“No. You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter if it was a good shooting. It doesn’t matter ifATF gives me a medal:”
She sat up and got to her feet. She stared down at me with defeat in her eyes and another emotion I didn’t recognize. Maybe it was grief. She’d never shown grief when Benton was murdered. All I’d ever seen was rage.
“The bullet they took out of her leg? It’s a Hornady Custom Jacketed hollowpoint. Ninety grains. What I had in my gun.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m the one who shot her, Aunt Kay.”
“Even if you did. : .”
“What if she never walks again . . . ? What if she’s finished in law enforcement because of me?”
“She won’t be jumping out of helicopters anytime soon,” I said. “But she’s going to be fine.”
“What if I permanently damaged her face with my fucking fist?”
“Lucy, listen to me,” I said. “You saved her life. If you killed two people to do that, then so be it. You had no choice. It’s not that you wanted to:’
“The hell I didn’t;’ she said. “I wish I’d killed all of them.”
“You don’t mean that:’
“Maybe I’ll just be a mercenary soldier,” she bitterly said. “Got any murderers, rapists, carjackers, pedophiles, drug dealers you need to get rid of? Just call one-eighthundred-L-U-C-Y”
“You can’t bring Benton back through killing.”
Still, it was as if she didn’t hear me.
“He wouldn’t want you to feel this way,” I said.
The telephone rang.
“He didn’t abandon you, Lucy. Don’t be angry with him because he died.”
The phone rang a third time, and she couldn’t restrain herself. She grabbed it, unable to hide the hope and fear in her eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what Dr. Worth had told me. Now was not the time.
“Sure, hold on,” she said, and disappointment and more hurt touched her face as she handed me the phone.
“Yes,” I reluctantly answered.
“Is this Dr. Kay Scarpetta?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“It’s important I verify who you are.” The accent was American.
“If you’re another reporter. . :’
“I’m going to give you a phone number.”
“I’m going to give you a promise,” I said. “Tell me who you are, or I’m hanging up.”
“Let me give you this number,” and he began reciting it before I could refuse.
I recognized the country code for France.
“It’s three o’clock in the morning in France,” I said, as if he didn’t know.
“It doesn’t matter what time it is. We have been getting information from you and running it through our computer system.”
“Not from me.”
“No, not in the sense that you typed it into the computer, Dr. Scarpetta”
His voice was baritone and smooth, like fine polished wood.
“I’m at the secretariat in Lyon,” he informed me. “Call the number I gave you and at least get our after-hours voice mail.”
“How much sense does that . . . ?”
“Please.”
I hung up and tried, and a recording of a woman with a heavy French accent said “Bonjour, hello,” and gave the office hours in both languages. I entered the extension he had given me, and the man’s voice came back over the line.
“Bonjour, hello? And that’s supposed to identify who you are?” I said. “You could be a restaurant for all I know.”
“Please fax me a sheet of your letterhead. When I see that I’ll fill you in.”
He gave me the number. I put him on hold and went back to my study. I faxed a sheet of my stationery to him while Lucy remained in front of the fire, elbow on her knee, chin in her hand, listless.
“My name’s Jay Talley, the ATF liaison at Interpol,” he said when I got back with him. “We need you to come here right away. You and Captain Marino.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You should have my reports. I have nothing more to add to them at this time.”
“We wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.”
“Marino doesn’t have a passport,” I said.
“He went to the Bahamas three years ago.”