Predator (29 page)

    
“Why don’t you ask Scarpetta about it?”

    
“I feel a fucking hell no coming over me.”

    
“Let’s talk it out, don’t act it out.”

    
It pleases her to hear herself say it. She thinks of the way her radio shows are promoted: Talk It Out with Dr. Self.

    
“What really happened today?” she asks Marino.

    
“Are you kidding me? I walked in on an old lady who had her head blown off. And guess who the detective is?”

    
“I would assume it’s you, Pete.”

    
“I’m not exactly in charge,” he retorts. “If it was the old days I sure as hell would be. I told you before. I can be the death investigator and help out the Doc. But I can’t be in charge of the entire case unless the jurisdiction involved hands it over to me and no way Reba’s going to do that. She don’t know shit but she’s got a thing about me.”

    
“As I recall it, you had a thing about her until she was disrespectful, tried to put you down, based on what you told me.”

    
“She shouldn’t be a damn detective,” he exclaims, his face turning red.

    
“Tell me about it.”

    
“I can’t talk about my work. Not even with you.”

    
“I’m not asking for details about cases or investigations, although you can tell me anything you like. What goes on in this room never leaves this room.”

    
“Unless you’re on the radio or that new TV show you’re doing.”

    
“We’re not on the radio or TV,” she says with another smile. “If you want to be on either, I can arrange that. You would be so much more interesting than Dr. Amos.”

    
“Star fucker. Monkey ass.”

    
“Pete?” she warns him—nicely, of course. “I’m well aware you don’t like him, either, have paranoiac thoughts about him, too. Right now, there is no microphone, no camera in this room, just you and me.”

    
He looks around as if he’s not sure he believes her, then says, “I didn’t like that she talked to him right in front of me.”

    
“Him being Benton. She being Scarpetta.”

    
“She makes me have a meeting with her and then gets on the phone with me sitting right there.”

    
“Rather much the way you feel when my answering machine clicks.”

    
“She could have called him while I wasn’t there. She did it on purpose.”

    
“It’s a habit of hers, isn’t it,” Dr. Self says. “Introducing her lover into the mix right in front of you when she must know the way you feel about it, about your jealousy.”

    
“Jealous? Of fucking what? He’s a rich-boy has-been FBI fortune-cookie profiler.”

    
“That’s not true, now is it. He’s a forensic psychologist on the faculty at Harvard, comes from a distinguished New England family. Sounds pretty impressive to me.”

    
She hasn’t met Benton. She would like to, would love to have him on her show.

    
“He’s a has-been. People who are has-beens teach.”

    
“I believe he does more than teach.”

    
“He’s a goddamn has-been.”

    
“Seems like most people you know are has-beens. Including Scarpetta. You’ve said that about her as well.”

    
“I call it like I see it.”

    
“I’m wondering if you might feel like a has-been.”

    
“Who me? You kidding? I can bench-press more than twice my body weight now and was running on the treadmill the other day. First time in twenty damn years.”

    
“We’re almost out of time,” she reminds him again. “Let’s talk about your anger towards Scarpetta. It’s about trust, isn’t it.”

    
“It’s about respect. About her treating me like shit and lying.”

    
“You feel she doesn’t trust you anymore because of what happened last summer at that place in Knoxville where they do all that research on dead bodies. What’s it called? The Decay Research something or other.”

    
“The Body Farm.”

    
“Oh, yes.”

    
What an intriguing topic for discussion on one of her shows: The Body Farm Isn’t a Health Spa. What is Death? Talk It Out with Dr. Self.

    
She has already composed the promo.

    
Marino looks at his watch, makes a big production of lifting his thick wrist to see what time it is, as if it doesn’t bother him that their time is about up, as if he is looking forward to its being up.

    
She isn’t fooled.

    
“Fear,” Dr. Self begins her summary. “An existential fear of not counting, of not mattering, of being left utterly alone. When the day ends, when the storm ends. When things end. It’s scary when things end, isn’t it? Money ends. Health ends. Youthfulness ends. Love ends. Maybe your relationship with Dr. Scarpetta will end? Maybe she’ll finally reject you?”

    
“There’s nothing to end except work and that will go on forever because people are shits and will keep killing each other long after I got my little angel wings. I’m not coming here anymore and listening to this bullshit. All you do is talk about the Doc. I think it’s pretty obvious my problem isn’t her.”

    
“We do have to stop now.”

