“It’s not.”
“Why did she fire him?” Her phone rings again.
“Because Dr. Self told her to,” Hollings says. “That’s why he went to New York. To confront her. To try to get Drew to change her mind.”
“I’d better see who this is.” Scarpetta answers her phone.
“You need to drop by on your way to the airport,” Lucy says.
“It’s not exactly on the way.”
“Another hour, hour and a half, and I think we can head out. The weather should be fine by then. You need to drop by the labs.” Lucy tells Scarpetta where to meet her, and adds, “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
Scarpetta says she will. To Henry Hollings, she says, “I’m assuming Drew didn’t change her mind.”
“She wouldn’t talk to him.”
“And Dr. Self?”
“He did talk to her. In her apartment. Mind you, this is what he told me. And she told him he was bad for Drew, an unhealthy influence, and she would continue to advise her to stay away from him. He got increasingly distraught and angry as he told me all this, and now I see I should have known better. I should have come over here immediately, sat down with him. Done something.”
“What else happened with Dr. Self?” Scarpetta asks. “Drew went to New York, then left for Rome the next day. Barely twenty-four hours later, she disappeared and ended up murdered, quite possibly by the same person who murdered Lydia. And I’ve got to head to the airport. You’re welcome to come. If we have any luck, we’re going to need you anyway.”
“The airport?” He gets up from the bench. “Now?”
“I don’t want us to wait another day. Her body’s in worse shape every hour.”
They start walking.
“Now? And I’m supposed to go with you in the middle of the night, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hollings puzzles.
“Heat signatures,” she says. “Infrared. Any thermal variation is going to show up better in the dark, and maggots can raise the temperature of a decomposing body as much as twenty degrees centigrade. It’s been more than two days, because when he left her house, I’m quite sure she wasn’t alive. Not based on what we found. What else happened with Dr. Self? Did Lupano tell you anything else?”
They’re almost to her car.
“He said he was extraordinarily insulted,” Hollings says. “She said very degrading things to him and wouldn’t tell him how to find Drew. After he left, he called Dr. Self again. This was supposed to be the greatest moment in his career, and she’d just wrecked it, and then the final blow. She told him Drew was staying with her, had been inside the apartment the entire time he was begging Dr. Self to undo what she’d done. I won’t be going with you. You don’t need me, and I, well, I want to check on Rose.”
Scarpetta unlocks her car as she thinks about the timing. Drew spent the night in Dr. Self’s penthouse, and the next day flew to Rome. The day after that, the seventeenth, she disappeared. The eighteenth, her body was found. The twenty-seventh, Scarpetta and Benton were in Rome investigating Drew’s murder. That same day, Dr. Self was admitted to McLean, and Dr. Maroni fabricated a file that was supposed to be notes he took when he saw the Sandman as a patient — something Benton feels sure is a lie.
Scarpetta slides behind the wheel. Hollings is a gentleman and isn’t going to leave until she starts the engine and locks her door.
She says to him, “When Lupano was inside Dr. Self’s apartment, was anybody else there?”
“Drew was.”
“I mean, anybody else Lupano knew about?”
He thinks for a moment, says, “There might have been.” He hesitates. “He said he ate at her apartment. I think it was lunch. And it seems he made a comment about Dr. Self’s chef.”
Chapter 21
The Forensic Science Laboratories.
The main building is red brick and concrete with expansive windows that are UV-protected and mirror- finished, so the world outside sees a reflection of itself, and what’s inside is protected from prying eyes and damaging rays from the sun. A smaller building isn’t finished, and the landscaping is mud. Scarpetta sits in her car and watches a big bay door roll up and wishes hers wasn’t so noisy. It adds to the unfortunate ambience of a morgue when the bay door screeches and scrapes like a drawbridge.
Inside, everything is new and pristine, brightly lighted and painted in shades of white and gray. Some labs she passes are empty rooms, while others are fully equipped. But countertops are uncluttered, work spaces clean, and she looks forward to the day when it feels like someone’s home. Of course, it’s after hours, but even during them, at most twenty people show up for work, and about half of those followed Lucy from her former labs in Florida. Eventually, she will have the finest private forensic facility in the country, and Scarpetta realizes why that makes her more unsettled than glad. Professionally, Lucy is as successful as anyone can be, but her life is sadly flawed, and so is Scarpetta’s. Neither of them adeptly manages to have or sustain personal relationships, and until now, Scarpetta has refused to see that they have this in common.
Despite Benton’s kindness, all his talk with her really did was remind her why she needed it. What he said is depressingly true. She’s run so fast for fifty years, she has little to show for it beyond an unusual ability to handle pain and stress that results in the very problem she faces. It’s much easier to just do her job and live out her days with long, busy hours and long, empty spaces. In fact, if she’s honest in examining herself, when Benton gave her the ring it didn’t make her feel happy or safe. It symbolizes what scares the hell out of her, and that is whatever he gives, he might take back or realize he didn’t mean it.
No wonder Marino finally snapped. Yes, he was drunk and hyped up on hormones, and probably Shandy and Dr. Self helped drive him to it. But if Scarpetta had taken a good look at him all these years, she probably could have saved him from himself and prevented a violation that was hers, too. She violated him, too, because she wasn’t a truthful or trustworthy friend. She didn’t tell him no until he finally went too far, and she should have told him no some twenty years ago.
She scripts what she should have said and demands an answer to why she didn’t. He might leave her. She might lose his constant presence, as annoying as it sometimes is. She might inflict on him that very thing she has done such a fine job evading: personal rejection and loss, and now she has both and so does he.
The elevator doors open on the second floor, and she follows an empty corridor to a series of labs that are individually sealed off by metal doors and airlocks. In an outer room, she puts on a white disposable gown, a hairnet and cap, shoe covers, gloves, and a face shield. She passes through another sealed area that decontaminates with ultraviolet light, and from there she enters a fully automated lab, where DNA is extracted and replicated — and where Lucy, also in white from head to toe, said to meet her for reasons unknown. She’s sitting near a fume hood, talking to a scientist who is covered up, too, and therefore unrecognizable at a glance.
“Aunt Kay?” Lucy says. “I’m sure you remember Aaron. Our interim director.”
The face behind the plastic shield smiles and suddenly is familiar, and the three of them sit.
“I know you’re a forensic specialist,” Scarpetta says. “But I didn’t know you had a new position.” She asks what happened to the previous lab director.
“Quit. Because of what Dr. Self put on the Internet,” Lucy says, anger in her eyes.
“Quit?” Scarpetta asks, baffled. “Just like that?”
“Thinks I’m going to die and scuttled off to take another job. Anyway, he was a jerk, and I’d been wanting to get rid of him. Kind of ironic. The bitch did me a favor. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’ve got lab results.”
“Blood, saliva, epithelial cells,” Aaron says. “Start with Lydia Webster’s toothbrush and blood from the
