‘The one crime scene the great Dr Kay Scarpetta will not visit.’ She tapped another Consulate out of the pack. ‘Would you like one?’
‘God knows I would. But I can’t.’
She sighed. ‘I remember Vienna. All those men and the two of us smoking more than they did.’
‘Probably the reason we smoked so much was all those men,’ I said.
‘That may be the cause, but for me, there seems to be no cure. It just goes to show that what we do is unrelated to what we know, and our feelings don’t have a brain.’ She shook out a match. ‘I’ve seen smokers’ lungs. And I’ve seen my share of fatty livers.’
‘My lungs are better since I quit. I can’t vouch for my liver,’ I said. ‘I haven’t given up whiskey yet.’
‘Don’t, for God’s sake. You’d be no fun.’ She paused, adding pointedly, ‘Course, feelings can be directed, educated, so they don’t conspire against us.’
‘I will probably leave tomorrow.’ I got back to that.
‘You have to go to London first to change planes.’ She met my eyes. ‘Linger there. A day.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s unfinished business, Kay. I have felt this for a long time. You need to bury Mark James.’
‘Margaret, what has suddenly prompted this?’ I was tripping over words again.
‘I know when someone is on the run. And you are, just as much as this killer is.’
‘Now, that’s a comforting thing to say,’ I replied, and I did not want to have this conversation.
But she was not going to let me escape this time. ‘For very different reasons and very similar reasons. He’s evil, you’re not. But neither of you wants to be caught.’
She had gotten to me and could tell.
‘And just who or what is trying to catch me, in your opinion?’ My tone was light but I felt the threat of tears.
‘At this stage, I expect it’s Benton Wesley.’
I stared off, past the gurney and its protruding pale foot tied with a tag. Light from above shifted by degrees as clouds moved over the sun, and the smell of death in tile and stone went back a hundred years.
‘Kay, what do you want to do?’ she asked kindly as I wiped my eyes.
‘He wants to marry me,’ I said.
I flew home to Richmond and days became weeks with the weather getting cold. Mornings were glazed with frost and evenings I spent in front of the fire, thinking and fretting. So much was unresolved and silent, and I coped the way I always did, working my way deeper into the labyrinth of my profession until I could not find a way out. It was making my secretary crazy.
‘Dr Scarpetta?’ She called out my name, her footsteps loud and brisk along the tile floor in the autopsy suite.
‘In here,’ I answered over running water.
It was October 30. I was in the morgue locker room, washing up with antibacterial soap.
‘Where have you been?’ Rose asked as she walked in. ‘Working on a brain. The sudden death from the other day.’
She was holding my calendar and flipping pages. Her gray hair was neatly pinned back, and she was dressed in a dark red suit that seemed appropriate for her mood. Rose was deeply angry with me and had been since I’ d left for Dublin without saying good-bye. Then I forgot her birthday when I got back. I turned off the water and dried my hands.
‘Swelling, with widening of the gyri, narrowing of the sulci, all good for ischemic encephalopathy brought on by his profound systemic hypotension,’ I cited.
‘I’ve been trying to find you,’ she said with strained patience.
‘What did I do this time?’ I threw up my hands.
‘You were supposed to have lunch at the Skull and Bones with Jon.’
‘Oh, God,’ I groaned as I thought of him and other medical school advisees I had so little time to see.
‘I reminded you this morning. You forgot him last week, too. He really needs to talk to you about his residency, about the Cleveland Clinic.’
‘I know, I know.’ I felt awful about it as I looked at my watch. ‘It’s one-thirty. Maybe he can come by my office for coffee?’