    
She rises from her chair and smiles at him.

    
“I quit taking that medicine you prescribed. A couple weeks ago, forgot to tell you.”

    
He gets up and his big presence seems to fill the room.

    
“It didn’t do nothing, so why bother,” he says.

    
When he is on his feet, she is always a bit startled by what a big man he is. His sun-darkened hands reminded her of baseball mitts, of baked hams. She can imagine him crushing someone’s skull or neck, of smashing another person’s bones like potato chips.

    
“We’ll talk about the Effexor next week. I’m seeing you…” She picks up the appointment book from her desk. “Next Tuesday at five.”

    
Marino stares through the open doorway, scanning the small sunroom with its one table and two chairs and potted plants, several of them palms that are almost as high as the ceiling. There are no other patients waiting. There never are this time of day.

    
“Huh,” he says. “Good thing we hurried up and finished on time. Hate for you to keep someone waiting.”

    
“Would you like to pay me at our next appointment?”

    
It is Dr. Self’s way of reminding him that he owes her three hundred dollars.

    
“Yeah, yeah. I forgot my checkbook,” he replies.

    
Of course he did. He isn’t about to owe her money. He will be back.

Chapter 33

    
Benton parks his Porsche in a visitor’s slot outside tall metal fencing that is curved like a breaking wave and topped with coils of razor wire. Guard towers rise starkly against the cold, overcast sky from each corner of the grounds. Parked in a side lot are unmarked white vans with steel dividers, no windows and no interior locks, mobile holding cells used to transport prisoners like Basil off-grounds.

    
Butler State Hospital is eight stories of precast and steel-mesh-covered windows on twenty acres amid woods and ponds less than an hour southwest of Boston. Butler is where offenders are committed by reason of insanity and is considered a model of enlightenment and civility with pods called cottages, each one housing patients requiring different levels of security and attention. D Cottage stands alone not far from the administration building, and houses approximately one hundred dangerous predatory inmates.

    
Segregated from the rest of the hospital population, they spend most of the day, depending on their status, in single cells, each with its own shower that can be used ten minutes per day. Toilets can be flushed twice an hour. A team of forensic psychiatrists is assigned to D Pod, and other mental health and legal professionals such as Benton are in and out regularly. Butler is supposed to be humane and constructive, a place to get well. To Benton, it is nothing more than attractive maximum-security confinement for people who can never be repaired. He has no illusions. People like Basil have no lives and never did. They ruin lives and always will, given the chance.

    
Inside the beige-painted lobby, Benton approaches a bulletproof window and speaks through an intercom.

    
“How you doing, George?”

    
“No better than last time you asked.”

    
“Sorry to hear that,” Benton says as a loud metallic click grants him entrance through the first set of air locked doors. “That mean you haven’t gotten around to seeing your doctor yet?”

    
The door shuts behind him and he places his briefcase on a small metal table. George is in his sixties and never feels well. He hates his job. He hates his wife. He hates the weather. He hates politicians and, when he can, removes the photograph of the governor from the wall in the lobby. For the past year, he has struggled with extreme fatigue, stomach problems and achiness. He also hates doctors.

    
“I’m not taking medicine, so what’s the point? That’s all doctors do anymore is throw drugs at you,” George says as he searches Benton’s briefcase and returns it to him. “Your pal’s in the usual spot. Have fun.”

    
Another click and Benton steps through a second steel door, and a guard in a tan-and-brown uniform, Geoff, leads him along a polished hallway, passing through another set of airlock doors into the high-security unit where lawyers and mental-health workers meet with inmates in small, windowless rooms made of cinder block.

    
“Basil says he’s not getting his mail,” Benton says.

    
“He says a lot of things,” Geoff replies without smiling. “All he does is run his mouth.”

    
He unlocks a gray steel door and holds it open.

    
“Thanks,” Benton says.

    
“I’ll be right outside.” Geoff fires a look at Basil, shuts the door.

    
He sits at a small wooden table and doesn’t get up. He is unrestrained and wears his usual prison garb of blue pants, white T-shirt and flip-flops with socks. His eyes are bloodshot and distracted, and he stinks.

    
“How are you, Basil?” Benton asks, taking a seat across from him.

    
“I had a bad day.”

    
“That’s what I hear. Tell me.”

    
“I’m feeling anxious.”

    
“How are you sleeping?”

    
“I was awake most of the night. I kept thinking about our talk.”