Trace (38 page)

    
"You knew the meeting was to be at nine-thirty?"

    
"I must have. I'm sorry I'm so foggy, Doc. But I knew about the meeting." He looks at her and can't figure out what's going through her mind. "Why? What's the big deal about the meeting?"

    
"He didn't tell me about it until eight-thirty this morning," she replies.

    
"He's shooting bullets at your feet, making you dance," Marino says, and he hates Dr. Marcus. "Let's get
us a plane and go back to Florida. Fuck him."

    
"When you saw Mrs. Paulsson at the office this morning, did she speak to you?"

    
"She looked at me and walked off. Like she didn't know me. I don't understand nothing about this, Doc. I just know something happened and it's bad, and I'm scared shitless I did something really bad and now I'm going to get it. After all the shit I've done, now this is going to do it. This is it."

    
Scarpetta slowly gets up from her chair, and she looks tired, but she is alert, and he can see the worry in her eyes but he can also see that she is thinking, she is making connections he sure as hell isn't making. Her eyes are full of thoughts as she looks out the window and walks over to the service cart and drains the last little bit of tea into her cup.

    
"She injured you, didn't she?" she says, standing near the bed, looking down at him. "Show me what she did to you."

    
"Hell no! Hell no, I can't," he says in a whine that makes him sound ten years old. "I can't do that. No way."

    
"Do you want me to help you or not? You think you have something I've never seen before?"

    
He covers his face with his hands. "I can't do it."

    
"You can call the police and they'll get you down to the station and photograph your injuries. Then you've just started a case. Maybe that's what you want. Not a bad plan, assuming she's already called the police. But I suspect she hasn't."

    
He lowers his hands and looks up at her. "Why?"

    
"Why do I suspect that? Very simple. People know we're staying here. Doesn't Detective Browning know you're staying here? Doesn't he have your phone numbers? So why haven't the police shown up to arrest you? You think they wouldn't be all over you if Gilly Paulsson's mother called nine-one-one and said you raped her? And why didn't she scream when she saw you at the office? You just raped her and she doesn't make a scene or call the police right then?"

    
"Ain't no way I'm calling the police," he says.

    
"Then I'm all you've got." She walks back to her chair and picks up her nylon scene kit. She unzips it and pulls out a digital camera.

    
"Holy shit," he says, staring at the camera as if it is a gun pointed at him.

    
"Sounds like the victim here is you," she says. "Sounds like she wants you to think you did something to her. Why?"

    
"Shit if I know. I can't do it."

    
"You're hungover but not stupid, Marino."

    
He looks at her. He looks at the camera down by her side. He looks at Scarpetta standing in the middle of his room in her dark, mud-spattered suit.

    
"We're here working the death of her daughter, Marino. Mama clearly wants some kind of leverage or money or attention or some kind of something, and I intend to find out what it is she wants. Oh yes. I will find out. Take your shirt off, your pants off, take off whatever you need to take off to show me what that woman did to you during her sick little game last night."

    
"Now what are you gonna think of me?" he says, pulling his black Polo shirt over his head, carefully, the fabric hurting him where it rubs the bite and suck marks all over his chest.

    
"God. Sit still. God damn it, why didn't you show me this earlier? We've got to take care of this or you're going to get infections. And you're worried about her calling the police? Are you out of your mind?" All this while she takes photographs, moving over him, getting close-ups of each wound.

    
"Thing is, I ain't seen what I did to her," he says, a little calmer, realizing that getting checked out by the Doc might not be as bad as he thought.

    
"You did even half of this to her, your teeth should hurt."

    
He pays very close attention to his teeth and feels nothing at all, just his usual teeth and the usual way they feel. Thank God his teeth don't hurt.

    
"What about your back?" she asks, standing over him.

    
"It don't hurt."

    
"Lean forward. Let me look."

    
He bends over and feels her carefully move the pillows away from his back. He feels her warm fingers between his shoulder blades, her hands lightly touching his bare skin and pushing him farther forward as she examines his back, and he tries to remember whether she's ever touched his bare back before. She hasn't. He would remember.

    
"What about your genitals?" she asks as if it is nothing. When he doesn't respond, she says, "Marino, did she injure your genitals? Is there something there I should photograph, not to mention treat, or are we going to pretend that I somehow don't know that you have male genitalia like half the rest of the human race? Well, obviously she hurt your genitals, or else you would simply tell me no. Correct?"

    
"Correct," he mutters, covering his crotch with his hands. "Yeah, I'm hurting, okay? But maybe you got enough already to prove your point, to prove she hurt me, no matter what I did to her, assuming I did something."

    
She sits on the edge of the bed not more than two feet from him and looks at him. "How about a verbal description. Then we'll decide if you need to take your pants off."

    
"She bit me. All over. And I got bruises."

