Approaching footsteps belonged to Marino and Poteat. They ducked under the tape and were joined by the officer with the clipboard. The back door quietly shut.
"Will there be someone to stay with her?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," the officer with the clipboard responded, his breath smoking out. "Miss Harper's got a friend coming, says she'll be okay. We'll have a couple units staked out nearby to make sure the guy doesn't come back for an encore."
"What we looking for?" Poteat asked me.
He slipped his hands in the pockets of his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the cold. Snowflakes as big as quarters were beginning to spiral down.
"More than one weapon," I replied. "The injuries to his head and face are blunt-force trauma." I pointed a bloody gloved finger. "Obviously, the injury to his neck was inflicted by a sharp instrument. As for the bird shot, the pellets aren't deformed, and it doesn't appear that any of them penetrated his body."
Marino looked positively baffled as he stared at the pellets scattered everywhere.
"That was my impression," Poteat said, nodding. "Don't appear the shot was fired, but I couldn't be sure. Then we're prob'ly not looking for a shotgun. A knife and maybe something like a tire tool?"
"Possibly but not necessarily," I answered. "All I can tell you with certainty right now is his neck was cut with something sharp, and he was beaten with something blunt and linear."
"That could be a lot of things, Doc," Poteat remarked, frowning.
"Yes, it could be a lot of things," I agreed.
Though I had my suspicions about the bird shot, I refrained from speculating, having learned the hard way from past experiences. Generalities often got interpreted literally, and at one crime scene the cops walked right past a bloody upholstery needle in the victim's living room because I had said that the weapon was "consistent with" an ice pick.
"The squad can move him," I announced, peeling off my gloves.
Harper was wrapped in a clean white sheet and zipped inside a body pouch. I stood next to Marino and watched the ambulance slowly head back down the dark, deserted drive. There were no lights or sirens-no need to rush when transporting the dead. The snow was coming down harder and it was sticking.
"You leaving?" Marino asked me.
"What are you going to do, follow me again?" I wasn't smiling.
He stared off at the old Rolls-Royce in the circle of milky light at the edge of the drive. Snowflakes melted as they hit the area of gravel stained with Harper's blood.
"I wasn't following you," Marino said seriously. "Got the radio message when I was almost back to Richmond-"
"Almost back to Richmond?" I interrupted. "Almost back from where*."
"From here," he said, fishing in a pocket for his keys. "Found out Harper was a regular at Culpeper's Tavern. I decide to buttonhole him. Was with him maybe a half hour before he basically tells me to screw myself. Then he splits. So I head out, am maybe fifteen miles from Richmond when Poteat gets a dispatcher to raise me and tell me what's gone down. I'm hauling ass back in this direction when I recognize your ride, stay with you to make sure you don't get lost."
"You're telling me you actually talked to Harper at the tavern tonight?"
I asked in amazement.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Then he leaves me and gets whacked about five minutes later."
Agitated and restless, he started moving toward his car. "Gonna meet with Poteat, see what all I can find out. And I'll be by in the morning to look in on the post if you've got no objections."
I watched him walk off, shaking snow out of his hair. He was gone by the time I turned the key in the Plymouth's ignition. The wipers pushed back a thin layer of snow, then stopped cold in the middle of the windshield. The engine of my state car made one last sick attempt before it became the second DOA of the night.
The Harper library was a warm, vibrant room of red Persian rugs and antiques crafted from the finest woods. I was fairly certain the sofa was a Chippendale, and I had never touched, much less sat on, a genuine Chippendale anything before. The high ceiling was ornamented in rococo molding, the walls lined with books, most of them leatherbound. Directly across from me was a marble fireplace recently stoked with split logs.
Leaning forward, I stretched my hands toward the flames and resumed studying the oil portrait over the mantel. The subject was a lovely young girl in white seated on a small bench, her hair long and very blond, her hands loosely curled around a silver hairbrush in her lap. She shimmered darkly in the rising heat, her eyes heavy lidded, her moist lips parted, the deeply scooped neckline of her dress exposing a porcelain-white, undeveloped bosom. I was wondering why this peculiar portrait was so prominently displayed when Gary Harper's sister came in and shut the door as quietly as she had opened it.
"I thought this might warm you," she said, handing me a glass of wine.
Setting the tray on the coffee table, she seated herself on the red velvet cushion of a baroque side chair, tucking her feet to one side the way proper ladies are taught to sit by their proper female elders.
"Thank you," I said, and again I apologized.
The battery in my state car was no longer in this world, and jumper cables were not going to bring it back. The police had radioed for a wrecker, and had promised to give me a lift back to Richmond as soon as they finished processing the scene. There was no choice. I wasn't going to stand outside in the snow or sit for an hour inside a squad car. So I had knocked on Miss Harper's back door.
