For a while I searched my house again, flipping on lights in every room. Satisfied that I had no unwanted guests, I checked the fuse box in the garbage and flipped on the breakers that had tripped. Order was restored, the alarm reset, and I poured a tumbler of Black Bush Irish whiskey on the rocks and waited for my nerves to tuck themselves back inside their sheaths. Then I called Johnson’s Motel in Warrenton, but Lucy was not there. So I tried her apartment in D.C. and Janet answered the phone.
‘Hi, it’s Kay,’ I said. ‘I hope I didn’t wake anyone.’
‘Oh, hello, Dr Scarpetta,’ said Janet, who could not call me by my first name no matter how many times I had told her to. ‘No, I’m just sitting here having a beer and waiting for Lucy.’
‘I see,’ I said, very disappointed. ‘She’s on her way home from Warrenton?’
‘Not for long. You ought to see this place. Boxes everywhere. It’s a wreck.’
‘How are you holding up through all this, Janet?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said, and I detected a quiver in her voice. ‘It will be an adjustment. God knows, we’ve been through adjustments before.’
‘And I’m sure you’ll get through this one with flying colors.’
I sipped my whiskey and had no faith in what I’d just said, but at the moment I was grateful to hear a warm human voice.
‘When I was married — ancient years ago — Tony and I were on two totally different planes,’ I said. ‘But we managed to find time for each other, quality time. In some ways, it was better like that.’
‘And you also got divorced,’ she politely pointed out.
‘Not at first.’
‘Lucy won’t be here for at least another hour, Dr Scarpetta. Is there a message I can give her?’
I hesitated, not sure what to do.
‘Is everything all right?’ Janet then asked.
‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘I guess you haven’t heard. I guess she hasn’t heard either, for that matter.’
I gave her a quick summary of Carrie’s letter to the press, and after I had finished, Janet was as silent as a cathedral.
‘I’m telling you because you’d better be prepared,’ I added. ‘You could wake up tomorrow and see this in the paper. You might hear it on the late news tonight.’
‘It’s best you told me,’ Janet said so quietly I could barely hear her. ‘And I’ll let Lucy know when she gets in.’
‘Tell her to call me, if she’s not too tired.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
‘Good night, Janet.’
‘No, it isn’t. It isn’t a good night at all,’ she said. ‘That bitch has been ruining our lives for years. One way or another. And I’ve fucking had enough of it! And I’m sorry to use that word.’
‘I’ve said it before.’
‘I was there, for God’s sake!’ She began to cry. ‘Carrie was all over her, the manipulative psycho bitch. Lucy never stood a chance. My God, she was just a kid, this genius kid who probably should have stayed in college where she belonged instead of doing an internship with the Fucking Bureau of Investigation. Look, I’m still FBI, okay? But I see the shit. And they haven’t done right by her, which just makes her all the more vulnerable to what Carrie is doing.’
My whiskey was half gone, and there wasn’t enough of it in the world to make me feel better right now.
‘She doesn’t need to get upset, either,’ Janet went on in a gush of frankness about her lover that I had never before heard. ‘I don’t know if she’s told you. In fact, I don’t think she ever intended to, but Lucy’s been seeing a psychiatrist for two years, Dr Scarpetta.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ I said, disguising my hurt. ‘No, she hasn’t told me, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect her to,’ I added with the perfect voice of objectivity as the ache in my heart got more intense.
‘She’s been suicidal,’ Janet said. ‘More than once.’
‘I’m glad she s seeing someone,’ was all I could think to say as tears welled.
I was devastated. Why had Lucy not reached out to me?