Black notice (2 page)

His penmanship and the way he expressed himself had always been deliberate and spare, and I found his words a comfort and a torment as I obsessively studied them, dissecting, excavating for one more hint of meaning or tone. At intervals, I almost believed he was cryptically telling me his death wasn't real, was part of an intrigue, a plan, something orchestrated by the FBI, the CIA, God only knew. Then the truth.returned, bringing its hollow chill to my heart. Benton had been tortured and murdered. DNA, dental charts, personal effects had verified that the unrecognizable remains were his.

I tried to imagine how I would honor his request tonight and didn't see how I could. It was ludicrous to think of Lucy's flying to Richmond, Virginia, for dinner. I picked up the phone and tried to reach her anyway, because that was what Benton had asked me to do. She called me back on her .portable phone about fifteen minutes later.

"The office said you're looking for me. What's going on?" she said cheerfully.

"It's hard to explain," I began. "I wish I didn't always have to go through your field office to get to you."

"Me, too."

"And I know I can't say much . . ." I started to get upset again.

"What's wrong?" she cut in.

"Benton wrote a letter. . ."

"We'll talk another time." She interrupted again, and I understood, or at least I assumed I did. Cell phones were not secure.

"Turn in right there," Lucy said to someone. "I'm sorry," she got back to me. "We're making a pit stop at Los Bobos to get a shot of colada."

"A what?"

"High-test caffeine and sugar in a shot glass."

"Well, it's something he wanted me to read now, on this day. He wanted you . . . Never mind. It all seems so silly." I fought to sound as if I were held together just fine.

"Gotta go;" Lucy said to me.

"Maybe you can call later?"

"Will do;" she said in her same irritating tone.

"Who are you with?" I prolonged the conversation because I needed her voice, and I didn't want to hang up with the echo of her sudden coolness in my ear.

"My psycho partner," she said.

"Tell her hi."

"She says hi," Lucy said to her partner, Jo, who was Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA.

They. worked together on a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, squad that had been relentlessly working a series of very vicious home invasions. Jo and Lucy's relationship was a partnership in another way, too, but they were very discreet. I wasn't sure ATF or DEA even knew.

"Later;" Lucy said to me, and the line went dead.

Richmond police captain Pete Marino and I had known each other for so long it sometimes seemed we were inside each other's heads. So it really came as no great surprise when he called me before I had a chance to track him down.

"You sound really stopped up," he said tome. "You got a cold?"

"No;" I said. "I'm glad you called because I was getting ready to call you."

"Oh, yeah?"

I could tell he was smoking in either his truck or police car. Both had two-way radios and scanners that. this moment were making a lot of noise.

"Where are you?" I asked him.

"Cruising around, listening to the scanner," he said, as if he had the top down and was having a wonderful day. "Counting the hours till retirement. Ain't life grand? Nothing missin' but the bluebird of happiness."

His sarcasm could have shred paper.

"What in the world's wrong with you?" I said.

"I'm assuming you know about the ripe one they just found,at the Port of Richmond," he replied. "People puking all over the place, is what I hear. Just glad it ain't my fucking problem."

My mind wouldn't work. I didn't know what he was talking about. Call-waiting was clicking. I switched the cordless phone to the other ear as I walked into my study and pulled out a chair at the desk.

"What ripe one?" I asked him. "Marino, hold on," I said as call-waiting tried again. "Let me see who this is. Don't go away." I tapped the hang-up button.

"Scarpetta" I said.

"It's Jack," my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, said. "They've found a body inside a cargo container at the Port of Richmond. Badly decomposed:'

"That's what Marino was just telling me," I said.

"You sound like you've got the flu. I think I'm getting it, too. And Chuck's coming in late because he's not feeling so great. Or so he says."

"Did this container-just come off a ship?" I interrupted him.

"The Sirius, as in the star. Definitely a weird situation. How do you want me to handle it?"

I began scribbling notes on a call sheet, my handwriting more illegible than usual, my central nervous system as crashed as a bad hard drive.

"I'll go; '.1 said without pause even as Benton's words pulsed in my mind.

I was off and running again. Maybe even faster this time.

"You don't need to do that, Dr. Scarpetta," Fielding said as if he were suddenly in charge. "I'll go down there. You're supposed to be taking the day off."

"Who do I contact when I get there?" I asked. I didn't want him to start in again.

Fielding had been begging me for months to take a break, to go somewhere for a week or two or even consider a sabbatical. I was tired of people watching me with worried eyes.

I was angered by the intimation that Benton's death was affecting my performance at work, that I had begun isolating myself from my staff and others and looked exhausted and distracted.

"Detective Anderson notified us. She's at the scene," Fielding was saying.

Who .

"Must be new. Really, Dr. Scarpetta, I'll handle it. Why don't you take a break? Stay home:"

I realized I still had Marino on hold. I switched back to tell him I'd call as soon as I got off the line with my office. He'd already hung up.

"Tell me how to get there," I said to my deputy chief.

"I guess you're not going to accept my pro bono advice."

"If I'm coming from my house, Downtown Expressway, and then what?" I said.

He gave me directions. I got off the phone and hurried to my bedroom, Benton's letter in hand. I couldn't think of a place to keep it. I couldn't just leave it in a drawer or file cabinet. God forbid I should lose it or the housekeeper should discover it, and I didn't want it in a place where I might run across it unawares and be undone again. Thoughts spun wildly, my heart racing, adrenaline screaming through my blood as I stared at the stiff, creamy envelope, at "Kay" written in Benton's modest, careful hand.

