“What about the brutalized little boy all alone in my morgue? Since you haven’t said anything, I assume your computer searches are still coming up empty-handed.”
“It’s like he didn’t exist.”
“Well, he did. And what was done to him is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s time we go out on a limb.”
“And do what?”
“I’ve been thinking about statistical genetics.”
“I still can’t believe no one’s doing it,” Lucy says. “The technology’s there. It’s been there. It’s all so stupid. Alleles are shared among relatives, and, as is true of any other database, it’s all a function of probability.”
“A father, mother, sibling would have a higher score. And we’d see it and focus on it. I think we should try it.”
“If we do, what happens if it turns out this little kid was killed by a relative? We use statistical genetics in a criminal case, and what happens in court?” Lucy says.
“If we figure out who he is, then we’ll worry about court.”
Belmont, Massachusetts. Dr. Marilyn Self sits before a window in her room with a view.
Sloping lawns, forests and fruit trees, and old brick buildings harken back to a genteel era when the wealthy and famous could disappear from their lives, briefly or for as long as needed, or in some hopeless cases, forever, and be treated with the respect and pampering they deserved. At McLean Hospital, it’s perfectly normal to spot famous actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians strolling the cottage-style campus, designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose other famous projects include New York’s Central Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, the Biltmore Estate, and Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair.
It isn’t perfectly normal to spot Dr. Marilyn Self. But she doesn’t intend to be here much longer, and when the public eventually finds out the truth, her reasons will be clear. To be safe and sequestered, and then, as has always been the story of her life, a destiny. What she calls
Dr. Self smiles as she imagines Marino’s ecstasy when he discovered she had written back to him. He probably believes that she (the most famous psychiatrist in the world) was happy to hear from him. He still believes she cares! She’s never cared. Even when he was her patient in her less prominent Florida days, she didn’t care. He was little more than a therapeutic amusement, and yes (she admits it), a dash of spice, because his adoration of her was almost as pathetic as his besotted sexual obsession with Scarpetta.
Poor, pathetic Scarpetta. Amazing what a few well-placed calls can do.
Her mind races. Her thoughts are nonstop inside her room at the Pavilion, where meals are catered and a concierge is available, should one wish to go to the theater or a Red Sox game or a health spa. The privileged patient at the Pavilion gets rather much whatever he or she wants, which in Dr. Self’s case is her own e-mail account and a room that happened to be occupied by another patient named Karen when Dr. Self was admitted nine days ago.
The unacceptable room assignment was, of course, remedied easily enough without administrative intervention or delay on Dr. Self’s first day when she entered Karen’s room before dawn and awakened her by gently blowing on her eyes.
“Oh!” Karen exclaimed in relief when she realized it was Dr. Self, not a rapist, hovering over her. “I was having a strange dream.”
“Here. I brought you coffee. You were sleeping like the dead. Perhaps you stared too long at the crystal light fixture last night?” Dr. Self looked up at the shadowy shape of the Victorian crystal light fixture above the bed.
“What!” Karen exclaimed in alarm, setting down her coffee on the antique bedside table.
“One must be most careful about staring at anything crystal. It can have a hypnotic effect and put you into a trancelike state. What was your dream?”
“Dr. Self, it was so real! I felt someone’s breath in my face and I was scared.”
“Do you have any idea who? Perhaps someone in your family? A family friend?”
“My father used to rub his whiskers against my face when I was little. I could feel his breath. How funny! I’m just now remembering that! Or maybe I’m imagining it. Sometimes I have a problem knowing what’s real.” Disappointed.
“Repressed memories, my dear,” Dr. Self said. “Don’t doubt your inner Self [said slowly]. It’s what I tell all my followers. Don’t doubt your what, Karen?”
“Inner Self.”
“That’s right. Your inner Self [said very slowly] knows the truth. Your inner Self knows what’s real.”
“A truth about my father? Something real I don’t remember?”
“An unbearable truth, an unthinkable reality you couldn’t face back then. You see, my dear, everything really is about sex. I can help you.”
“Please help me!”
Patiently, Dr. Self led her back in time, back to when she was seven, and with some insightful guidance navigated her back to the scene of her original psychic crime. Karen finally, for the first time in her pointless, used- up life, recounted her father crawling into bed with her and rubbing his exposed erect penis against her buttocks, his boozy breath in her face, and then a warm, wet stickiness all over her pajama bottoms. Dr. Self went on to direct poor Karen to the traumatic realization that what happened wasn’t an isolated incident, because sexual abuse, with rare exception, is repeated, and her mother must have been aware, based on the condition of little Karen’s pajamas and the bedcovers, meaning her mother turned a blind eye to what her husband was doing to their younger daughter.
“I remember my father bringing me hot chocolate in bed once and I spilled it,” Karen finally said. “I remember the warm stickiness on my pajama bottoms. Maybe that’s what I’m remembering and not…”
“Because it was safe to think it was hot chocolate. And then what followed?” No answer. “If you spilled it? Whose fault was it?”
“I spilled it. It was my fault,” Karen says, tearfully.
“Perhaps why you’ve abused alcohol and drugs ever since? Because you feel what happened is your fault?”
“Not ever since. I didn’t start drinking or smoking pot until I was fourteen. Oh, I don’t know! I don’t want to go into another trance, Dr. Self! I can’t bear the memories! Or if it wasn’t real, now I think it is!”
“It’s just as Pitres wrote in his
“I can’t stay in this room!” Karen cried. “Won’t you please trade rooms with me?” she begged.
Lucious Meddick snaps a rubber band on his right wrist as he parks his shiny black hearse in the alley behind Dr. Scarpetta’s house.
Intended for horses, not huge vehicles, what kind of nonsense is this? His heart is still pounding. He’s a nervous wreck. Damn lucky he didn’t scrape against trees or the high brick wall that separates the alley and old houses along it from a public garden. What kind of ordeal is this to put him through, and already his brand-new hearse is feeling out of alignment, was pulling to one side as it bumped over pavers, kicking up dust and dead leaves. He climbs out, leaving the engine rumbling, noticing some old lady staring out her upstairs window at him. Lucious smiles at her, can’t help but think it won’t be long before the old bag needs his services.
He presses the intercom button on a formidable iron gate and announces, “Meddicks’.”
After a long pause, which requires him to make the announcement again, a woman’s strong voice sounds
