Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“A hamburger and a Pepsi.”

“And fries?”

“Mais oui. Fries.” He seems to think this is funny.

“So you’ve been given whatever you need, isn’t that right?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“And the hospital staff removed your bandages and gave you special glasses to wear. You’re comfortable?”

“I hurt a little bit.”

“Were you given any pain medication?”

“Yes.”

“Tylenol. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, I suppose. Two tablets”

“Nothing more than that. Nothing that might interfere with

your thinking.”

“No, nothing.” His black glasses are fixed on her.

“And nobody is forcing you to talk to me or made you any promises, isn’t that right?” Her shoulders move as she flips a page in what I assume is a legal pad,

“Yes.”

“Sir, have I made any threats or promises to get you to talk to me?”

This goes on and on as Berger runs through her checklist. She is making sure that Chandonne’s eventual representation won’t have any opportunity to say that Chandonne was intim­idated, badgered, abused or treated unfairly in any way. He sits straight in his chair, his arms folded on top of each other in a tangle of hair that splays over the top of the table and hangs in repulsive clumps, like dirty cornsilk, from the short sleeves of his hospital-issue shirt. Nothing about the way his anatomy has been put together computes. He reminds me of old campy movies where silly boys on the beach bury each other in sand and paint eyes on their foreheads and make beards look like head hair or wear sunglasses on the backs of their heads or kneel with shoes on their knees to turn them­selves into dwarfspeople turning themselves into freakish caricatures, because they think it is amusing. There is nothing amusing about Chandonne. I can’t even find him pitiful. My anger stirs like a great shark deep beneath the surface of my stoical demeanor.

“Let’s get back to the night you say you met Susan Pless,” Berger says to him on the tape. “In Lumi. That’s on the corner of Seventieth and Lexington?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You were saying you had dinner together and then you asked her if she would like to drink champagne with you somewhere. Sir, are you aware that the description of the gen­tleman Susan met and dined with that night doesn’t fit yours in the least?”

“I have no way to know.”

“But you must be aware that you have a serious medical condition that causes you to look very different from other people, and it’s hard to imagine, therefore, that you could be confused with someone who absolutely doesn’t have your condition. Hypertrichosis. Isn’t that what you have?”

I catch the barely perceptible flicker of Chandonne blink­ing behind the dark glasses. Berger has touched a nerve. The muscles in his face tense. He begins flexing his fingers again.

“Is that the name of your medical condition? Or do you know what it’s called?” Berger says to him.

“I know what it is,” Chandonne replies in a tone that is tighter.

“And you have lived with it all your life?”

He stares at her.

“Please answer the question, sir.”

“Of course. That is a stupid question. What do you think? You come down with it like a cold?”

“My point is, you don’t look like other people, and there­fore I’m having a hard time imagining you might be mistaken for a man described as clean-cut and handsome with no facial hair.” She pauses. She is picking at him. She wants him to lose control. “Someone well groomed in an expensive suit.” An­other pause. “Didn’t you just finish telling me you’ve virtually lived like a homeless person? How could that man in Lumi have been you, sir?”

“I had on a black suit, a shirt and tie.” Hate. Chandonne’s true nature has begun to shine through his mantle of dark de­ceit like a distant cold star. I expect him to dive over the table any moment and crush Berger’s throat or bash her head against the wall before Marino or anyone else can stop him. I have almost quit breathing. I remind myself that Berger is alive and well, sitting at the table with me inside my confer­ence room. It is Thursday night. In four hours, it will have been exactly five days since Chandonne kicked his way into my house and tried to beat me to death with a chipping ham­mer.