Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

Verona. It didn’t matter that I happened to arrive first, a girl. Kay is one of those names that can be assigned to either gen- der, but my mother has always called me Katie. In part, ac­cording to her, it was confusing to have two Kays in the house. Later, when that was no longer an issue because I was the only Kay left, she still called me Katie, refusing to accept my father’s death, to get over it, and she still isn’t over it. She won’t let him go. My father died more than thirty years ago, when I was twelve, and my mother has never gone out with another man. She still wears her wedding band. She still calls me Katie.

LUCY AND MCGOVERN GO OVER PLANS UNTIL PAST

midnight. They have given up trying to include me in their conversations and no longer even seem to notice that I have slipped away to the Old Country in my mind, staring into the fire, absently massaging my stiff left hand and worming a fin­ger under plaster to scratch my miserable, air-starved flesh. Finally, Marino yawns like a bear and pulls himself to his feet. He is made slightly unsteady by bourbon and smells like stale cigarettes, and regards me with a softness in his eyes that I might call sad love if I were willing to accept his true feelings for me. “Come on,” he says to me. “Walk me out to my truck, Doc.” This is his way of calling for a treaty between us. Marino is not a brute. He is feeling bad about the way he has been treating me since I was almost murdered, and he has never seen me so distant and strangely quiet.

The night is cold and still, and stars are shy behind vague clouds. From Anna’s driveway, I take in the glow of her many candles in the windows and am reminded that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the last Christmas Eve of the twentieth cen­tury. Keys disturb the peace as Marino unlocks his truck and hesitates awkwardly before opening the driver’s door. “We got a lot to do. I’ll meet you at the morgue early.” This is not what he really wants to say. He stares up at the dark sky and sighs.

“Shit, Doc, Look, I’ve known for a while, okay? By now

you’ve figured that out. I’ve known what that son of a bitch Righter was up to and I had to let it run its course.”

“When were you going to tell me?” I don’t ask this accus­ingly, simply curiously.

He shrugs. “I’m glad Anna brought it up first. I know you didn’t kill Diane Bray, for God’s sake. But I wouldn’t blame you if you had, truth be told. She was the biggest fucking bitch ever born. In my book, if you’d done her in, it would have been damn self-defense.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been.” I address the possibility se­riously. “It wouldn’t have been, Marino. And I didn’t kill her.” I look closely at his hulking shape in the castoffs of carriage lamps and holiday lights in trees. “You’ve never really thought… ?” I don’t finish the question. Maybe I really don’t want to know his answer.

“Hell, I’m not sure what I’ve been thinking lately,” he says. “That’s the truth. But what am I going to do, Doc?”

“Do? About what?” I don’t know what he means.

He shrugs and gets choked up. I can’t believe it. Marino is about to cry. “If you quit.” His voice rises and he clears his throat and fumbles for his Lucky Strikes. He cups his huge hands around my hand and lights a cigarette for me, his skin rough against mine, the hairs on the back of his wrists whis­pering against my chin. He smokes, staring off, heartbroken. “Then what? I’m supposed to go down to the fucking morgue and you ain’t there anymore? Hell, I wouldn’t go down to that stink-hole half as much as I do if it wasn’t for you being there, Doc. You’re the only damn thing that gives any life to that joint, no kidding.”

I hug him. I barely come up to his chest, and his belly sep­arates the beat of our hearts. He has raised his own barriers in this life and I am overwhelmed by an immeasurable compas­sion and need for him. I pat his broad chest and let him know, “We’ve been together for a long time, Marino. You’re not rid of me yet.”[“_Toc37098923”]