“Not nice? How about unforgivable?”
“I should be the unforgiving one, not you,” Lucy says. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it’s like to be there. I don’t want to talk about it.”
A small statue of an angel that watches over the pond. What it protects, Scarpetta has yet to discover. Certainly not birds. Maybe not anything. She gets up and brushes off the back of her skirt.
“Is this why you wanted to talk to me,” she says, “or did it just happen to pop into your mind while I was sitting here feeling awful because I had to euthanize another bird?”
“It’s not why I called you last night and said I need to see you,” Lucy says, still playing with the leaf.
Her hair, cherrywood-red with highlights of rose-gold, is clean and shiny and tucked behind her ears. She wears a black T-shirt that shows off a beautiful body earned by punishing workouts and good genetics. She’s going somewhere, Scarpetta has a suspicion, but she’s not going to ask. She sits down again.
“Dr. Self.” Lucy stares at the garden, the way people stare when they aren’t looking at anything except what’s bothering them.
It’s not what Scarpetta expected her to say. “What about her?”
“I told you to keep her close, always keep your enemies close,” Lucy says. “You didn’t pay attention. Haven’t cared that she disparages you every chance she gets because of that court case. Says you’re a liar and a professional sham. Just Google yourself on the Internet. I track her, forwarded her bullshit to you, and you barely look at it.”
“How could you possibly know whether I barely look at something?”
“I’m your system administrator. Your faithful IT. I know damn well how long you keep a file open. You could defend yourself,” Lucy says.
“From what?”
“Accusations that you manipulated the jury.”
“What court’s about. Manipulating the jury.”
“That you talking? Or am I sitting with a stranger?”
“If you’re hog-tied, tortured, and can hear the screams of your loved ones being brutalized and killed in another room, and you take your own life to escape their fate? That’s not a goddamn suicide, Lucy. That’s murder.”
“What about legally?”
“I really don’t care.”
“You sort of used to.”
“I sort of didn’t. You don’t know what’s been in my mind when I’ve worked cases all these years and often found myself the only advocate for the victims. Dr. Self wrongly hid behind her shield of confidentiality and didn’t divulge information that could have prevented profound suffering and death. She deserves worse than she got. Why are we talking about this? Why are you getting me upset?”
Lucy meets her eyes. “What do they say? Revenge is best served cold? She’s in contact with Marino again.”
“Oh, God. As if this past week hasn’t been hell enough. Has he completely lost his mind?”
“When you came back from Rome and spread the word, did you think he was going to be happy about it? Do you live in outer space?”
“Clearly, I must.”
“How can you not see it? Suddenly he goes out and gets drunk every night, gets a new trashy girlfriend. He’s really picked one this time. Or don’t you know? Shandy Snook, as in Snook’s Flamin’ Chips?”
“Flamin’ what? Who?”
“Greasy, oversalted potato chips flavored with jalapeno and red pepper sauce. Made her father a fortune. She moved here about a year ago. Met Marino at the Kick ’N Horse this past Monday night, and it was love at first sight.”
“He tell you all this?”
“Jess told me.”
Scarpetta shakes her head, has no idea who Jess is.
“Owns the Kick ’N Horse. Marino’s biker hangout, and I know you’ve heard him talk about it. She called me because she’s worried about him and his latest trailer-park paramour, worried about how out of control he’s getting. Jess says she’s never seen him like this.”
“How would Dr. Self know Marino’s e-mail address unless he contacted her first?” Scarpetta asks.
“Her personal e-mail address hasn’t changed since he was her patient in Florida. His has. So I think we can figure out who wrote who first. I can find out for sure. Not that I have the password for the personal e-mail account on his home computer, although minor inconveniences like that have never stopped me. I’d have to…”
“I know what you’d have to do.”
“Have physical access.”
“I know what you’d have to do, and I don’t want you to. Let’s don’t make this any worse than it is.”
“At least some of the e-mails he’s gotten from her are now on his office desktop for all the world to see,” Lucy says.
“That makes no sense.”
“Of course it does. To make you angry and jealous. Payback.”
“And you noticed them on his desktop because?”
“Because of the little emergency last night. When he called me and said he’d been notified that an alarm was going off, indicating the fridge was malfunctioning, and he wasn’t anywhere near the office and could I check. He said if I need to call the alarm company, the number’s on the list taped to his wall.”
“An alarm?” she says, baffled. “No one notified me.”
“Because it didn’t happen. I get there and everything’s status quo. The fridge is fine. I go into his office to get the number of the alarm company so I can check to be sure everything really is okay, and guess what’s on his desktop.”
“This is ridiculous. He’s acting like a child.”
“He’s no child, Aunt Kay. And you’re going to have to fire him one of these days.”
“And manage how? I can barely manage now. I’m already short-staffed, without a single eligible person on the horizon to hire.”
“This is just the beginning. He’s going to get worse,” Lucy says. “He’s not the person you once knew.”
“I don’t believe that, and I could never fire him.”
“You’re right,” Lucy says. “You couldn’t. It would be a divorce. He’s your husband. God knows you’ve spent a hell of a lot more time with him than you have with Benton.”
“He most assuredly isn’t my husband. Don’t goad me, please.”
Lucy picks up the envelope from the steps and hands it to her. “Six of them, all from her. Coincidentally, starting on this past Monday, your first day back at work from Rome. The same day we saw your ring and, great sleuths that we are, figured out it wasn’t from Cracker Jacks.”
“Any e-mails from Marino to Dr. Self?”
“He must not want you to see whatever he wrote. I recommend you bite on a stick.” Indicating the envelope and what’s inside it. “How is he? She misses him. Thinks about him. You’re a tyrant, a has-been, and he must be miserable working for you, and what can she do to help him?”
“Will he never learn?” Mostly, it’s depressing.
“You should have kept the news from him. How could you not know what it would do to him?”
Scarpetta notices the purple Mexican petunias climbing the north garden wall. She notices the lavender lantana. They look a bit parched.
“Well, aren’t you going to read the damn things?” Lucy indicates the envelope again.
“I’m not going to give them that power right now,” Scarpetta says. “I have more important things to deal with. That’s why I’m dressed in a damn suit and going into the damn office on a damn Sunday when I could be working in my garden or even going for a damn walk.”
“I ran a background check on the guy you’re meeting with this afternoon. Recently, he was the victim of an assault. No suspect. And related to this, he was charged with a misdemeanor for possession of marijuana. The charge was dropped. Beyond that, not even a speeding ticket. But I don’t think you should be alone with him.”
