Unnatural Exposure (8 page)

'I'm HIV positive.' His voice trembled and he began to cry.

I let him go for a while, his arms over his face, as if he could not bear for anyone to see him. His shoulders shook, tears spotting his greens as his nose ran. Getting up with a box of tissues, I came over to him.

'Here.' I set the tissues nearby. 'It's all right.' I put my arm around him and let him weep. 'Wingo, I want you to try to get hold of yourself so we can talk about this, okay?'

He nodded, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. For a moment he nuzzled his head against me, and I held him like a child. I gave him time before I faced him straight on, gripping his shoulders.

'Now is the time for courage, Wingo,' I said. 'Let's see what we can do to fight this thing.'

'I can't tell my family,' he choked. 'My father hates me anyway. And when my mother tries, he gets worse. To her. You know?'

I moved a chair close. 'What about your friend?'

'We broke up.'

'But he knows.'

'I just found out a couple weeks ago.'

'You've got to tell him and anybody else you've been intimate with,' I said. 'It's only fair. If someone had done that for you, maybe you wouldn't be sitting here now, crying.'

He was silent, staring down at his hands. Taking a deep breath, he said, 'I'm going to die, aren't I.'

'We're all going to die,' I gently told him.

'Not like this.'

'It could be like this,' I said. 'Every physical I get, I'm tested for HIV. You know what I'm exposed to. What you're going through could be me.'

He looked up at me, his eyes and cheeks burning. 'If I get AIDS, I'm going to kill myself.'

'No, you're not,' I said.

He began to cry again. 'Dr Scarpetta, I can't go through it! I don't want to end up in one of those places, a hospice, the Fan Free Clinic, in a bed next to other dying people I don't know!' Tears flowed, his face tragic and defiant. 'I'll be all alone just like I've always been.'

'Listen.' I waited until he calmed down. 'You will not go through this alone. You have me.'

He dissolved in tears again, covering his face and making sounds so loud I was certain they could be heard in the hall.

'I will take care of you,' I promised as I got up. 'Now I want you to go home. I want you to do what's right and tell your friends. Tomorrow, we'll talk more and figure out the best way to handle this. I need the name of your doctor and permission to talk to him or her.'

'Dr Alan Riley. At MCV.'

I nodded. 'I know him, and I want you to call him first thing in the morning. Let him know I'll be contacting him and that it's all right for him to talk to me.'

'Okay.' He looked furtively at me. 'But you'll be . . . You won't tell anyone.'

'Of course not,' I said with feeling.

'I don't want anyone here to know. Or Marino. I don't want him to.'

'No one will know,' I said. 'At least not from me.'

He slowly got up and stepped toward the door with the unsteadiness of someone drunk or dazed. 'You won't fire me, will you?' His hand was on the knob as he cast blood-shot eyes my way.

'Wingo, for God's sake,' I said with quiet emotion. 'I would hope you would think more of me than that.'

He opened the door. 'I think more of you than anyone.' Tears spilled again, and he wiped them on his scrubs, exposing his thin bare belly. 'I always have.'

His footsteps were rapid in the hall as he almost ran, and the elevator bell rang. I listened as he left my building for a world that did not give a damn. I rested my forehead on my fist and shut my eyes.

'Dear God,' I muttered. 'Please help.'

THE RAIN WAS still heavy as I drove home, and traffic was terrible because an accident had closed lanes in both directions on I-64. There were fire trucks and ambulances, rescuers prying open doors and hurrying with stretchers and boards. Broken glass glistened on wet pavement, drivers slowing to stare at injured people. One car had flipped multiple times before catching fire. I saw blood on the shattered windshield of another and that the steering wheel was bent. I knew what that meant, and said a prayer for whoever the people were. I hoped I would not see them in my morgue.

In Carytown, I pulled off at P. T. Hasting's. Festooned with fish nets and floats, it sold the best seafood in the city. When I walked in, the air was spicy and pungent with fish and Old Bay, and filets looked thick and fresh on ice inside displays. Lobsters with bound claws crawled in their tank of water, and were in no danger from me. I was incapable of boiling anything alive and wouldn't touch meat if the cattle and pigs were first brought to my table. I couldn't even catch fish without throwing them back.

I was trying to decide what I wanted when Bev emerged from the back.

'What's good today?' I asked her.

'Well, look who's here,' she exclaimed warmly, wiping her hands on her apron. 'You're about the only person to brave the rain. So you sure got plenty to choose from.'

'I don't have much time, and need something easy and light,' I said.

A shadow passed over her face as she opened a jar of horseradish. 'I'm afraid I can imagine what you've been doing,' she said. 'Been hearing it on the news.' She shook her head. 'You must be plumb worn out. I don't know how you sleep. Let me tell you what to do for yourself tonight.'

She walked over to a case of chilled blue crabs. Without asking, she selected a pound of meat in a carton.

'Fresh from Tangier Island. Hand-picked it myself, and you tell me if you find even a trace of cartilage or shell. You're not eating alone, are you?' she said.

'No.'

'That's good to hear.'

She winked at me. I had brought Wesley in here before.

She picked out six jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, and wrapped them. Then she set a jar of her homemade cocktail sauce on the counter by the cash register.

'I got a little carried away with the horseradish,' she said, 'so it will make your eyes water, but it's good.' She began ringing up my purchases. 'You saute the shrimp so quick their butts barely hit the pan, got it? Chill 'em, and have that as an appetizer. By the way, those and the sauce are on the house.'

'You don't need to . . .'

She waved me off. 'As for the crab, honey, listen up. One egg slightly beaten, one-half teaspoon dry mustard, a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce, four unsalted soda crackers, crushed. Chop up an onion, a Vidalia if you're still hoarding any from summer. One green pepper, chop that. A teaspoon or two of parsley, salt and pepper to taste.'

