Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“I did not know those women,” Anna says. “I cannot speak

to what they did or did not do.”

An image of Diane Bray flashes, her arrogant beauty sav­aged, destroyed and crudely displayed on the bare mattress in- side her bedroom. She was completely unrecognizable by the time he finished with her, seeming to hate her more com­pletely than he did Kim Luongmore completely than the women we believe he murdered in Paris before he came to Richmond. I wonder out loud to Anna if Chandonne recog­nized himself in Bray and it excited his self-hate to its highest level. Diane Bray was cunning and cold. She was cruel and abused power as readily as she breathed air.

“You had every good reason to hate her,” is Anna’s reply.

This stops me in my mental tracks. I don’t respond right away. I try to remember if I have ever said I hate someone, or worse, if I have actually been guilty of it. To hate another per­son is wrong. It is never right. Hate is a crime of the spirit that leads to crimes of the flesh. Hate is what brings so many of my patients to my door. I tell Anna that I didn’t hate Diane Bray, even though she made it her mission to overpower me and almost succeeded in getting me fired. Bray was patholog­ically jealous and ambitious. But no, I tell Anna, I didn’t hate Diane Bray. She was evil, I conclude. But she didn’t deserve what he did to her. Certainly, she didn’t invite it.

“You don’t think so?” Anna questions all of it. “You do not think he did to her, symbolically, what she was doing to you? Obsession. Forcing her way into your life when you were vul­nerable. Attacking, degrading, destroyingan overpowering that aroused her, perhaps even sexually. What is it you have told me so many times? People die the way they lived.”

“Many of them do.”

“Did she?”

“Symbolically, as you put it?” I reply. “Maybe.”

“And you, Kay? Did you almost die the way you lived?”

“I didn’t die, Anna.”

“But you almost did,” she says again. “And before he came to your door, you had almost given up. You almost stopped living when Benton did.”

Tears touch my eyes.

“What do you think might have happened to you had Di­ane Bray not died?” Anna then asks.

Bray ran the Richmond police department and fooled peo- pie who mattered. In a very short time, she made a name for herself throughout Virginia, and ironically, her narcissism, her lust for power and recognition, it appears, may be what lured Chandonne to her. I wonder if he stalked her first. I wonder if he stalked me, and suppose the answer to both questions is that he must have.

“Do you think you’d still be the chief medical examiner if Diane Bray were alive?” Anna’s stare is unwavering.

“I wouldn’t have let her win.” I taste my soup and my stomach flops. “I don’t care how diabolical she was, I wouldn’t have allowed it. My life is up to me. It was never up to her. My life is mine to make or ruin.”

“Perhaps you are glad she is dead,” Anna says.

“The world’s better off without her.” I push the place mat and everything on it well away from me. “That’s the truth. The world is better off without people like her. The world would be better off without him.”

“Better off without Chandonne?”

I nod.

“Then perhaps you wish Lucy had killed him after all?” she quietly suggests, and Anna has a way of demanding truth without being aggressive or judging. “Maybe you would pull the switch, as they say?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, I would not pull the switch on anyone. I can’t eat. I’m sorry you went to so much trouble. I hope I’m not coming down with something.”

“We have talked enough for now.” Anna is suddenly the parent deciding it is time for bed. “Tomorrow is Sunday, a good day to stay in and be quiet and rest. I am clearing my calendar, canceling all my appointments for Monday. And then I’ll cancel Tuesday and Wednesday and the rest of the week, if need be.”

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