off the sand. She flies away, and the load gently swings like a pendulum. Scarpetta and Benton head back to the tent. Were it daylight, the flies would be a droning storm and the air would be dense and loud with decay.
“He sleeps here,” Benton says. “Not necessarily all the time.”
He nudges the pillow with his foot. Beneath it is the border of the blanket, and beneath that, the mattress. A freezer bag keeps a box of matches dry, but paperback books don’t seem to mean much to him. They are soggy, the pages stuck together — the sort of obscure family sagas and romance novels one might buy in a drugstore when one wants something to read and doesn’t care what it is. Beneath this small makeshift tent is a pit where he built fires, using charcoal and the rusting grate from a grill set on top of rocks. There are root-beer cans. Scarpetta and Benton don’t touch anything, and they return to the beach where the helicopter landed, the marks from its skids deep in the sand. More stars are out, and the stench taints the air but no longer crowds it.
“At first you thought it was him. I saw it on your face,” Benton says.
“I hope he’s all right and didn’t do anything foolish,” she says. “One more thing that will be Dr. Self’s fault. Ruining what all of us had. Driving us apart. You haven’t told me how you found out.” Getting angry. Old anger and new.
“That’s her favorite thing to do. Drive people apart.”
They wait near the water, upwind from Lucious Meddick’s black cocoon, and the stench is carried away from them. Scarpetta smells the sea and hears it breathe and softly break on the shore. The horizon is black, and the lighthouse warns of nothing anymore.
A little later, in the distance, winking lights, and Lucy flies in and they turn away from blasting sand as she lands. With Lucious Meddick’s body securely in the cargo net, they lift off and carry him to Charleston. Police lights throb on the ramp, and Henry Hollings and Captain Poma stand near a windowless van.
Scarpetta walks in front of them. Anger moves her feet. She scarcely listens to a four-way conversation. Lucious Meddick’s hearse being found parked behind Hollings’s Funeral Home, keys in the ignition. How did it get there unless the killer left it — or maybe Shandy did. Bonnie and Clyde — that’s what Captain Poma calls them, then he brings up Bull. Where is he, what else might he know? Bull’s mother says he’s not home, been saying that for days. No sign of Marino, and now the police are looking for him, and Hollings says the bodies will go straight to the morgue. Not Scarpetta’s morgue. The MUSC morgue, where two forensic pathologists are waiting after working most of the night on Gianni Lupano.
“We could use you, if you’re willing,” Hollings says to Scarpetta. “You found them, so you should work it through. Only if you don’t mind.”
“The police need to get to Morris Island now and secure the scene,” she says.
“Zodiac boats are on the way. I’d better give you directions to the morgue.”
“I’ve been there before. You said the head of security is your friend,” she says. “At the Charleston Place Hotel. What’s the name?”
As they walk.
Hollings then says, “Suicide. Blunt-force trauma from a jump or a fall. Nothing to indicate foul play. Unless you can charge someone with driving a person to it. In that event, Dr. Self should be indicted. My friend at the hotel, her name’s Ruth.”
Lights are bright inside the FBO, and Scarpetta steps into the ladies’ room to wash her hands and her face and the inside of her nose. She sprays a lot of air freshener and moves into its mist, and she brushes her teeth. When she walks back out, Benton is standing there, waiting.
“You should go home,” he says.
“As if I can sleep.”
He follows her as the windowless van drives away, and Hollings is talking to Captain Poma and Lucy.
“I’ve got something I need to do,” Scarpetta says.
Benton lets her go. She walks to her SUV alone.
Ruth’s office is near the kitchen, where the hotel has had numerous problems with theft.
Shrimp, in particular. Cunning petty criminals disguised as chefs. She tells one amusing story after another, and Scarpetta listens attentively because she wants something, and the only way to get it is to play audience to the head of security’s performance. Ruth is an elegant older woman who is a captain in the National Guard but looks more like a demure librarian. In fact, she looks a little bit like Rose.
“But then, you didn’t come see me to hear all this,” Ruth says from behind a desk that is likely hotel surplus. “You want to know about Drew Martin, and probably Mr. Hollings told you the last time she stayed here, she was never in her room.”
“He did tell me that,” Scarpetta says, looking for a gun under Ruth’s paisley jacket. “Was her coach ever here?”
“He ate in the Grill now and then. Always ordered the same thing, caviar and Dom Perignon. Never heard of her being in there, but I don’t imagine a professional tennis player would be eating rich food or drinking champagne the night before a big match. Like I said, she obviously had another life somewhere and was never here.”
“You have another famous guest staying here,” Scarpetta says.
“We have famous guests all the time.”
“I could go door to door and knock.”
“You can’t get on the secure floor without a key. There’s forty suites here. That’s a lot of doors.”
“My first question is whether she’s still here, and I assume the reservation isn’t in her name. Otherwise, I’d just call her,” Scarpetta says.
“We have twenty-four-hour-a-day room service. I’m so close to the kitchen, I can hear the carts rattle by,” Ruth says.
“She’s already up, then. Good. I wouldn’t want to wake her.” Rage. It starts behind Scarpetta’s eyes and begins working its way down.
“Coffee every morning at five. She doesn’t tip much. We’re not crazy about her,” Ruth says.
Dr. Self is in a corner suite on the hotel’s eighth floor, and Scarpetta inserts a magnetic card into the elevator and minutes later is at her door. She senses her looking through the peephole.
Dr. Self opens the door as she says, “I see someone was indiscreet. Hello, Kay.”
She wears a flashy red silk robe, loosely tied around her waist, and black silk slippers.
“What a pleasant surprise. I wonder who told you. Please.” She moves to one side to let Scarpetta in. “As fate would have it, they brought two cups and an extra pot of coffee. Let me guess how you found me here at all, and I don’t just mean this wonderful room.” Dr. Self sits on the couch and tucks her legs under her. “Shandy. It would appear my giving her what she wanted resulted in a loss of leverage. That would be her petty point of view, at any rate.”
“I haven’t met Shandy,” Scarpetta says from a wing chair near a window that offers a view of the lighted old city.
“Not in person, you mean,” Dr. Self says. “But I believe you’ve seen her. Her exclusive tour of your morgue. I think back to those unhappy days in court, Kay, and I wonder how different all of it would have been if the world had known what you’re really like. That you give tours of the morgue and turn dead bodies into spectacles. Especially the little boy you skinned and filleted. Why did you cut out his eyes? How many injuries did you need to document before you decided what killed him? His eyes? Really, Kay.”
“Who told you about the tour?”
“Shandy bragged about it. Imagine what a jury would say. Imagine what the jury in Florida would have said had they known what you’re like.”
“Their verdict didn’t hurt you,” Scarpetta says. “Nothing’s hurt you the way you manage to hurt everybody else. Did you hear that your friend Karen killed herself barely twenty-four hours after she left McLean?”
Dr. Self’s face brightens. “Then her sad story will have a fitting finale.” She meets Scarpetta’s eyes. “Don’t think I’m going to pretend. What would upset me is if you told me Karen was back in rehab drying out again. The mass of men living lives of quiet desperation. Thoreau. Benton’s part of the world. Yet you live down here. How will you manage when you’re married?” Her eyes find the ring on Scarpetta’s left hand. “Or will you go through with it? The two of you aren’t much into commitments. Well, Benton is. A different sort of commitment he deals with up there. His little experiment was a treat, and I can’t wait to talk about it.”
“The lawsuit in Florida didn’t take anything from you except money that probably was covered by your