'Sounds fabulous,' I gratefully said. 'Bev, what would I do without you?'

'Now you gently mix all that together and shape it into patties.' She made the motion with her hands. 'Saute in oil over medium heat until lightly browned. Maybe fix him a salad or get some of my slaw,' she said. 'And that's as much as I would fuss over any man.'

It was as much as I did. I got started as soon as I got home, and shrimp were chilling by the time I turned on music and climbed into a bath. I poured in aromatherapy salts that were supposed to reduce stress, and shut my eyes as steam carried soothing scents into my sinuses and pores. I thought about Wingo, and my heart ached and seemed to lose its rhythm like a bird in distress. For a while, I cried. He had started out with me in this city, then left to go back to school. Now he was back and dying. I could not bear it.

At seven P. M., I was in the kitchen again, and Wesley, always punctual, eased his silver BMW into my drive. He was still in the suit he had been wearing earlier, and he had a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay in one hand, and a fifth of Black Bush Irish whiskey in the other. The rain, at last, had stopped, clouds marching on to other fronts.

'Hi,' he said when I opened the door.

'You profiled the weather right.' I kissed him.

'They don't pay me this much money for nothing.'

'The money comes from your family.' I smiled as he followed me in. 'I know what the Bureau pays you.'

'If I was as smart with money as you are, I wouldn't need it from my family.'

In my great room was a bar, and I went behind it because I knew what he wanted.

'Black Bush?' I made sure.

'If you're serving it. Fine pusher that you are, you've managed to get me hooked.'

'As long as you bootleg it from D. C., I'll serve it any time you like,' I said.

I fixed our drinks on the rocks with a splash of seltzer water. Then we went into the kitchen and sat at a cozy table by an expansive window overlooking my wooded yard and the river. I wished I could tell him about Wingo and how it felt for me. But I could not break a confidence.

'Can I bring up a little business first?' Wesley took off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of a chair.

'I have some, too.'

'You first.' He sipped his drink, his eyes on mine.

I told him what had been leaked to the press, adding, 'Ring's a problem that's only getting worse.'

'If he's the one, and I'm not saying he is or isn't. The difficulty's getting proof.'

'There's no doubt in my mind.'

'Kay, that's not good enough. We can't just throw someone out of an investigation based on our intuition.'

'Marino's heard rumors that Ring's having an affair with a well-known local broadcaster,' I then said. 'She's with the same station that had the misinformation about the case, about the victim being Asian.'

He was silent. I knew he was thinking about proof again, and he was right. This all sounded circumstantial even as I said it.

Then he said, 'This guy's very smart. Are you aware of his background?'

'I know nothing about him,' I replied.

'Graduated with honors from William and Mary, double major in psychology and public administration. His uncle is the secretary of public safety.' He piled worse news upon bad. 'Harlow Dershin, who's an honorable guy, by the way. But it goes without saying this is not a good situation for making accusations unless you're one hundred percent damn sure of yourself.'

The secretary of public safety for Virginia was the immediate boss of the superintendent of the state police. Ring's uncle couldn't have been more powerful unless he had been the governor.

'So what you're saying is that Ring's untouchable,' I said.

'What I'm saying is, his educational background makes it clear he has high aspirations. Guys like him are looking to be a chief, a commissioner, a politician. They're not interested in being a cop.'

'Guys like him are interested only in themselves,' I impatiently said. 'Ring doesn't give a damn about the victims or the people left behind who have no idea what has happened to their loved one. He doesn't care if someone else gets killed.'

'Proof,' he reminded me. 'To be fair, there are a lot of people -- including those working at the landfill -- who could have leaked information to the press.'

I had no good argument, but nothing would shake me loose from my suspicions.

'What's important is breaking these cases,' he went on to say, 'and the best way to do that is for all of us to go about our business and ignore him, just like Marino and Grigg are doing. Follow every lead we can, steering around the impediments.' His eyes were almost amber in the overhead light, and soft when they met mine.

I pushed back my chair. 'We need to set the table.'

He got out dishes and opened wine as I arranged chilled shrimp on plates and spooned Bev's Kicked By A Horse Cocktail Sauce into a bowl. I halved lemons and wrapped them in gauze diapers, and fashioned crab cakes. Wesley and I ate shrimp cocktail as night drew closer and cast its shadow over the east.

'I've missed this,' he said. 'Maybe you don't want to hear it, but it's true.'

I did not say anything because I did not want to get into another big discussion that went on for hours, leaving both of us drained.

'Anyway.' He set his fork on his plate the way polite people do when they are finished. 'Thank you. I have missed you, Dr Scarpetta.' He smiled.

'I'm glad you're here, Special Agent Wesley.'

I smiled back at him as I got up. Turning on the stove, I heated oil in a pan while he cleared dishes.

'I want to tell you what I thought of the photograph that was sent to you,'' he said. 'First, we need to establish that it is, in fact, of the victim you worked on today.'

'I'm going to establish that on Monday.'

'Assuming it is,' he went on, 'this is a very dramatic shift in the killer's M. O.'

'That and everything else.' Crab cakes went into the pan and began to sizzle.

'Right,' he said, serving coleslaw. 'It's very blatant this time, as if he's really trying to rub our noses in it. And, of course, the victimology's all wrong, too. That looks great,' he added, watching what I was cooking.

When we were seated again, I said with confidence, 'Benton, this is not the same guy.'

He hesitated before replying, 'I don't think it is, either, if you want to know the truth. But I'm not prepared to rule him out. We don't know what games he might be into now.'