From Potter's Field (25 page)

'Dr. Menendez? It's Dr. Kay Scarpetta in Richmond,' I said when I got him on the phone.

'Oh,' he said, surprised. 'How are you? Merry Christmas.'

'Thank you. I'm sorry to bother you, but I need your help.'

He hesitated. 'Is everything all right? You sound very stressed.'

'I have a very difficult situation. A serial killer who is out of control.' I took a deep breath. 'One of the cases involves an unidentified young woman with a lot of gold foil restorations.'

'That's most curious,' he said thoughtfully. 'You know, there are still some dentists out here who do those.'

'That's why I'm calling. I need to talk to someone. Maybe the head of their organization.'

'Would you like me to make some calls?'

'What I'd like you to do is find out if by some small miracle their group is on a computer system. It sounds like a small and unusual society. They might be connected through E-mail or a bulletin board. Maybe something like Prodigy. Who knows? But I've got to have a way to get information to them instantly.'

'I'll put several of my staffers on it immediately,' he said. 'What's the best way for me to reach you?'

I gave him my numbers and hung up. I thought of Gault and the missing dark blue van. I wondered where he had gotten the body pouch he zipped Sheriff Brown in, and then I remembered. We always kept a new one in each van as a backup. So he had come here first and stolen the van. Then he had gone to Brown's house. I thumbed through the telephone directory again to see if the sheriff's residence was listed. It was not.

I picked up the phone and called directory assistance. I asked for Lament Brown's number. The operator gave it to me and I dialed it to see what would happen.

'I can't get to the phone right now because I'm out delivering presents in my sleigh . . .' the dead sheriff's voice sounded strong and healthy from his answering machine. 'Ho! Ho! Ho! Merrrrrrry Christmas!'

Unnerved, I got up to go to the ladies' room, revolver in hand. I was walking around my office armed because Gault had ruined this place where I had always felt safe. I stopped in the hall and looked up and down it. Gray floors had a buildup of wax and walls were eggshell white. I listened for any sound. He had gotten in here once. He could get in again.

Fear gripped me strongly, and when I washed my hands in the bathroom sink, they were trembling. I was perspiring and breathing hard. I walked swiftly to the other end of the corridor and looked out a window. I could see my car covered in snow, and just one van. The other van remained missing. I returned to my office and resumed dictating.

A telephone rang somewhere and I started. The creaking of my chair made me jump. When I heard the elevator across the hall open, I reached for the revolver and sat very still, watching the doorway as my heart hammered. Quick, firm footsteps sounded, getting louder as they got nearer. I raised the gun, both hands on the rubber grips.

Lucy walked in.

'Jesus,' I exclaimed, my finger on the trigger. 'Lucy, my God.' I set the gun on my desk. 'What are you doing here? Why didn't you call first? How did you get in?'

She looked oddly at me and the .38. 'Jan drove me down, and I've got a key. You gave me a key to your building a long time ago. I did call, but you weren't here.'

'What time did you call?' I was light-headed.

'A couple hours ago. You almost shot me.'

'No.' I tried to fill my lungs with air. 'I didn't almost shoot you.'

'Your finger wasn't on the side of the trigger guard, where it was supposed to be. It was on the trigger. I'm just glad you didn't have your Browning right now. I'm just glad you didn't have anything that's single action.'

'Please stop it,' I quietly said, and my chest hurt.

'The snow's more than two inches, Aunt Kay.'

Lucy was standing by the door, as if she were unsure about something. She was typically dressed in range pants, boots and a ski jacket.

An iron hand was squeezing my heart, my breathing labored. I sat motionless, looking at my niece as my face got colder.

'Jan's in the parking lot,' she was saying.

'The press is back there.'

'I didn't notice any reporters. But anyway, we're in the pay lot across the street.'

'They've had several muggings there,' I said. 'There was a shooting, too. About four months ago.'

Lucy was watching my face. She looked at my hands as I tucked the revolver in my pocketbook.

'You've got the shakes,' she said, alarmed. 'Aunt Kay, you're white as a sheet.' She stepped closer to my desk. 'I'm getting you home.'

Pain skewered my chest, and I involuntarily pressed a hand there.

'I can't.' I could barely talk.

The pain was so sharp and I could not catch my breath.

Lucy tried to help me up, but I was too weak. My hands were going numb, fingers cramping, and I leaned forward in the chair and shut my eyes as I broke out in a profuse cold sweat. I was breathing rapid, shallow breaths.

She panicked.

I was vaguely aware of her yelling into the phone. I tried to tell her I was all right, that I needed a paper bag, but I could not talk. I knew what was happening, but I could not tell her. Then she was wiping my face with a cool, wet cloth. She was massaging my shoulders, soothing me as I wearily stared down at my hands curled in my lap like claws. I knew what was going to happen, but I was too exhausted to fight it.

'Call Dr. Zenner,' I managed to say as pain stabbed my chest again. 'Tell her to meet us there.'

'Where is there?' Terrified, Lucy dabbed my face again.

'MCV.'

'You're going to be all right,' she said.

I did not speak.

'Don't you worry.'

I could not straighten my hands, and I was so cold I was shivering.

'I love you, Aunt Kay,' Lucy cried.

14

The Medical College of Virginia had saved my niece's life last year, for no hospital in the area was more adept at guiding the badly injured through their golden hour. She had been medflighted here after flipping my car, and I was convinced the damage to her brain would have been permanent had the Trauma Unit not been so skilled. I had been in the MCV emergency room many times, but never as a patient before this night.

By nine-thirty, I was resting quietly in a small, private room on the hospital's fourth floor. Marino and Janet were outside the door, Lucy at my bedside holding my hand.

