“Yes, I am. Based on facts and common sense.” Lucy has been bantering with him since he picked them up at the airport and made a smart-aleck comment about her helicopter.
He called it an eggbeater. She called him a Luddite. He didn’t know what a Luddite was, still doesn’t. She didn’t define it for him.
“But that doesn’t preclude her having been abducted for ransom,” Lucy says. “I’m not saying that’s impossible. I don’t believe it, but sure, it’s possible, and we should do exactly what we’re doing. Have every investigative agency looking.”
“Sure as hell wish we could have kept it out of the news. Becky says they’ve been chasing people away from the house all morning.”
“Who’s Becky?” Lucy asks.
“Chief of crime scene investigation. Like me, she’s got a second job as an EMT.”
Scarpetta wonders why that matters. Maybe he’s self-conscious about needing a second job.
“Then again, I guess you don’t have to worry about paying the rent,” he says.
“Sure do. It’s just mine’s a little bit more than yours.”
“Yeah, just a little. Can’t imagine what those labs are costing you. Or your fifty houses and Ferraris.”
“Not quite fifty, and how do you know what I’ve got?”
“Many departments using your labs yet?” he asks.
“A few. Still under construction, but we’ve got the basics. And we’re accredited. You get to choose. Us or SLED.” South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
“We’re faster,” she adds. “If you need something that’s not on the menu, we’ve got friends in high-tech places. Oak Ridge. Y-Twelve.”
“I thought they make nuclear weapons.”
“That’s not all they do.”
“You’re kidding. They do forensic stuff? Like what?” he asks.
“It’s a secret.”
“Doesn’t matter. We can’t afford you.”
“Nope, you can’t. Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t help.”
His dark glasses appear in the rearview mirror. He says to Scarpetta, probably because he’s had enough of Lucy, “You still with us back there?”
He wears a suit the color of cream, and Scarpetta wonders how he stays clean at crime scenes. She picks up on the more important points he and Lucy were discussing, reminds them that no one should assume anything at all, including when Lydia Webster’s Cadillac disappeared, because it appears she rarely drove anyway, only on occasion, for cigarettes, booze, some food. Sadly, driving wasn’t a good idea. She was too impaired. So the car could have been gone for days, and its disappearance may have nothing to do with the dog’s being gone. Then there are the images the Sandman e-mailed to Dr. Self. Both Drew Martin and Lydia Webster were photographed in bathtubs that seem to have been filled with cold water. Both of them look drugged, and what about what Mrs. Dooley saw? This case must be worked as a homicide, no matter what the truth may be. Because — and Scarpetta’s been preaching this for more than twenty years — you can’t go back.
Then she goes back into her own private place. She can’t help it. Her thoughts return to the last time she was in Hilton Head, when she cleared out Benton’s condo. It never entered her mind during the darkest of dark times that his murder might have been contrived to hide him from those who certainly would have killed him, given the chance. Where are those would-be hit men now? Did they lose interest, decide he was no longer a threat or worthy of retribution? She’s asked Benton. He won’t talk about it, says he can’t. She rolls down the window of Turkington’s car and her ring winks in the sun, but it doesn’t reassure her, and the good weather won’t last. Later today, yet another storm is supposed to roll in.
The road winds through golf courses, and over short bridges that briefly span narrow canals and small ponds. On a grassy embankment, an alligator looks like a log, and turtles are quiet in the mud, and a snowy egret stands on stick legs in shallow water. The conversation in the front seat is centered on Dr. Self for a while, and light turns to shadow in the shade of huge oak trees. Spanish moss looks like dead, gray hair. Little has changed. A few new houses have been built here and there, and she remembers long walks and salt air and wind, and sunsets on the balcony, and the moment all of it came to an end. She envisions what she believed was him in the charred ruins of the building where he supposedly died. She sees his silver hair and incinerated flesh in the blackened wood and filth from a fire that was still smoldering when she arrived. His face was gone, nothing but burned bone, and his autopsy records were false. She was fooled. Devastated. Destroyed, and she is forever different because of what Benton did — far more different than she is because of Marino.
They park in the driveway of Lydia Webster’s sprawling white villa. Scarpetta remembers seeing it before, from the beach, and it seems surreal because of why they’re here. Police cars line the street.
“They got the place about a year ago. Some tycoon from Dubai had it before that,” Turkington says, opening his door. “Real sad. They’d just finished a massive renovation and moved in when the little girl drowned. I don’t know how Mrs. Webster stood being inside the place after that.”
“Sometimes people can’t let go,” Scarpetta says as they walk over pavers toward the double teakwood doors at the top of stone steps. “So they stay embedded in a place and its memories.”
“She get this in the settlement?” Lucy asks.
“Probably would have.” As if, in truth, there’s no doubt she’s dead. “Still in the middle of the divorce. Her husband’s into hedge funds, investments, whatever. Almost as rich as you are.”
“How about we stop talking about that,” Lucy says, annoyed.
Turkington opens the front door. Crime scene investigators are inside. Propped against a stucco wall in the foyer is a window with a broken pane of glass.
“The lady on vacation,” Turkington says to Scarpetta. “Madelisa Dooley. According to her statement, the glass was removed from the window when she came in through the laundry room. This pane here.” He squats and points to a pane of glass on the bottom right-hand side of the window. “It’s the one he removed and glued back. If you look, you can just barely see the glue. I made her think we didn’t find the broken glass when officers first looked here. I wanted to see if she changed her story, so I told her the glass wasn’t broken.”
“I guess you didn’t foam it first,” Scarpetta says.
“I’ve heard about that,” Turkington says. “We need to start doing it. My theory is, if Mrs. Dooley’s got her story right, something went on in the house after she left.”
“We’ll foam it before it’s wrapped up and transported,” Scarpetta says, “so we can stabilize the broken glass.”
“Help yourself.” He walks off toward the living room, where an investigator takes photographs of the clutter on the coffee table and another lifts up cushions from the couch.
Scarpetta and Lucy open their black cases. They put on shoe covers and gloves, and a woman in range pants and a polo shirt with FORENSICS in bold letters on the back walks out of the living room. She’s probably in her forties, with brown eyes and short, dark hair. She’s petite, and it’s difficult for Scarpetta to imagine that a woman so short and slight would want to go into law enforcement.
“You must be Becky,” Scarpetta says, and she introduces herself and Lucy.
Becky indicates the window leaning against the wall and says, “The lower-right pane of glass. Tommy must have explained.” She means Turkington, and she points a gloved finger. “A glass cutter was used, then the pane was glued back. The reason I noticed?” She’s proud of herself. “Sand stuck in the glue. See?”
They look. They can see it.
“So it appears when Mrs. Dooley came in looking for the owner,” Becky tells them, “the glass certainly could have been out of the window and on the ground. I find it credible she did what she said. Got the hell out of here, and then the killer straightened up after himself.”
Lucy inserts two pressurized containers into a holster that is attached to a mixing gun.
“Creepy to think about,” Becky says. “The poor lady was probably in here when he was. She said she felt like somebody was watching her. This that glue spray? I’ve heard of it. Holds the broken glass in place. What’s it made out of?”
“Mostly polyurethane and compressed gas,” Scarpetta says. “You taken photographs? Dusted for prints? Swabbed for DNA?”
Lucy photographs the window anyway, with and without a scale.
