Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“Keep your detectives off me,” I warn him. “I don’t want to see another cop in my face. I’m not the one who did some­thing wrong.”

“If they got anything else, they’ll run it through me. This is my investigation, even if people like Galloway ain’t figured that out yet. But I also ain’t the one you got to worry about.

It’s like take a number in the deli line, there’s so many people who insist they got to talk to you.”

I stack slacks on top of the polo shirts, and then reverse the order, placing the shirts on top so they don’t wrinkle.

“Course, nowhere near as many people as the ones who want to talk to him.” He means Chandonne. “All these profil­ers and forensic psychiatrists and the media and shit.” Marino goes through the Who’s Who list.

I stop packing. I have no intention of picking through lin­gerie while Marino watches. I refuse to sort through toiletries with him witness to it all. “I need a few minutes alone,” I tell him.

He stares at me, his eyes red, his face flushed the deep color of wine. Even his balding head is red, and he is di­sheveled in his jeans and a sweatshirt, his belly nine months pregnant, his Red Wing boots huge and dirty. I can see his mind working. He doesn’t want to leave me alone and seems to be weighing concerns that he will not share with me. A paranoid thought rises like dark smoke in my mind. He doesn’t trust me. Maybe he thinks I am suicidal.

“Marino, please. Can you just stand outside and keep peo­ple away while I finish up in here? Go to my car and get my crime scene case out of the trunk. If I get called out on some­thing… well, I need to have it. The key’s in the kitchen desk drawer, the top rightwhere I keep all my keys. Please. And I need my car, by the way. I guess I’ll just take my car and you can leave the scene case in it.” Confusion eddies.

He hesitates. “You can’t take your car.”

“Damn it!” I blurt out. “Don’t tell me they’ve got to go through my car, too. This is insane.”

“Look. The first time your alarm went off last night, it was because someone tried to break into your garage.”

“What do you mean, someone!” I retort as migraine pain sears my temples and blurs my vision. “We know exactly who. He forced my garage door open because he wanted the alarm to go off. He wanted the police to show up. So it wouldn’t seem odd if the police came back a little later be- cause a neighbor reported a prowler on my property, suppos­edly.”

It was Jean-Baptiste Chandonne who came back. He im­personated the police. I still can’t believe I fell for it.

“We ain’t got all the answers yet,” Marino replies.

“Why is it I keep getting this feeling you don’t believe me?”

“You need to get to Anna’s and sleep.”

“He didn’t touch my car,” I assert. “He never got inside my garage. I don’t want anyone touching my car. I want to take it tonight. Just leave the scene case inside the trunk.”

“Not tonight.”

Marino walks out and shuts the door behind him. I am des­perate for a drink to override the electrical spikes in my cen­tral nervous system, but what do I do? Walk out to the bar and tell the cops to get the hell out of my way while I find the Scotch? Knowing that liquor probably won’t help my headache doesn’t have an impact. I am so miserable in my own skin, I don’t care what is good or not good for me right now. In the bathroom I dig through more drawers and spill several lipsticks on the floor. They roll between the toilet and the tub. I am unsteady as I bend over to retrieve them, groping awkwardly with my right arm, all of this made more difficult because I am left-handed. I stop to ponder the perfumes neatly arranged on the vanity and gently pick up the small gold metal bottle of Hermes 24 Faubourg. It is cool in my hand. I lift the spray nozzle to my nose and the spicy, erotic scent that Ben-ton Wesley loved fills my eyes with tears and my heart feels as if it will fatally fly out of rhythm. I have not used the perfume in more than a year, not once since Benton was murdered. Now I have been murdered, I tell him in my throbbing mind. And I am still here, Benton, I am still here. You were a psy­chological profiler for the FBI, an expert in dissecting the psy­ches of monsters and interpreting and predicting their behavior. You would have seen this coming, wouldn’t you? You would have predicted it, prevented it. Why weren’t you here, Benton? I would be all right if you had been here.