He reaches under his jacket and slides out his gun, and he doesn’t shut the car door all the way. He doesn’t make a sound. He knows how to do this, has had to do it more times than he’d ever want to remember. He moves like a ghost, dark and silent, through puddles, through the rain. Every other step he stops, and he’s sure the person across the street doesn’t see him.
“You okay?” Lucy’s voice in his head.
He doesn’t answer. He stops behind a telephone pole and smells creosote. The figure at the fence moves to the left, to the one o’clock position, and he starts to cross the street.
Lucy says, “You ten-four?”
Benton doesn’t answer, and the figure is so close, he can see the dark shadow of a face, and the distinct outline of a hat, then arms and legs moving. Benton steps out and points the pistol at him.
“Don’t move.” He says it quietly in a tone that commands attention. “I’ve got a nine-mil pointed right at your head, so stand real still.”
The man, and Benton feels sure it’s a man, has turned into a statue. He doesn’t make a sound.
“Step off the road but not toward me. Step to your left. Very slowly. Now drop to your knees and put your hands on top of your head.” Then, to Lucy, he says, “I’ve got him. You can close in.”
As if she’s a stone’s throw away.
“Hold on.” Her voice is tense. “Just hold on. I’m coming.”
He knows she’s far away — too far away to help him if there’s a problem.
The man has his hands on top of his head, and he’s kneeling on the cracked, wet blacktop, and he says, “Please don’t shoot.”
“Who are you?” Benton says. “Tell me who you are.”
“Don’t shoot.”
“Who are you?” Benton raises his voice above the sound of the rain. “What are you doing here? Tell me who you are.”
“Don’t shoot.”
“Goddamn it. Tell me who you are. What are you doing at the port? Don’t make me ask you again.”
“I know who you are. I recognize who you are. My hands are on my head, so there is no need to shoot,” the voice says as rain splashes, and Benton detects an accent. “I’m here to catch a killer, just like you. Am I right, Benton Wesley? Please put away your gun. It’s Otto Poma. I’m here for the same reason as you. It’s Captain Otto Poma. Please put the gun away.”
Poe’s Tavern, a few minutes’ ride from Marino’s fishing shack. He could use a beer or two.
The street is wet and shiny black, and the wind carries the smell of the rain and the scent of the sea and the marshes. He is soothed as he rides his Roadmaster through the dark, rainy night, knowing he shouldn’t drink, but he doesn’t know how to stop himself, and anyway, why does it matter? Ever since it happened, he has a sickness in his soul, a feeling of terror. The beast within has surfaced, the monster has shown himself, and what he’s always feared is right in front of him.
Peter Rocco Marino isn’t a decent person. As is true of almost every criminal he’s caught, he has believed little in life is his fault, that he’s inherently good, brave, and well-intentioned, when the truth is quite the reverse. He’s selfish, sick, and bad. Bad, bad, bad. That’s why his wife left him. That’s why his career has gone to hell. That’s why Lucy hates him. That’s why he’s ruined the best thing he ever had. His relationship with Scarpetta is dead. He killed it. Brutalized it. Betrayed her again and again because of something she can’t help. She never wanted him, and why would she? She’s never been attracted to him. How could she be? So he punished her.
He shifts into a higher gear as he gives his bike more gas. He rides much too fast, rain painful pinpricks against his bare skin, speeding to the strip, as he calls the hangouts of Sullivan’s Island. Cars are parked wherever there is space. No bikes, only his, because of the weather. He’s chilled, his hands stiff, and he feels unbearable pain and shame, and laced with it is a venomous anger. He unstraps his useless brain bucket of a helmet and hangs it from the handlebars and locks the bike’s front fork. His rain gear swishes as he walks inside a restaurant of unpainted worn wood and ceiling fans, and framed posters of ravens and probably every Edgar Allan Poe movie ever made. The bar is crowded, and his heart bumps hard and flutters like a startled bird when he notices Shandy between two men, one of them wearing a do-rag — the man Marino almost shot the other night. She is talking to him, pressing her body against his arm.