    
"I'm a doctor," Scarpetta says.

    
"I know that all right. But you ain't my doctor."

    
"I would be if you died. If she'd killed you, who do you think would want to see you and know every damn thing about it? But you're not dead, for which I'm extremely grateful, but you got attacked and have the same sort of injuries you might have were you dead. And this all sounds perfectly ridiculous, even to me, even as I'm saying it. Will you please let me take a look and see if you need medical treatment and if we need to take photographs?"

    
"What kind of medical treatment?"

    
"Probably nothing that a little Betadine won't cure. I'll pick some up at the drugstore."

    
He tries to imagine what will happen if she sees him. She has never seen him. She doesn't know what he has, and he might not be above average or below average, and ordinarily just being ordinary will get one by, but he doesn't know what to expect because he has no idea what she likes or is accustomed to. So it's probably not smart to take off his pants. Then he thinks of riding in the back of an unmarked car and being photographed in lockup and going to court, and he unbuttons his pants and pulls down the zipper.

    
"If you laugh I'll hate you the rest of your life," he says, and his face burns hot and he is sweating, and the sweat stings whatever it touches.

    
"You poor boy," she says. "That crazy bitch," she says.

Chapter 31

    
It is raining
a cold hard rain when Scarpetta pulls off to the side of the street and parks in front of Suzanna Paulsson's house. For a few minutes she sits with the engine running and the wiper blades sweeping back and forth, and she looks out at the uneven brick sidewalk that leads to the sloping porch and imagines Marino's path last night. She doesn't have to imagine much else.

    
What he told her was more than he thinks. What she saw was worse than he knows. He may not believe he told her every detail, but he told her plenty. She turns off the wipers and watches the rain spatter the glass and run down it, and then it is raining so hard all she can hear is a steady wet splashing, and the water on the windshield looks like rippled ice. Suzanna Paulsson is home. Her mini-van is parked near the sidewalk and the lights are on in the house. She didn't walk anywhere in this weather.

    
Scarpetta's rental car has no umbrella and she doesn't have a hat. She gets out and the smacking of water is suddenly louder and rain dashes her face as she hurries along the slippery old bricks that lead to the house of a girl who is dead and a mother who is sexually insane. Perhaps it is overly dramatic to consider her sexually insane. Scarpetta reconsiders, but she is much angrier than Marino knows. He may not realize she is angry at all, but she is quite angry and Mrs. Paulsson is about to see what it is like when Scarpetta is angry. She firmly taps the brass pineapple against the front door and contemplates what to do if the woman refuses to open it, if she pretends she isn't home like Fielding did. She taps the pineapple again, slower and harder.

    
Night is coming quickly like a cloud of black ink because of the storm, and she can see her breath as she stands on the porch, surrounded by splashing water, and she raps again and again. I'll just keep standing here, she thinks. You're not getting out of this, don't think there's a chance I'll turn around and leave. She pulls her cell phone and a scrap of paper out of her coat pocket and looks at a number she jotted down when she was here yesterday, when she was quiet and gentle with this woman, when she felt sorry for her. She dials and can hear the phone ring inside the house, and she raps the pineapple again as loud as she can. If the door knocker breaks she doesn't care.

    
Another minute passes and she redials the number and the phone rings and rings inside and she hangs up before the answering machine begins. You're home, she thinks. Don't pretend you're not. You probably know it's me out here. Scarpetta steps back from the door and looks at the lighted windows along the front of the small brick house. Filmy white curtains are drawn across them, and they are full of soft, warm light, and she sees a shadow pass before the window on her right. She can see the outline of a person as it drifts past the window, pauses, then turns around and vanishes.

    
She raps on the door again and redials. This time when the answering machine picks up, Scarpetta stays on the line and says, "Mrs. Paulsson, it's Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Please answer your door. It's very important. I'm standing outside your front door. I know you're home." She ends the call and raps some more, and the shadow moves again, this time past the window to the left of the door, and then the door opens.

    
"Good heavens," Mrs. Paulsson says in feigned surprise that is unconvincing. "I didn't know who it was. What a storm. Come in out of the rain. I don't answer the door when I don't know who it is."

    
Scarpetta drips into the living room and takes off her long, dark, soaking-wet coat. Cold water drips from her hair and she pushes it off her face, realizing her hair is as wet as it would be had she just stepped out of the shower.

    
"God knows you're going to get
pneumonia," Mrs. Paulsson says to her. "Here I am telling you. You're the doctor. Come on in the kitchen and let me get you something warm to drink."

    
Scarpetta looks around the tiny living room, at the cold ashes and chunks of burned wood in the fireplace, at the plaid couch beneath the windows, at the doorways on either side of the living room that lead into other parts of the house. Mrs. Paulsson catches Scarpetta looking and a tightness comes over her face, a face that is almost pretty but cheap and rough.