more confident he gets, the more Lucy’s hatred rises like bile.

  “The puppy,” Benton says in her ear. “Ask him.”

  “What happened to Gilly’s puppy?” Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson. “Yo
ur wife says their puppy disappeared and you had something to do with it.”

  “She’s no longer my wife,” he says, his eyes hard and cold. “And she’s never had a dog.”

  “Sweetie,” Lucy says.

  He looks at her, and something glints in his eyes.

  “Where’s Sweetie?” Lucy asks.

  “The only Sweetie I know is me and Gilly,” he says, a smirk on his face.

  “Don’t be funny,” Lucy warns him. “There’s nothing funny about any of this.”

  “Suz calls me Sweetie. She always has. And I called Gilly Sweetie.”

  “That’s the answer,” Benton says. “That’s enough. Get out.”

  “There’s no puppy,” Dr. Paulsson says. “That’s a lot of shit.” He leans into the conversation more, and she sees what is coming. “Who are you?” he asks. “Give me the pen.” He gets up from the chair. “You’re just some stupid little girl sent in to sue me, aren’t you? Think you’re getting money. You see how foolish this is, don’t you? Give me the pen.”

  Lucy stands with her arms by her sides, her hands ready.

  “Move out,” Benton says. “Now.”

  “So a couple of you Whirly-Girls get together, think you’re going to get a few bucks?” He stands before her, and she knows what is about to happen.

  “Move out,” Benton says emphatically. “It’s over.”

  “You want the camera?” Lucy asks Dr. Paulsson. “You want the micro-recorder?” She has no recorder. Benton does. “You really want them?”

  “We can just pretend this never happened,” Dr. Paulsson says, smiling. “Give them to me. You got the information you wanted, now didn’t you? So we’ll just forget everything else. Let me have them.”

  She taps the cellular interface that is clipped to a belt loop, the wire connected to it running through a tiny hole inside her flight suit. She pushes a switch, turning off the interface. Benton’s screen just went blank. He can hear and talk but he can’t see.

  “Don’t,” Benton says in her ear. “Get out. Now.”

  “Sweetie,” Lucy mocks Dr. Paulsson. “What a joke. Can’t imagine anybody calling you Sweetie. That’s sickening. You want the camera, the recorder, come and get them.”

  He rushes at her and runs right into her fist, and then his legs go out from under him and he is on the floor with a grunt and a cry and she is on his back, a knee pinning his right arm, her left hand pinning his left arm. His arms are wrenched and trapped painfully behind his back.

  “Let me go!” he yells. “You’re hurting me!”

  “Lucy! No!” Benton is talking but she isn’t listening.

  She grips the back of Dr. Paulsson’s hair, and she is breathing hard and tastes her rage, and she lifts his head by his hair. “Hope you had a nice time today, Sweetie,” Lucy says, jerking his head by the hair. “I should beat your fucking brains out. You molest your own daughter? You let other perverts do it when they came to your house for sex games? You molest her in her own bedroom right before you moved out last summer?” She presses his head against the floor and holds it hard as if she is drowning him in the white tile floor. His cheek is squashed against the floor. “How many lives have you ruined, you motherfucker?” She bangs his head on the floor, hard enough to remind him she could smash his brains out. He grunts and cries out.

  “Lucy! Stop!” Benton’s voice pierces her eardrum. “Move out!”

  She blinks, suddenly aware of what she is doing. She can’t kill him. She must not kill him. She gets off him. She starts to kick him in the head, but stops her foot. She breathes hard, sweating, backing off, wanting to kick him, wanting to beat him to death, and she could, easily. “Don’t move,” she snarls, backing away from him, her heart flying as she realizes just how much she wants to kill him. “Lie right there and don’t move. Don’t move!”

  She reaches toward the countertop and snatches up her bogus FAA forms, then backs up to the door and opens it. He stays down and doesn’t move, his face against the floor. Blood drips from his nose and is bright red against the white tile.

  “You’re finished,” she says to him from the doorway, wondering where the plump woman is, the secretary, glancing out toward the stairs and seeing no one. The house is perfectly quiet and she is alone inside it with Dr. Paulsson, just the way he planned. “You’re finished. You’re lucky you’re not dead,” she says, shutting the door behind her.

  47.

  ALONG THE narrow streets inside the training camp, five agents armed with Beretta Storm nine-millimeter rifles with Bushnell scopes and tactical lights move in from different directions on a small stucco house with a cement roof.

