“Strong,” Scarpetta said, and Louie headed to the bar.
Behind her, at a table by a window overlooking Second Avenue, a big man wearing a white Stetson sat alone, working on what looked like straight vodka or gin with a twist. Now and then he craned his neck to check the score of a basketball game playing silently on the TV above his head, and Scarpetta got a glimpse of his big jaw and thick lips, and long white sideburns. Then he stared at nothing, slowly turning his glass in small circles on the white tablecloth. Something about him was familiar, and she envisioned footage she’d seen on TV and was seized by the shock that she was looking at Jake Loudin.
But it wasn’t possible. He was in custody. This man was small, rather thin. She realized he was an actor, one who wasn’t busy anymore.
Benton studied the menu, his face obscured by a plastic laminated menu with Elaine on the cover.
Scarpetta said to him, “You look like the Pink Panther on a stakeout.”
He closed the menu and placed it on the table, and said, “Anything in particular you want to say to everyone? Since you’ve orchestrated this little gathering for reasons beyond being sociable. I just thought I’d mention it before they show up.”
“Nothing in particular,” Scarpetta said. “Just wanted to air out. I feel everyone should air out before we go home. I wish we weren’t going. It doesn’t seem like we should be there and everyone else is here.”
“Lucy will be absolutely fine.”
Tears touched Scarpetta’s eyes. She couldn’t get over it. A sense of dread held her heart like unwelcome hands, and she was conscious of her near loss, even in her sleep.
“She’s not meant to go anywhere.” Benton pulled his chair closer and took her hand. “If she were, she would have checked out a hell of a long time ago.”
Scarpetta held her napkin to her eyes, then stared up at the silent TV, as if she cared about whoever was playing basketball.
She cleared her throat and said, “But it’s almost impossible.”
“It’s not. Those revolvers? The ones I’m always telling you are such a terrible idea because they’re so lightweight? Well, you see why, only in this case the luck was in our favor. The recoil is unbelievable. Like having your hand kicked by a horse. I think he jerked when he pulled the trigger, and probably Lucy moved, and small- caliber, low-velocity. Plus, she’s meant to be with us. She’s not meant to go anywhere. All of us are fine. We’re more than fine,” Benton said, pressing his lips against her hand, then kissing her on the mouth tenderly.
He didn’t used to be so openly affectionate in public. He didn’t seem to care anymore. If Gotham Gotcha still existed, they would probably be an item in it tomorrow—Scarpetta’s entire dinner party would be.
She had never visited the apartment where the anonymous author wrote her cruel and vindictive columns, and now that she was sure who it was, she felt pity for her. She completely understood why Terri Bridges turned on her. Terri was receiving heartless and belittling e-mails from her hero, or thought she was, and when she’d had enough, she gave her alter ego the assignment to eviscerate Scarpetta publicly. Terri had pulled her own trigger, firing several rounds at a woman whose perceived mistreatments were the last straw in a lifetime of mistreatment.
Lucy had determined that Terri had written the two New Year’s Day columns on December 30, and they had been in a queue and had been automatically sent to Eva Peebles after Terri was already dead. Lucy also discovered that on the afternoon of December 31, just hours before Terri was murdered, she deleted all her e-mails from Scarpetta612, not because she sensed she was about to die, for sure, in Benton’s opinion, but because she had just committed her own crime, anonymously, against a medical examiner whom she would finally meet, in the morgue.
Benton believed Terri had a conscience, a sizable one, and that’s why she’d deleted the hundred-some e-mails she’d thought were between Scarpetta and her. Terri’s anxiety had dictated she should eradicate any evidence that there might be a connection between Gotham Gotcha and Terri Bridges. By deleting the correspondence, she’d also expunged her fallen hero from her life.
That was Benton’s theory. Scarpetta didn’t have a theory except that there would always be theories.
