Point of Origin

'And they can't fool you,' I said.

'Oh no-sir-ree-bob. But it's none of my business as long as they don't wreck the room.'

'You're not too far from the farm that burned,' I then said.

She got more animated. 'I was working that night. You could see the flames shooting up like a volcano going off.' She gestured broadly with her arms. 'Everyone staying here was out front watching and listening to the sirens. All those poor horses. I can't get over it.'

'Are you acquainted with Kenneth Sparkes?' I wondered out loud.

'Can't say I've ever seen him in person.'

'What about a woman who might have been staying in his house?' I asked. 'You ever heard anything about that?'

'Only what people say.' Helen was looking at the door as if someone might appear any second.

'For example,' I prodded.

'Well, I guess Mr Sparkes is quite the gentleman, you know,' Helen said. 'Not that his ways are popular around here, but he's quite a figure. Likes them young and pretty.'

She thought for a moment and gave me her eyes as moths flickered outside the window.

'There are those who got upset when they'd see him around with the newest one,' she said. 'You know, no matter what anybody says, this is still the Old South.'

'Anybody in particular who got upset?' I asked.

'Well, the Jackson boys. They're always in one sort of trouble or another,' she said, and she was still watching the door. 'They just don't like colored people. So for him to be sporting something pretty, young, and white, he tended to do that a lot… Well, there's been talk. I'll just put it like that.'

I was imagining Ku Klux Klansmen with burning crosses, and white supremacists with cold eyes and guns. I had seen hate before. I had dipped my hands in its carnage for most of my life. My chest was tight as I bid Helen the clerk good night. I was trying not to leap to assumptions about prejudice and arson and an intended victim, which may have been only Sparkes and not a woman whose body was now on its way to Richmond. Of course, it may simply have been the former governor's vast property that the perpetrators had been interested in, and they did not know anyone was home.

The man in the tank top was on the pay phone when I went out. He was absently holding his new lightbulb and talking in an intense, low voice. As I walked past, his anger flared.

'Dammit, Louise! That's what I mean. You never shut up,' he snarled into the phone as I decided to call Benton later.

I unlocked the red door to room fifteen, and Lucy pretended that she hadn't been waiting for me as she sat in a wing chair, bent over a spiral notebook, making notes and calculations. But she had not touched her fast-food dinner, and I knew she was starved. I took Whoppers and French fries out of the bag and set paper napkins and food on a nearby table.

'Everything's cold,' I said simply.

'You get used to it.' Her voice was distant and distracted.

'Would you like to shower first?' I asked politely.

'Go ahead,' she replied, buried in math, a scowl furrowing her brow.

Our room was impressively clean for the price and decorated in shades of brown, with a Zenith TV almost as old as my niece. There were Chinese lamps and long-tasseled lanterns, porcelain figurines, static oil paintings and flower-printed spreads. Carpeting was a thick shag Indian design, and wallpaper was woodland scenes. Furniture was Formica or so thickly shellacked that I could not see the grain of the wood.

I inspected the bath and found it a solid pink and white tile that probably went back to the fifties, with Styrofoam cups and tiny wrapped bars of Lisa Luxury soap on the sink. But it was a single plastic red rose in a window that touched me most. Someone had done the best with the least to make strangers feel special, and I doubted that most patrons noticed or cared. Maybe forty years ago such resourcefulness and attention to detail would have mattered when people were more civilized than they seemed to be now.

I lowered the toilet lid and sat to remove my dirty wet boots. Then I fought with buttons and hooks until my clothes retreated to a wilted heap on the floor. I showered until I was warm and cleansed of the smell of fire and death. Lucy was working on her laptop when I emerged in an old Medical College of Virginia T-shirt and popped open a beer.

'What's up?' I asked as I sat on the couch.

'Just screwing around. I don't know enough to do much more than that,' she replied. 'But that was a big fucking fire, Aunt Kay. And it doesn't appear to have been set with gasoline.'

I had nothing to say.

'And someone died in it? In the master bathroom? Maybe? How did that happen? At eight o'clock at night?'

I did not know.

'I mean, she's in there brushing her teeth and the fire horn goes off?'

Lucy stared hard at me.

'And what?' she asked. 'She just stays there and dies?'

She paused to stretch sore shoulders.

'You tell me, Chief. You're the expert.'

'I can offer no explanation, Lucy,' I said.

'And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. World famous expert Dr Kay Scarpetta doesn't know.' She was getting irritable. 'Nineteen horses,' she went on. 'So who took care of them? Sparkes doesn't have a stable hand? And why did one of the horses get away? The little black stallion?'

'How do you know it's a boy?' I said as someone knocked on our door. 'Who is it?' I asked through wood.

'Yo. It's me,' Marino announced gruffly.

I let him in and could tell by the expression on his face that he had news.

'Kenneth Sparkes is alive and well,' he announced.

'Where is he?' I was very confused again.

'Apparently, he's been out of the country and flew back when he heard the news. He's staying in Beaverdam and don't seem to have a clue about anything, including who the victim is,' Marino told us.

'Why Beaverdam?' I asked, calculating how long the trip would take to that remote part of Hanover County.

'His trainer lives there.'

'His?'

'Horse trainer. Not his trainer, like in weight lifting or nothing.'

'I see.'

'I'm heading out in the morning, around nine A.M.,' he said to me. 'You can go on to Richmond or go with me.'

'I have a body to identify, so I need to talk to him whether he claims to know anything or not. I guess I'm going with you,' I said as Lucy met my eyes. 'Are you planning on our fearless pilot dropping us off, or have you managed to get a car?'

'I'm skipping the whirlybird,' Marino retorted. 'And do I need to remind you that the last time you had a chat with Sparkes, you pissed him off?'

'I don't remember,' I said, and I really did not, for I had irritated Sparkes on more than one occasion when we disagreed about case details he thought should be released to the media.

'I can guarantee he does, Doc. You gonna share the beer or what?'

'I can't believe you don't have your own stash,' Lucy said as she resumed working on her laptop, keys clicking.

He went to the refrigerator and helped himself to one.

'You want my opinion at the end of the day?' he said. 'It's the same as it was.'

'Which is?' Lucy asked without looking up.

'Sparkes is behind this.'

He set the bottle opener on the coffee table and stopped at the door, resting his hand on the knob.

'For one thing, it's just too friggin' convenient that he was suddenly out of the country when it happened,' he talked on as he yawned. 'So he gets someone to do his dirty work. Money.' He slid a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and shoved it between his lips. 'That's all the bastard's ever cared about, anyway. Money and his dick.'

'Marino, for God's sake,' I complained.

I wanted to shut him up, and I wanted him to leave. But he ignored my cue.

'The worst news of all is now we probably got a homicide on our hands, on top of everything else,' he said as he opened the door. 'Meaning yours truly here is stuck on this case like a fly on a pest strip. And that goes for the two of you. Shit.'