“I would think that’s a very real threat,” Donoghue says. “You can’t know who might come around, and these days it’s easy to figure out where somebody lives.”
“Classic Carrie payback,” Janet says.
“And that’s what this is about?”
“It’s about her need to overpower. It’s about her need to be a god,” Benton says, and one place we might go is California.
We could move there and be safer than we are here. That’s a given. But the prospect of uprooting is overwhelming, and I don’t believe it will do any good. We can’t escape Carrie. If she doesn’t want us to find her we won’t, even if she’s breathing down our necks. It seems impossible we could be inside the same house with her and not have any idea. But that’s what happened. For the better part of the past six months she was belowground in a tunnel that had been sealed off since the Civil War. Lucy suspects Carrie found out about it the same way other people have. It’s in old documents. You just have to look.
“And the ultimate in taking power,” Benton describes to Donoghue, “is to stalk, to steal someone’s identity and then finally take the person’s life.”
“Which is what she did to Chanel Gilbert.” Donoghue stares off thoughtfully, watching Lucy play tug-of-war with Sock.
“Leave it. Leave it!” Lucy says, and he drops the green ball and looks bored.
I smell the perfume of the roses along the back wall behind our Cambridge house, and the breeze is cool for August. The sun burns bright orange over rooftops and trees, and soon I need to go back inside and finish preparing dinner but it’s not just that. I don’t want to sit here. It’s hard for me to listen to the stories. I’ve heard them multiple times and they don’t get better in the retelling.
Chanel Gilbert was a Navy underwater photographer who left the military to work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of her aliases was Elsa Mulligan, the name Carrie called herself when she “found” the body and claimed to be the housekeeper. It’s a bad story, the worst of stories, and it’s all connected to cyberterrorism, to data fiction. The man murdered in a Boston hotel this summer, Joel Fagano, was also CIA. He and Chanel Gilbert were colleagues, both of them spies. Janet knew Chanel before Lucy did, and no one has told me what that means.
“We don’t exactly know when Carrie alerted to Chanel.” Benton continues to talk about what really can’t be explained, not entirely.
“Probably it was when she began working as an adviser to the Ukrainian security service,” Janet offers. “Beyond that who knows why anybody ends up on Carrie’s radar.”
“It’s as subjective and personal as picking out who to date.” Marino takes a big swallow of beer. “It’s sort of like being attracted to someone. That’s what I’ve always figured.”
“People are more the same than they’re different.” Benton remembers his drink, and ice rattles quietly. “They fall in love with someone who looks like them. Chanel was fit and into extreme sports. She was compellingly attractive in an androgynous way. She would have appealed to Carrie’s narcissism.”
“So she takes on at least one of Chanel’s identities and even takes over her property here in Cambridge? Plus she manages to get a Range Rover—an SUV the police, the FBI still can’t find? You have to admit she’s unbelievably brazen, doesn’t seem to have a fearful bone in her body.” Donoghue sounds annoyingly impressed.
It enters my mind that she’d probably like nothing better than to represent a notorious monster like Carrie.
“The best place to hide is in plain view,” Benton says. “Neighbors saw a red Range Rover in and out. They caught glimpses of a young woman. Why would they think anything was amiss? Carrie’s probably pulled stunts like this countless times all over the world.”
“So she hijacked Chanel’s life or lives,” Donoghue says. “Then what made Carrie decide to kill her right after she returned here from Bermuda?”
“It might simply have been a matter of practicality,” Benton says. “Chanel hadn’t been here for a long time. So Carrie appropriated her property and then murdered her when she showed up.”
“Something made her decide it though.” Lucy walks back to us and sits. “And my theory is when Carrie hung around after she shot you”—she directs this at me, reaching for the bottle of Freisa d’Asti in the ice bucket—“she watched Chanel help you to the surface, basically save your life and that marked Chanel for death.”
The same way Carrie marked you, and I push that from my mind. I don’t want to imagine Lucy’s tattooed dragonfly. I don’t want to envision Carrie slashing her with the same Swiss Army knife that she fashioned into a cruel mobile some seventeen years later.
“I’m not saying she wasn’t going to annihilate Chanel eventually,” Lucy adds.
“She would have,” Benton says. “But when she watched Chanel save Kay’s life it pushed her over the edge. As much as we can simplify what is anything but simple when you’re dealing with an offender like this.”
Two months and one week ago when I almost died I didn’t know that other dive boats in the area belonged to special ops. In retrospect I’m not at all surprised because Benton knows how dangerous Carrie is. He wouldn’t allow us to dive a hundred feet down into dark murky water without making sure we were safe. As it turned out we weren’t. Certainly the two police divers weren’t. The tactical divers were a day late and a dollar short, to quote Marino. But they helped save my life after I was shot—specifically Chanel Gilbert did.
“Why might that have prompted Carrie to kill her?” Donoghue is asking. “I’m trying to understand the reason.”
“You’re probably not going to,” I reply.
“Jealousy. Resentment.” Benton sips his drink. “Chanel was the hero. She stole Carrie’s thunder. That’s as close as we’re probably going to get to what goaded Carrie into it. There’s no fortune cookie formula.”
“That’s the hard part,” Lucy says. “We don’t know the details and might never. For example I’m not sure of the relationship between Carrie and Chanel.”
“Did they have one?” Donoghue asks.