She sipped her wine and stared vacantly into the fire. Like the expensive objects surrounding her, she was beautifully crafted, one of the most elegant women I thought I had ever seen. Silver-white hair softly framed her patrician face. Her cheekbones were high, her features refined, her figure lithe but shapely in a beige cowl-necked sweater and corduroy skirt. When I looked at Sterling Harper, the word "spinster" definitely did not enter my mind.
She was silent. Snow coldly kissed the windows and the wind moaned around the eaves. I could not imagine living alone in this house.
"Do you have any other family?" I asked.
"None living," she said.
"I'm sorry, Miss Harper…"
"Really. You must stop saying that, Dr. Scarpetta."
A large cut-emerald ring flashed in the firelight as she lifted her glass again. Her eyes focused on me. I remembered the terror in those eyes when she opened the door while I was examining her brother. She was remarkably steady now.
"Gary knew better," she suddenly commented. "I suppose what surprises me most is the way it happened. I wouldn't have expected someone to be so bold as to wait for him at the house."
"And you didn't hear anything?" I asked.
"I heard him drive up. I heard nothing after that. When he didn't come inside the house, I opened the door to check. I immediately called 911."
"Did he frequent any other places besides Culpeper's?" I asked.
"No. No other place. He went to Culpeper's every night," she said, her eyes drifting away from me. "I warned him about going to that place, about the dangers in this day and age. He always carried cash, you see, and Gary was quite skilled at offending people. He never stayed at the tavern long. An hour, at the most two hours. He used to tell me it was for inspiration, to mingle with the common man. Gary had nothing else to say after The fagged Corner."
I had read the novel at Cornell and remembered only impressions: a gothic South of violence, incest, and racism as seen through the eyes of a young writer growing up on a Virginia farm. I remembered it had depressed me.
"My brother was one of these unfortunate talents who had but one book in him," Miss Harper added.
"There have been other very fine writers like that," I said.
"He lived only what he was forced to live when he was young," she went on in the same unnerving monotone. "After that he became the hollow man, the life of quiet desperation. His writing was a series of false starts that he would eventually toss into the fire, scowling as he wat
ched the pages burn. Then he would roam about the house like a angry bull until he was ready to try again. That is the way it has been for more years than I care to recall."
"You seem awfully hard on your brother," I remarked quietly.
"I'm awfully hard on myself, Dr. Scarpetta," she said as our eyes met. "Gary and I are cut from the same cloth. The difference between the two of us is I don't feel compelled to be analytical about what can't be altered. He was constantly excavating his nature, his past, the forces that shaped him. It won him a Pulitzer Prize. As for me, I have chosen not to fight what has always been so clear."
"Which is?"
"The Harper family is at the end of its line, overbred and barren. There will be no one after us," she said.
The wine was an inexpensive domestic burgundy, dry with a faint metallic bite. How much longer until the police finished? I thought I'd heard the rumble of a truck a while ago, the wrecker coming to tow away my car.
"I accepted it as my lot in life to take care of my brother, to ease the family into extinction," Miss Harper said. "I will miss Gary only because he was my brother. I'm not going to sit here and lie about how wonderful he was."
She sipped her wine again. "I'm sure I must sound cold to you."
Cold wasn't the word for it. "I appreciate your honesty," I said.
"Gary had imagination and volatile emotions. I have little of either, and were this not the case I couldn't have managed. Certainly, I wouldn't have lived here."
"Living in this house would be isolating." I supposed this was what Miss Harper meant.
"It isn't the isolation I mind," she said.
"What is it you mind, then, Miss Harper?" I queried, reaching for my cigarettes.
"Would you like another glass of wine?" she asked, one side of her face obscured by the shadow of the fire.
"No, thank you."
"I wish we'd never moved here. Nothing good happens in this house," she said.
"What will you do, Miss Harper?" The emptiness of her eyes chilled me. "Will you stay here?"
"I have no place else to go, Dr. Scarpetta."
"I would think selling Cutler Grove wouldn't be hard," I answered, my attention wandering back to the portrait over the mantel. The young girl in white smiled eerily in the firelight at secrets she would never tell.
"It is hard to leave your iron lung, Dr. Scarpetta."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm too old for change," she explained. "I'm too old to pursue good health and new relationships. The past breathes for me. It is my life. You are young, Dr. Scarpetta. Someday you will see what it is like to look back. You will find it inescapable. You will find your personal history drawing you back into familiar rooms where, ironically, events occurred that set into motion your eventual estrangement from life. You will find the hard furniture of heartbreak more comfortable and the people who failed you friendlier with time. You will find yourself running back into the arms of the pain you once ran away from. It is easier. That's all I can say. It is easier."
"Do you have any idea who did this to your brother?" I asked her directly, desperate to change the subject.
She said nothing as she stared wide-eyed into the fire.
"What about Beryl?" I persisted.
"I know she was being harassed months before it happened."
"Months before her death?" I asked.
"Beryl and I were very close."
"You knew she was being harassed?"
"Yes. The threats she was getting," she said.
"She told you she was being threatened, Miss Harper?"
"Of course," she said.
