When he text-messaged me that Anna Copper’s “rep is tarnished,” I wonder if he was referring to Jaime. If so, he must have run a check on her apartment building and come across a resident named Anna Copper LLC, and then run another check and realized who it was. He likely wouldn’t accept it as an accident of fate that Jaime has resurfaced in our lives, and he might know something about the trouble she got into that caused her to abandon her life in New York.
We walk through the bright lobby, where at this hour there is a solitary clerk at the desk, only a few people in the bar. When we reach the glass elevator, Marino taps the button several times, as if it will make the doors open faster.
“Shit,” he says. “I left the damn groceries in the van.”
“Did Lucy ever tell you what Anna Copper means? Where she got the name?”
“All I remember is it had something to do with Groucho Marx,” he says. “You want me to drop off some water for you?”
“No, thanks.” I’m getting into the tub. I’m making phone calls. I don’t want Marino stopping by my room.
I board the elevator and tell him I’ll see him in the morning.
15
It was still hot when the sun came up, and by eight a.m. I’m sweltering in black field clothes and black ankle-high boots as I sit on a bench in front of the hotel, drinking a venti iced coffee I got at a nearby Starbucks.
The bell in the City Hall tower rings in the first day of July, deep, melodious peals echoing in brassy reverberations as I watch a cabdriver watching me. Rawboned and weathered, with pants hitched up and a beard as scruffy as Spanish moss, he reminds me of characters I’ve seen in Civil War photographs. I imagine he hasn’t migrated far from the birthplace of his ancestors and still shares traits in common with them, like so many people I notice in cities and towns insulated from the outside world.
I’m reminded of what Kathleen Lawler said about genetics. No matter what we strive to become in life, we’re still who and what the forces of biology shape us to be. Hers is a fatalistic explanation, but she’s not completely wrong, and as I recall her comments about predetermination and DNA, I have a feeling she wasn’t referring only to herself. She was also alluding to her daughter. Kathleen was warning me, perhaps attempting to intimidate me, about Dawn Kincaid, with whom she claims to have no contact, yet according to a number of sources, it simply isn’t true. Kathleen knows more than she’s letting on, has secrets she keeps that likely are related to why Tara Grimm moved her into segregation at the same time I was lured down here. I believe Jaime Berger has caused real trouble.
She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with, because she isn’t as rationally motivated or as in touch with herself as she believes. While her selfish reasoning may very well have been precipitated by her clashes with New York police and politicians, most of what drives her is related to my niece, and now none of us have ended up in a good place, certainly not a safe one. Not Benton, not Marino, not Lucy, not me, and least of all Jaime, although she might not see it or believe it if I pointed it out. She’s completely deluded herself, and I’m along for the ride and reminded of what an old Diener used to tell me during my Richmond days:
When I woke up this morning after very little sleep, I realized I can’t afford to waiver in my resolve. Too much is at stake, and I don’t trust Jaime’s analysis of most matters or have faith in her approach, but I will do what I can to help. I’m involved not because I volunteered. I was drafted, practically abducted, and that’s of no consequence anymore. My sense of urgency isn’t about Lola Daggette or Dawn Kincaid and her mother, Kathleen Lawler.
It’s not about nine-year-old murders or the recent ones in Massachusetts, although these cases and those involved in them are critically important, and I will make investigative sense of them as best I can. What overrides all of it is Jaime’s meddling with the people closest to me. I feel she has endangered Lucy, Marino, and Benton. She has threatened our relationships, which have always been intricate and complicated, held in place by fragile threads. The network that we are is sturdy only when each of us is.
These people Jaime trifles with are my family, my only family, really. I don’t count my mother or my sister, I’m sorry to confess. I can’t rely on them, and frankly wouldn’t think of entrusting myself to their care, not even on their better days, the few they have. There was a time when I was happy to widen my inner circle to include Jaime, but what I won’t permit is for her to range about on the perimeter and dislodge the rest of us from our moorings or change who we are to one another. She abandoned Lucy in a way that was cold and unfair, and now Jaime seems determined to redefine Marino’s career, his very identity. In short order, she has managed to inflame his jealousy of Benton again and imply that my husband has betrayed me and is indifferent to my safety and happiness.
Even if there weren’t old murders connected to recent ones that seem to share the common denominator of Savannah, I wouldn’t leave right now. I extended my hotel reservation and booked a room for Lucy, who took off in her helicopter with Benton at dawn. I said I needed their help. I told them I usually don’t ask, but I want them here. Marino’s white cargo van turns into the hotel’s brick driveway, still loud but at least not bucking and shaking, and I get up from the bench. I walk toward the cabdriver with the scruffy beard and smile at him as I drop my Starbucks cup into the trash.
“Good morning,” I greet him, as he continues to stare.
“You mind me asking who you’re with?” He eyes me up and down, leaning against his blue taxicab parked beneath the same palm tree where Marino left his crippled van some seven hours earlier.
“Military medical research.” I give the taxi driver the same meaningless answer I’ve offered other people this morning who wondered aloud why I’m wearing black cargo pants, a long-sleeved black tactical shirt with the CFC shield embroidered in gold on it, and boots.
The go-bag I found in my room when I walked in at close to two a.m. had all of the essentials I might need on the road working a case but nothing suited for the civilian world, certainly not one located in the subtropics. I recognize Marino’s handiwork. In fact, I have no doubt he packed the go-bag himself, removing items from my office closet and bathroom and also my locker in the morgue changing room. As I’ve continued reconstructing these past several months and especially the two weeks since he’s been gone I recall being puzzled when certain items seemed to be missing. I thought I had more uniform shirts. I was sure I had more cargo pants. I could have sworn I had two pairs of boots, not just one. The contents of the go-bag suggest that from Marino’s point of view, I’m going to spend my time down here in labs or a medical examiner’s office, or more to the point, with him.
Had Bryce packed for me, and that’s the usual routine when an emergency rushes me out of town or I’m stranded somewhere, he would have included a suit bag with blazers, blouses, and slacks generously padded and wrapped with tissue paper so nothing gets wrinkled. He would have picked out shoes, socks, workout clothes, and toiletries, his choices made with far more thoughtfulness and flair than if I’d packed myself, and most likely he would have stopped by my house. Bryce doesn’t hesitate to help himself to anything he anticipates I might need, including lingerie, which is of no personal interest to him beyond his occasional comments about various labels and fabrics, and which detergents and dryer sheets he prefers. But he would not have sent me off to Georgia in the summer with three sets of cold-weather field clothes, three pairs of men’s white socks, a flak jacket, boots, one deodorant, and an insect repellent.
“I didn’t know if you ate yet,” Marino says, as I open the van’s door, and right away I notice the interior is much cleaner than it was when I was in it last. I smell citrus-scented air freshener and butter and deep-fried steak and eggs. “They got a Bojangles’ a couple miles from here near Hunter Army Airfield, which gave me an excuse to do a test run. The van’s good as new.”
“With the minor exception of air-conditioning.” I buckle up and notice the bulging bag on the floor between our seats as I roll the window down all the way.
“Would need to get a new compressor for that, but the hell with it. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the deal I got on this thing, and you sort of get used to not having air. Like the old days. When I was growing up, a lot of cars didn’t have it.”