  The house is old and in poor repair, and the small overgrown yard is gaudy with inflated Santas, snowmen, and candy canes. Palm trees are sloppily strung with multicolored lights. Inside the house, a dog barks nonstop. The agents wear their Storms on tactical slings that angle across their bodies and hold the muzzles down at a forty-degree angle. Dressed in black, they are not wearing body armor, which is unusual on a raid.

  Rudy Musil waits calmly inside the stucco house behind a high barricade of turned-over tables and upended chairs that block the narrow doorway leading into the kitchen. He is dressed in camouflage pants and tennis shoes and armed with an AR-15 that is not a lightweight search weapon like the Storm but a high-power combat weapon with a twenty-inch barrel that can take out the enemy up to three hundred yards away. He doesn’t need a weapon to clear the house because he is in the house. He moves from the doorway to the broken window over the sink, looking out. He sees movement behind a Dumpster about fifty yards from the house.

  He props the AR-15 on the edge of the sink and rests the barrel on the rotting windowsill. Through the scope he finds his first prey crouching behind the Dumpster, just a sliver of his black-clothed body exposed. Rudy squeezes the trigger and the rifle cracks and the agent screams, and then another agent darts out of nowhere and hits the dirt behind a palm tree and Rudy shoots him too. That agent doesn’t scream or make any sound that Rudy can hear, and he moves from the window to the barricade in the doorway, angrily kicking and tossing tables and chairs out of his way. He breaks through his own barricade and rushes to the front of the house and smashes out the living room window and begins firing. Within five minutes, all five agents have been slammed with rubber bullets, but they keep on coming until Rudy orders them over the radio to halt.

  “You guys are worthless,” he says into his radio as he sweats inside the raid house that the training camp uses for simulated combat. “You’re dead. Every one of you. Fall in.”

  He steps outside the front door as the agents in black walk toward the yard festively decorated for Christmas, and Rudy has to give them credit. At least they are not showing their pain, and he knows they hurt like hell where the rubber bullets slammed into their unprotected bodies. You get hit enough times with rubber bullets and you want to break down and cry like a baby, but at least this batch of new recruits is hard-faced and able to take the pain. Rudy presses a small remote control and the CD of the barking dog inside the house stops.

  Rudy stands in the doorway and looks at the agents. They are breathing hard and sweating and angry with themselves. “What happened?” Rudy asks. “The answer’s easy.”

  “We fucked up,” an agent replies.

  “Why?” Rudy asks, the AR-15 down by his side. Sweat streams down his muscular bare chest, and veins rope along his tanned, chiseled arms. “I’m looking for one answer. You did one thing and that’s why you’re dead.”

  “We didn’t anticipate you having a combat rifle. Maybe assumed you had a handgun,” an agent offers, wiping her dripping face on her sleeve and breathing hard from nerves and physical exertion.

  “Never assume,” Rudy replies loudly to the group. “I might have a fully automatic machine gun in here. I might be firing fifty-caliber rounds in here. But you made one fatal mistake. Come on. You know what it is. We’ve talked about it.”

  “We faced off with the boss,”
someone says, and everybody laughs.

  “Communication,” Rudy says slowly. “You, Andrews.” He looks at an agent whose black fatigues are covered with dirt. “As soon as you took a round in your left shoulder, you should have alerted your comrades that I was firing from the kitchen window behind the house. Did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I’ve never been shot before, sir.”

  “Hurts, don’t it?”

  “Like hell, sir.”

  “That’s right. And you weren’t expecting it.”

  “No, sir. Nobody said we’d get shot with live rounds.”

  “And that’s why we do it down here at Camp Pain and Misery,” Rudy says. “When something bad happens in real life, we usually haven’t been briefed first, now have we? So you got hit and it hurt like hell and scared the shit out of you, and as a result you didn’t get on the radio and warn your comrades. And everybody got killed. Who heard the dog?”

  “I did,” several agents say.

  “You got a fucking dog barking like holy hell,” Rudy replies impatiently. “Did you get on the radio and let everybody know? The damn dog is barking, so the guy in the house knows you’re coming. A clue, maybe?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The end,” Rudy dismisses them. “Get out of here. I gotta get cleaned up for your funerals.”

  He steps back into the house and shuts the door. His two-way radio-phone vibrated twice from his belt while he was talking to the recruits, and he checks to see who is trying to get hold of him. Both calls are from his computer geek, and Rudy calls him back.

  “What’s up?” Rudy asks.

  “Looks like your guy’s about to run out of prednisone. Last filled a prescription twenty-six days ago at a CVS,” and he gives Rudy the address and phone number.

  “Problem is,” Rudy replies, “I don’t think he’s in Richmond. So now we’ve got to figure out where the hell he might get his drugs next. Assuming he’ll bother.”