“That’s what I’m getting at,” Lucy says. “They could have.”
“One of the problems with people in the intelligence community is they never seem to know whose side they’re on,” Janet says as I get up to see about dinner, and I just can’t listen anymore. “It’s a squirrely way to live,” she adds, and I carry my drink toward the back door.
Janet and Lucy ask if they can help but I say no. I tell everybody I’ll get dinner on the table and they’re to relax and enjoy their cocktails and antipasto. I open the screen door and feel something cold poke against the back of my injured leg, and I stop to turn around and pet Sock’s long velvety snout.
“I see. So you’re not going to stay with our company,” I say to him as I let him inside the house. “Well there’s not much you can help me with but I’m happy for the company.”
I continue to talk to my shy brindle greyhound as I open a drawer inside one of the refrigerators and select various greens, both tart and sweet lettuces and two of my cherished homegrown tomatoes. A rinse and a whirl in the salad spinner, I explain cheerfully to Sock, and a dash or two of coarse ground pepper and sea salt.
“And we save the vinegar for last so it doesn’t wilt everything.” I continue talking to a dog who doesn’t answer or bark, and then I hear the back door bang again.
I’m startled and just as quickly I remember I’m home and I’m not alone. I hear quick quiet footsteps in the hall. I’m cubing tomatoes as Desi walks into the kitchen, and he wants to know why I’m crying. I blame it on the Vidalia onion I’m just now peeling but Desi is a perceptive little boy. He stands in the middle of my kitchen with his hands on his hips, his mussed-up brown hair in his big blue eyes.
“Aunt Janet says I’m helping you set the table.” He opens a drawer and begins gathering silverware. “Do you want to eat on the sunporch or are you afraid?”
The sunporch is enclosed in
glass.
“What might I be afraid of?” I scan a selection of vinegars and decide on a Bordeaux.
We’re not sitting on the sunporch.
“The bad lady who hurt you,” Desi says. “She might see us through the windows if we eat on the sunporch. Is that why you’re crying?”
“She could see us sitting in the yard,” I remind him.
“I know. You can’t stay here anymore can you?” He slides out a chair from the breakfast table and sits down. “But you’ll take me with you.”
“Where are we going?”
“We have to stay together, Aunt Kay,” he says and technically I’d be his Great-Aunt Kay if I were a blood relative.
“You know where the dining room is. Out this door and to the left.” I hand him plates and folded napkins. “We’ll be fancy and eat in there.”
“That’s not why.”
“We’ll turn on the chandelier and pretend we’re royalty.”
“I don’t want to pretend. You don’t want us sitting near windows. That’s why we’re not eating on the sunporch, isn’t it? I don’t want that bad lady to hurt us.”
“No one is going to hurt us.” I collect glasses from a cupboard and follow Desi out of the kitchen, and I think about the way we lie to children.
I can’t tell Desi the truth. I won’t have him live in fear. We’re not safe. But for him to know that solves nothing. It makes things only worse.
“Now I’m going to show you a trick.” I turn on the overhead alabaster chandelier inside the dining room. “That’s assuming you might want to learn a trick.” I close the draperies in big windows overlooking the side yard.
“Yes! Please show me!”
I get place mats out of the breakfront and help him set the table. I teach him how to fold linen napkins into a tree. A flower. A horse. A bow tie. By the time we make an elf hat he’s giggling. He’s laughing hysterically. Then I fold a napkin into a heart. I put it on a plate.
“This is your place,” I say to him. “And you know what that means don’t you?” I wrap my arms around him.
“It means I sit here!”
“It means I’ve given you my heart.”
“Because you love me!”
“Yes.” I kiss the top of his head. “I think I might. Maybe just a little bit.”
If you enjoyed Depraved Heart, try:
It’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and while she’s enjoying a leisurely morning, a man is shot dead five minutes from her house. The bullet tore through him as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet nobody heard or saw a thing …
Click here to order Flesh and Blood.
About the Author
Patricia Cornwell is recognized as one of the world’s top bestselling crime authors with novels translated into thirty-six languages in more than 120 countries. Her novels have won numerous prestigious awards including the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, Macavity, and the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize. Beyond the Scarpetta series, Patricia has written a definitive book about Jack the Ripper and a biography and has created two more fiction series among others. Cornwell, a licensed helicopter pilot and scuba diver, actively researches the cutting-edge forensic technologies that inform her work. She was born in Miami, grew up in Montreat, NC, and now lives and works in Boston.
ALSO BY PATRICIA CORNWELL
SCARPETTA SERIES
Flesh and Blood
Dust
The Bone Bed
Red Mist
Port Mortuary
The Scarpetta Factor
Scarpetta
Book of the Dead
Predator
Trace
Blow Fly
The Last Precinct
Black Notice
Point of Origin
Unnatural Exposure
Cause of Death
From Potter’s Field
The Body Farm
Cruel and Unusual
All That Remains
Body of Evidence
Postmortem
NONFICTION
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed
ANDY BRAZIL SERIES
Isle of Dogs
Southern Cross
Hornet’s Nest
WIN GARANO SERIES
The Front
At Risk
BIOGRAPHY
Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham
OTHER WORKS
Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen
Life’s Little Fable
Scarpetta’s Winter Table
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
One Week Later
About the Author
Also by Patricia Cornwell
About the Publisher
Depraved Heart Page 41