Marino had been through Beryl's phone bills. He hadn't found any long-distance calls made to Williamsburg. Nor had he turned up any letters written to her by Miss Harper or her brother.
"Then you maintained close contact with her over the years?" I said.
"Very close contact," she replied. "At least, as much as that was possible. Because of this book she was writing and the clear violation of her agreement with my brother. Well, it all got very ugly. Gary was enraged."
"How did he know what she was doing? Did she tell him what she was writing?"
"Her lawyer did," she said.
"Sparacino?"
"I don't know the details of what he told Gary," she said, her face hard. "But my brother was informed of Beryl's book. He knew enough to be extremely out of sorts. The lawyer agitated the matter behind the scenes. Going from Beryl to Gary, back and forth, acting as if he were an ally with one or the other, depending on whom he was talking to."
"Do you know the status of her book now?" I asked carefully. "Does Sparacino have it? Is it in the process of being published?"
"Several days ago he called Gary. I overheard snatches of their conversation, enough to ascertain the manuscript has disappeared. Your office was mentioned. I heard Gary say something about the medical examiner. You, I suppose. And at this point he was getting angry. I concluded Mr. Sparacino was trying to determine whether it was possible my brother might have the manuscript."
"Is that possible?" I wanted to know.
"Beryl would never have turned it over to Gary," she answered with emotion. "It would make no sense for her to have relinquished her work to him. He was adamantly opposed to what she was doing."
We were silent for a moment.
Then I asked, "Miss Harper, what was your brother so afraid of?"
"Life."
I waited, watching her closely. She was staring into the fire again.
"The more he feared it, the more he retreated from it," she said in a strange voice. "Reclusiveness does peculiar things to one's mind. Turns it inside out, puts a spin on thoughts and ideas until they begin to bounce off center and at crazy angles. I think Beryl was the only person my brother ever loved. He clung to her. He had an overwhelming need to possess her, to keep her wedded to him. When he thought she was betraying him, that he no longer had power over her, his madness became more extreme. I'm sure he began to imagine all sorts of nonsense she might divulge about him. About our situation here."
When she reached for her wine again, her hand trembled. She was talking about her brother as if he had been dead for years. There was an edge to her voice when she spoke of him, the well of love for her brother lined with hard bricks of rage and pain.
"Gary and I had no one left when Beryl came along," she continued. "Our parents were dead. We had no one but each other. Gary was difficult. A devil who wrote like an angel. He needed taking care of. I was willing to facilitate his desire to leave his mark on the world."
"Such sacrifices are often accompanied by resentment," I ventured.
Silence. The light from the fire flickered on her exquisitely chiseled face.
"How did you find Beryl?" I asked.
"She found us. She was living in Fresno at the time with her father and stepmother. She was writing, was obsessed with writing."
Miss Harper continued staring into the fire as she talked. "One day Gary got a letter from her through his publisher. Accompanying it was a short story written in longhand. I still remember it well. She showed promise, a germinal imagination that simply needed shepherding. Thus the correspondence began, and months later Gary invited her to visit us, sent her a ticket. Not long after that, he bought this house and began to restore it. He did it for her. A lovely young girl had brought magic into his world."
"And you?" I asked.
She did not reply at first.
Wood shifted in the fireplace and sparks popped.
"Life was not without its complications after she moved in with us, Dr. Scarpetta," she said. "I watched what went on between them."
"Between your brother and Beryl."
"I did not want to imprison her the way he did," she said. "In Gary's relentless attempts to hold on to Beryl and have her all to himself, he lost her."
"You loved Beryl very much," I said.
"It is impossible to explain," she said, her voice catching. "It was very d
ifficult to manage."
I continued to probe. "Your brother didn't want you to have contact with her."
"Especially during the past few months, because of her book. Gary denounced and disowned her. Her name was not mentioned in this house. He forbade me to have any sort of contact with her."
"But you did," I answered.
"In a very limited way," she said with difficulty.
"That must have been very painful for you. To be cut off from someone so dear to you."
She looked away from me, interested in the fire again.
"Miss Harper, when did you find out about Beryl's death?"
She did not reply.
"Did someone call you?"
"I heard about it on the radio the next morning," she muttered.
Dear God, I thought. How awful.
She said nothing more. Her wounds were beyond my reach, and as much as I wanted to offer a word of comfort, there was nothing I could say. So we sat in silence for what seemed a very long time. When I finally stole a glance at my watch, I saw it was almost midnight.
The house was very quiet-too quiet, I realized with a start.
After the warmth of the library, the entrance hall was as chilly as a cathedral. I opened the back door and gasped in surprise. Beneath the milky swirl of snow the drive was a solid white blanket, with barely perceptible tire tracks left when the damn cops had driven off without me. My state car had been towed long ago, and they had forgotten I was still inside the house. Damn! Damn! Damn!
When I returned to the library, Miss Harper was placing another log on the fire.
"It appears my ride went off without me," I said, and I know I sounded upset. "I'll need to use a phone."
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