“I wrote Oscar a letter,” she said as she opened her handbag and pulled out an envelope. “I’m thinking everyone should read it, that I’ll show it to them. But I want to read it to you first. Not an e-mail but a real letter on real paper, my personal stationery, which I haven’t used since God knows when. I didn’t write it in longhand, though. My penmanship gets only worse with time. Since there will never be a court case, Jaime said it’s perfectly fine to tell Oscar whatever I want, and I have. I’ve done my best to explain to him that Terri was dealt hardships by her family, and it was this early programming that compelled her to control everything within her reach. She was angry because she’d been hurt, and hurt people often hurt back, but beneath it all she was a good person. I’m giving you a bit of a summary, because it’s long.”
She slipped four folded pages of heavy, creamy paper out of the envelope and carefully smoothed them open. She skimmed until she found the part she wanted Benton to hear.
She quietly read to him:
. . . In the secret room upstairs where she wrote her columns were the yellow roses you gave her. She saved every one of them, and I’m betting she never told you. No one would do something like that if the feelings weren’t profoundly important, Oscar. I want you to remember that, and if you forget, re-read this letter. That’s why I wrote it. Something for you to keep.
I also took the liberty to write her family and express my condolences and tell them what I could, because they have many, many questions. Dr. Lester, I fear, hasn’t been as helpful as they’d like, so I’ve filled in the blanks, most of those conversations over the phone, with a few exchanges by e-mail.
I’ve talked about you, and maybe by now you’ve heard from them. If you haven’t, I feel sure you will. They said they wanted me to tell you what Terri did in her will, and they intend to write you about it. Maybe they have.
I won’t divulge the fine points of her wishes, because it isn’t my place to do that. But in keeping with her family’s request to me, I’ll pass along this much. She left a considerable sum to the Little People of America, to start a foundation that offers assistance in medical care for those who want and need procedures (such as corrective surgeries) that medical insurance won’t cover. As you know, much of what can and should be done is unfairly deemed elective: orthodontic care, for example, and in some instances, bone lengthening.
Suffice it to say, Terri had a very kind heart. . . .
Scarpetta had read as much as she could, because the wave of sadness was rolling over her again. She folded the pages and tucked them back into their envelope.
Louie appeared with their drinks and just as unobtrusively was gone, and she took a sip and it warmed her on its way down and its vapors lifted her brain as if it had retreated into a cloistered place and needed courage.
“If you think it won’t interfere with your patient’s treatment”—she handed Benton the envelope—“would you see that he gets this?”
“It will mean more to him than you imagine,” Benton said, sliding it into the inside pocket of his jacket, a buttery black leather jacket.
It was new, as was the belt with its Winston eagle-head buckle, and the handmade boots he had on. Lucy’s way of celebrating when she, quote, dodged another bullet, was to buy people gifts. Not inexpensive ones. She’d gotten Scarpetta another watch she really didn’t need—a titanium Breguet with a carbon-fiber face—to go with the black Ferrari F43O Spider that she said she’d also gotten Scarpetta. It was a joke, thank God. Scarpetta would rather ride a bicycle than drive one of those things. Marino had a new motorcycle, a racing red Ducati 1098 that Lucy was keeping for him in her hangar in White Plains, because she said he wasn’t allowed to ride anything with fewer than four wheels in the city. She’d rather rudely added that he had to maintain his weight or he wouldn’t fit on a Superbike no matter how super it was.
Scarpetta had no idea what Lucy might have given Berger. She didn’t ask questions unless Lucy wanted her to ask them. Scarpetta was being patient as Lucy continued to wait for judgment that Scarpetta had no intention of rendering because it wasn’t what she felt. Not remotely. After getting over the initial shock of it, although there was no justification for shock, not really, Scarpetta couldn’t be more pleased.
She and Berger had actually gone out to lunch last week, the two of them alone at Forlini’s near One Hogan Place, and had sat in a booth that Berger said was almost named after Scarpetta. She’d said it was a lucky