Marino stands near the door, dripping rainwater on the scuffed floor, watching, wondering what to do as the wounds inside him swell, and his heart races, feels like horses galloping in his neck. Shandy and the man in the do- rag are drinking beer and shots of tequila and snacking on tortilla chips with chili con queso, the same thing she and Marino always order when they come here. Used to. In days past. Over and out. He didn’t use his hormone gel this morning. Threw it away with reluctance as the vile creature inside his darkness whispered mocking things. He can’t believe Shandy is so brazen as to come in here with that man, and the meaning is clear. She put him up to threatening the Doc. As bad as Shandy is, as bad as he is, as bad as they are together, Marino’s worse.
What they tried to do to the Doc is nothing like what he did.
He approaches the bar without looking in their direction, pretends he doesn’t see them, wondering why he didn’t spot Shandy’s BMW. She’s probably parked on a side street, always worried about someone dinging one of the doors. He wonders where the man with the do-rag’s chopper is and remembers what Lucy said about it. About it looking dangerous. She did something. She’ll probably do something to Marino’s bike next.
“Whatcha have, hon? Where you been, anyway?” The bartender looks maybe fifteen, the way all young people look to Marino these days.
He’s so depressed and distracted, he can’t remember her name, thinks it’s Shelly but is afraid to say. Maybe it’s Kelly. “Bud Lite.” He leans close to her. “Don’t look. But that guy over there with Shandy?”
“Yeah, they’ve been in here before.”
“Since when?” Marino asks as she slides a draft beer his way and he slides back a five.
“Two for the price of one. So you got another one coming, hon. Oh, gosh. On and off for as long as I’ve worked here, hon. The past year, I guess. I don’t like either one of ’em, and that’s ’tween you and me. Don’t ask his name. I don’t know. He’s not the only one she comes in here with. I think she’s married.”
“No shit.”
“I hope you and her are taking a time out. For good, hon.”
“I’m done with her,” Marino says, drinking his beer. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing but trouble, my guess,” Shelly or Kelly says.
He feels Shandy’s stare. She’s stopped talking to the man in the dorag, and now Marino has to wonder if she’s been having sex with him all along. Marino wonders about the stolen coins and where she gets her money. Maybe her daddy didn’t leave her anything and she felt she had to steal. Marino wonders about a lot of things and wishes he’d wondered all of them before. She sees him as he lifts his frosty mug, takes a swallow. Her glaring eyes look half crazy. He thinks about walking over to where she’s sitting, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
He knows they won’t tell him anything. He’s sure they’ll laugh at him. Shandy nudges the man in the do-rag. He looks at Marino and smirks, must think it’s real funny, sitting there feeling up Shandy and knowing that all along she’s never been Marino’s woman. Who the hell else does she sleep with?
Marino yanks off his silver-dollar necklace and drops it in his beer, and it makes a plopping sound and sinks to the bottom. He slides the mug across the bar, and it stops short of them, and he walks out, hoping he’ll be followed. The rain has let up, and the pavement is steaming under streetlights, and he sits on the wet seat of his motorcycle and waits, hoping he’ll be followed. He watches the front door of Poe’s Tavern, waiting and hoping. Maybe he can start a fight. Maybe they can finish it. He wishes his heart would slow down and his chest would stop hurting. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack. His heart ought to attack him, as bad as he is. He waits, looking at the door, looking at people on the other side of lighted windows, everybody happy except him. He waits and lights a cigarette and sits on his wet motorcycle in his wet rain gear, smoking and waiting.
He’s such a nothing, he can’t even make people angry anymore. He can’t make anybody fight him. He’s such a nothing, he’s sitting out here in the rainy dark, smoking and looking at the door, wishing Shandy or the man in the do-rag or both of them would come out and make him feel he still has something worthwhile left in him. But the door doesn’t open. They don’t care. They aren’t scared. They think Marino’s a joke. He waits and smokes. He
