Point of Origin

I waited for Lucy to call, and she didn't. Since I had not called Benton, at midnight, he finally called me.

'Kay?'

'Have you heard?' I said with feeling. 'What Carrie has done?'

'I know about her letter.'

'Damn it, Benton. Damn it all.'

'I'm in New York,' he surprised me by saying. 'The Bureau's called me in.'

'Well, okay. And they should have. You know her.'

'Unfortunately.'

'I'm glad you're there,' I decided out loud. 'Somehow it seems safer. Isn't that an ironical thing to say? Since when is New York safer?'

'You're very upset.'

'Do you know anything more about where she is?' I swirled melting ice in my glass.

'We know she mailed her latest letter from a 10036 zip code, which is Times Square. The postdate is June tenth, yesterday, Tuesday.'

'The day she escaped.'

'Yes.'

'And we still don't know how she did that.'

'We still don't know,' he said. 'It's as if she beamed herself across the river.'

'No, it's not like that,' I said, weary and out of sorts. 'Someone saw something and someone probably helped her. She's always been skilled at getting people to do what she wants.'

'The profiling unit's had too many calls to count,' he said. 'Apparently she did a blitz mailing, all the major newspapers, including the Post and The New York Times.'

'And?'

'And this is too juicy for them to drop in a basket, Kay. The hunt for her is as big as the one for the Unabomber or Cunanan, and now she's writing to the media. The story's going to run. Hell, they'll print her grocery list and broadcast her belches. To them she's gold. She's magazine covers and movies in the making.'

'I don't want to hear anymore,' I said.

'I miss you.'

'You wouldn't if you were around me right now, Benton.'

We said good night and I fluffed the pillow behind my back and contemplated another whiskey but thought better of it. I tried to imagine what Carrie would do, and the twisted path always led back to Lucy. Somehow, that would be Carrie's tour de force because she was consumed by envy. Lucy was more gifted, more honorable, more everything, and Carrie would not rest until she had appropriated that fierce beauty and sucked up every drop of Lucy's life. It was becoming clear to me that Carrie did not even need to be present to do it. All of us were moving closer to her black hole, and the power of her pull was shockingly strong.

My sleep was tortured, and I dreamed of plane crashes and sheets soaked with blood. I was in a car and then a train, and someone was chasing me. When I awakened at half past six, the sun was announcing itself in a royal blue sky, and puddles gleamed in the grass. I carried my Glock into the bathroom, locked the door and took a quick shower. When I shut the water off, I listened closely to make sure my burglar alarm wasn't going, and then I checked the keypad in my bedroom to make sure the system was still armed. All the while, I was aware of how paranoid and downright irrational my behavior was. But I could not help it. I was scared.

Suddenly Carrie was everywhere. She was the thin woman in sunglasses and baseball cap walking along my street, or the driver pulling up close behind me at the toll plaza, or the homeless woman in a shapeless coat who stared at me as I crossed Broad Street. She was anyone white with punk hair and body piercing, or anyone androgynous or oddly dressed, and all the while I kept telling myself I had not seen Carrie in more than five years. I had no idea what she looked like now and quite possibly would not recognize her until it was too late.

The bay door was open when I parked behind my office, and Bliley's Funeral Home was loading a body into the back of a shiny black hearse, as the rhythm continued of bringing and taking away.

'Pretty weather,' I said to the attendant in his neat dark suit.

'Fine, how are you?' came the reply of someone who no longer listened.

Another well-dressed man climbed out to help, and stretcher legs clacked and the tailgate slammed shut. I waited for them to drive off, and I rolled down the big door after them.

My first stop was Fielding's office. It was not quite quarter after eight.

'How are we doing?' I asked as I knocked on his door. 'Come in,' he said.

He was scanning books on his shelves, his lab coat straining around his powerful shoulders. Life was difficult for my deputy chief, who rarely could find clothes that fit, since he basically had no waist or hips. I remembered our first company picnic at my house, when he had lounged in the sun with nothing but cut-offs on. I had been amazed and slightly embarrassed that I could scarcely take my eyes off him, not because I had any thoughts of bed, but rather his raw physical beauty had briefly held me hostage. I could not comprehend how anyone could find time to look like that.

'I guess you've seen the paper,' he said.

'The letter,' I said as my mood sunk.

'Yes.'

He slid out an outdated PDR and set it on the floor.

'Front page with a photo of you and an old mug shot of her. I'm sorry you have to put up with shit like this,' he said, hunting for other books. 'The phones up front are going crazy.'

'What have we got this morning?' I changed the subject.

'Last night's car wreck from Midlothian Turnpike, passenger and driver killed. They're views, and DeMaio's already started on them. Other than that, nothing else.'

'That's enough,' I said. 'I've got court.'

'Thought you were on vacation.'

'So did I.'

'Seriously. Didn't get it continued. What? You were gonna have to come back from Hilton Head?'

'Judge Bowls.'

'Huh,' Fielding said with disgust. 'He's done this to you how many times now? I think he waits to find out your void dates so he can decide on a court date that will totally screw you. Then what? You bust your butt to get back here and half the time he continues the case.'

'I'm on the pager,' I said.

'And you can guess what I'll be doing.'

He pointed at the paperwork cascading from piles on his desk.

'I'm so behind I need a rearview mirror,' he quipped.

'There's no point in nagging you,' I said.

The John Marshall Courts Building was but a ten-minute walk from our new location, and I thought the exercise would do me good. The morning was bright, the air cool and clean as I followed the sidewalk along Leigh Street and turned south on Ninth, passing police headquarters, my pocketbook over my shoulder and an accordion file tucked under an arm.

This morning's case was the mundane result of one drug dealer killing another, and I was surprised to see at least a dozen reporters on the third floor, outside the courtroom door. At first I thought Rose had made a mistake on my schedule, for it never occurred to me that the media might have been there for me.

But the minute I was spotted, they hurried my way with television cameras shouldered, microphones pointed, and flashguns going off. At first I was startled, then I was angry.

'Dr Scarpetta, what is your response to Carrie Grethen's letter?' asked a reporter from Channel 6.

'No comment,' I said as I frantically cast about for the commonwealth's attorney who had summoned me here to testify in his case.

'What about the conspiracy allegation?'

'Between you and your FBI lover?'

'That would be Benton Wesley?'

'What is your niece's reaction?'

I shoved past a cameraman, my nerves hopping like faulty wiring as my heart flew. I shut myself inside the small windowless witness room and sat in a wooden chair. I felt trapped and foolish, and wondered how I could have been so thick as not to consider that something like this might happen after what Carrie had done. I opened the accordion file and began going through various reports and diagrams, envisioning gunshot entrances and exits and which had been fatal. I stayed in my airless space for almost half an hour until the Commonwealth's attorney found me. We spoke for several minutes before I took the stand.