'Has anything else happened with CAIN?' I asked.

'Don't think about that right now,' she ordered. 'You need to rest and be quiet.'

'They've already given me something to be quiet. I am being quiet.'

'You're a wreck,' she said.

'I'm not a wreck.'

'You almost had a heart attack.'

'I had muscle spasms and hyperventilated,' I said. 'I know exactly what I had. I reviewed the cardiogram. I had nothing that a paper bag over my head and a hot bath wouldn't have fixed.'

'Well, they're not going to let you out of here until they're sure you don't have any more spasms. You don't fool around with chest pain.'

'My heart is fine. They will let me out when I say so.'

'You're noncompliant.'

'Most doctors are,' I said.

Lucy stared stonily at the wall. She had not been gentle since coming into my room. I was not sure why she was angry.

'What are you thinking about?' I asked.

They're setting up a command post,' she said. 'They were talking about it in the hall.'

'A command post?'

'At police headquarters,' she said. 'Marino's been back and forth to the pay phone, talking to Mr. Wesley.'

'Where is he?' I asked.

'Mr. Wesley or Marino?'

'Benton.'

'He's coming here.'

'He knows I'm here,' I said.

Lucy looked at me. She was no fool. 'He's on his way here,' she said as a tall woman with short gray hair and piercing eyes walked in.

'My, my, Kay,' Dr. Anna Zenner said, leaning over to hug me. 'So now I must make house calls.'

'This doesn't exactly constitute a house call,' I said. 'This is a hospital. You remember Lucy?'

'Of course.' Dr. Zenner smiled at my niece.

'I'll be outside the door,' Lucy said.

'You forget I do not come downtown unless I have to,' Dr. Zenner went on. 'Especially when it snows.'

'Thank you, Anna. I know you don't make house calls, hospital calls or any other kinds of calls,' I said sincerely as the door shut. I'm so glad you're here.'

Dr. Zenner sat by my bed. I instantly felt her energy, for she dominated a room without trying. She was remarkably fit for someone in her early seventies and was one of the finest people I knew.

'What have you done to yourself?' she asked in a German accent that had not lessened much with time.

'I fear it is finally getting to me,' I said. 'These cases.'

She nodded. 'It is all I hear about. Every time I pick up a newspaper or turn on TV.'

'I almost shot Lucy tonight.' I looked into her eyes.

'Tell me how that happened?'

I told her.

'But you did not fire the gun?'

'I came close.'

'No bullets were fired?'

'No,' I said.

'Then you did not come so close.'

'That would have been the end of my life.' I shut my eyes as they welled up with tears.

'Kay, it would also have been the end of your life had someone else been coming down that hall. Someone you had reason to fear, you know what I mean? You reacted as best you could.'

I took a deep, tremulous breath.

'And the result is not so bad. Lucy is fine. I just saw her and she is healthy and beautiful.'

I wept as I hadn't in a very long time, covering my face with my hands. Dr. Zenner rubbed my back and pulled tissues from a box, but she did not try to talk me out of my depression. She quietly let me cry:

'I'm so ashamed of myself,' I finally said between sobs.

'You mustn't be ashamed,' she said. 'Sometimes you have to let it out. You don't do that enough and I know what you see.'

'My mother is very ill and I have not been down to Miami to see her. Not once.' I was incapable of being consoled. 'I am a stranger at my office. I can no longer stay in my house - or anywhere else for that matter -without security.'

'I noticed many police outside your room,' she observed.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. 'He's decompensating,' I said.

Her eyes were fastened to mine.

'And that's good. He's more daring, meaning he's taking greater risks. That's what Bundy did in the end.'

Dr. Zenner offered what she did best. She listened.

I went on, 'The more he decompensates, the greater the likelihood he'll make a mistake and we'll get him.'

'I would also assume he is at his most dangerous right now,' she said. 'He has no boundaries. He even killed Santa Claus.'

'He killed a sheriff who plays Santa once a year. And this sheriff also was heavily involved in drugs. Maybe drugs were the connection between the two of them.'

'Tell me about you.'

I looked away from her and took another deep breath. At last I was calmer. Anna was one of the few people in this world who made me feel I did not need to be in charge. She was a psychiatrist. I had known her since my move to Richmond, and she had helped me through my breakup with Mark, then through his death. She had the heart and hands of a musician.

'Like him, I am decompensating,' I confessed in frustration.

'I must know more.'

'That's why I'm here.' I looked at her. 'That's why I'm in this gown, in this bed. It's why I almost shot my niece. It's why people are outside my door worried about me. People are driving the streets and watching my house, worrying about me. Everywhere, people are worrying about me.'

'Sometimes we have to call in the troops.'

'I don't want troops,' I said impatiently. 'I want to be left alone.'

'Ha. I personally think you need an entire army. No one can fight this man alone.'

'You're a psychiatrist,' I said. 'Why don't you dissect him?'

'I don't treat character disorders,' she said. 'Of course he is sociopathic.'

She walked to the window, parted curtains and looked out. 'It is still snowing. Do you believe that? I may have to stay here with you tonight. I have had patients over the years who were almost not of this world, and I did try to disengage from them quickly.

'That's the thing with these criminals who become the subject of legend. They go to dentists, psychiatrists, hairstylists. We cannot help but encounter them just like we encounter anyone. In Germany once I treated a man for a year until I realized he had drowned three women in the bathtub.

'That was his thing. He would pour them wine and wash them. When he would get to their feet, he would suddenly grab their ankles and yank. In those big tubs, you cannot get out if someone is holding your feet up in the air.' She paused. 'I am not a forensic psychiatrist.'