I finally focused on the small fireproof safe bolted to the floor in my closet. I frantically tried to remember where I had' written down the combination.

"I'm losing my goddamn mind," I exclaimed out loud.

The combination was where I always kept it, between pages 670 and 671 of the seventh edition of Hunter's Tropical Medicine. I locked the letter in the safe and walked into the bathroom and repeatedly splashed cold water on my face. I called Rose, my secretary, and instructed her to arrange for a removal service to meet me at the Port of Richmond in about an hour and a half.

"Let them know the body's in very sorry shape," I emphasized.

"How are you going to get there?" Rose asked. "I'd tell you to stop here first and get the Suburban, but Chuck's taken it in for an oil change."

"I thought he was sick."

"He showed up fifteen minutes ago and left with the Suburban."

"Okay, I'll have to use my own car. Rose, I'm going to need the Ltuna-Lite and a hundred-foot extension cord. Have someone meet me in the parking lot with them. I'll call when I'm close."

"You need to know that Jean's in a bit of an uproar."

"What's the problem?" I asked, surprised.

Jean Adams was the office administrator and she rarely showed emotion, much less got upset.

"Apparently all the coffee money disappeared. You know this isn't the first time. . ."

"Damn!" I said. "Where was it kept?"

"Locked up in Jean's desk drawer, like always. Doesn't look like the lock was pried open or anything, but she went into the drawer this morning, no money. A hundred and eleven dollars and thirty-five cents."

"This has got to stop," I said.

"I don't know if you're aware of the latest;" Rose went on. "Lunches have started disappearing from the break room. Last week Cleta accidentally left her portable phone on her desk overnight and the next morning it was gone. Same thing happened to Dr. Riley. He left a nice pen in the pocket of his lab coat. Next morning, no pen"

"The crew that cleans up after hours?"

"Maybe;" Rose said. "But I will tell you, Dr. Scarpettaand I'm not trying to accuse anyone-I'm afraid it might be an inside job:'

"You're right. We shouldn't accuse anyone. Is there any good news today?"

"Not so far," Rose matter-of-factly replied.

Rose had worked for me since I had been appointed chief medical examiner, which meant she had been running my life for most of my career. She had the remarkable ability to know virtually everything going on around her without getting caught up in it herself. My secretary remained untainted, and although the staff was somewhat afraid of her, she was the first one they ran to when there was a problem. .

"Now you take care of yourself, Dr. Scarpetta," she went on. "You sound awful. Why don't you let Jack go to the scene and you stay in for once?"

"I'll just take my car," I said as a wave of grief rolled over me and sounded in my voice.

Rose caught it and rode it out in silence. I could hear her shuffling through papers on her desk. I knew she wanted to somehow comfort me, but I had never allowed that.

"Well, make sure you change before you get back in it," she finally said.

"Change what?"

"Your clothes. Before you get back into your car," she said as if rd never dealt with a decomposed body before.

"Thank you, Rose," I said.

I set the burglar alarm and locked the house, turning on the light in the garage, where I opened a spacious locker built of cedar, with vents along the top and bottom. Inside were hiking boots, waders, heavy leather gloves and a Barbour coat with its special waterproofing that reminded me of wax.

Out here I kept socks, long underwear, jumpsuits and other gear that would never see the inside of my house. Their end of tour landed them in the industrial-size stainless steel sink and washer and dryer not meant for my normal clothes.

I tossed a jumpsuit, a pair of black leather Reeboks and an Office of Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, baseball cap inside the trunk. I checked my large Halliburton aluminum scene case to make sure I had plenty of latex gloves, heavy-duty trash bags, disposable sheets, camera and film. I set out with a heavy heart ss Benton's words drifted through my mind again. I tried to block out his voice, his eyes and smile and the feel of his skin. I wanted to forget him and more than anything, I didn't.

I turned on the radio as I followed the Downtown Expressway to 1-95, the Richmond skyline sparkling in the sun. I was slowing at the Lombardy Toll Plaza when my car phone rang. It was Marino.

Thought I'd let you know I'm going to drop by," he said.

A horn blared when I changed lanes and almost clipped a silver Toyota in my blind spot. The driver swooped around me, yelling obscenities I couldn't hear.

"Go to hell," I angrily said in his wake.

"What?" Marino said loudly in my ear.

"Some goddamn idiot driver."

"Oh, good. You ever heard of road rage, Doc?"

"Yes, and I've come down with it"

I took the Ninth Street exit, heading to my office, and let Rose know I was two minutes away. When I pulled into the parking lot, Fielding was waiting with the hard case and extension cord.

"I don't guess the Suburban's back yet," I said.

"Nope," he replied, loading the equipment in my trunk. "Gonna be something when you show up in this thing. I can just see all those dockworkers staring at this goodlooking blond woman in a black Mercedes. Maybe you should borrow my car."

My bodybuilding deputy chief had just finalized a divorce and celebrated by trading in his Mustang for a red Corvette.

"Actually, that's a good idea;" I dryly said. "If you don't mind. As long as it's a V-eight"

Yeah, yeah. I hear ya. Call me if you need me. You know the way, right?"

"I do."

His directions led me south, and I was almost to Petersburg when I turned off and drove past the back of the Philip Morris manufacturing plant and over railroad tracks. The narrow road led me through a vacant land of weeds and woods that ended abruptly at a security checkpoint. I felt as if I were crossing the border into an unfriendly country. Beyond was a train yard and hundreds of boxcar-size orange containers stacked three and four high. A guard who took his job very seriously stepped outside his booth. I rolled down my window.