Point of Origin

'You can go with me, or I'm happy to do this on my own,' I told him.

A baseball game was playing loudly on his TV, and the phone clunked as he set it down somewhere. I could hear him breathing.

'Crap,' he said.

'I know,' I agreed. 'I'm tired, too.'

'Give me half an hour.'

'I'll pick you up to save you a little time,' I offered.

'Yeah, that will work.'

He lived south of the James in a neighborhood with wooded lots just off the strip-mall-strewn corridor called Midlothian Turnpike, where one could buy handguns or motorcycles or Bullet burgers, or indulge in a brushless carwash with or without wax. Marino's small aluminum-sided white house was on Ruthers Road, around the corner from Bon Air Cleaners and Ukrop's. He had a large American flag in his front yard and a chainlink fence around the back, and a carport for his camper.

Sunlight winked off strands of unlit Christmas lights that followed every line and angle of Marino's habitat. The multi-colored bulbs were tucked in shrubs and entwined in trees. There were thousands of them.

'I still don't think you should leave those lights up,' I said one more time when he opened the door.

'Yo. Then you take them down and put 'em back again come Thanksgiving,' he said as he always did. 'You got any idea how long that would take, especially when I keep adding to them every year?'

His obsession had reached the point where he had a separate fuse box for his Christmas decorations, which in full blaze included a Santa pulled by eight reindeer, and happy snowmen, candy canes, toys, and Elvis in the middle of the yard crooning carols through speakers. Marino's display had become so dazzling that its radiance could be seen for miles, and his residence had made it into Richmond's official Tacky Tour. It still bewildered me that someone so antisocial didn't mind endless lines of cars and limousines, and drunken people making jokes.

'I'm still trying to figure out what's gotten into you,' I said as he got into my car. 'Two years ago you would never do something like this. Then out of the blue, you turn your private residence into a carnival. I'm worried. Not to mention the threat of an electrical fire. I know I've given you my opinion before on this, but I feel strongly…'

'And maybe I feel strongly, too.'

He fastened his seat belt and got out a cigarette.

'How would you react if I started decorating my house like that and left lights hanging around all year round?'

'Same way I would if you bought an RV, put in an above-the-ground pool and started eating Bojangles biscuits every day. I'd think you lost your friggin' mind.'

'And you would be right,' I said.

'Look.'

He played with the unlit cigarette.

'Maybe I've reached a point in life where it's do it or lose it,' he said. 'The hell with what people think. I ain't going to live more than once, and shit, who knows how much longer I'm gonna be hanging around, anyway.'

'Marino, you're getting entirely too morbid.'

'It's called reality.'

'And the reality is, if you die, you'll come to me and end up on one of my tables. That ought to give you plenty of incentive to hang around for a long time.'

He got quiet, staring out his window as I followed Route 6 through Goochland County, where woods were thick and I sometimes did not see another car for miles. The morning was clear but on its way to being humid and warm, and I passed unassuming homes with tin roofs and gracious porches, and bird baths in the yards. Green apples bent gnarled branches to the ground, and sunflowers hung their heavy heads as if praying.

'Truth is, Doc,' Marino spoke again. 'It's like a premonition, or something. I keep seeing my time running short. I think about my life, and I've pretty much done it all. If I didn't do nothing else, I still would have done enough, you know? So in my mind I see this wall ahead and there's nothing behind it for me. My road ends. I'm out of here. It's just a matter of how and when. So I'm sort of doing whatever the hell I want. May as well, right?'

I wasn't sure what to say, and the image of his garish house at Christmas brought tears to my eyes. I was glad I was wearing sunglasses.

'Don't make it a self-fulfilled prophecy, Marino,' I said quietly. 'People think about something too much and get so stressed out they make it happen.'

'Like Sparkes,' he said.

'I really don't see what this has to do with Sparkes.'

'Maybe he thought about something too much and made it happen. Like you're a black man with a lot of people who hate your guts, and you worry so much about the assholes taking what you got, you end up burning it down yourself. Killing your horses and white girlfriend in the process. Ending up with nothing. Hell, insurance money won't replace what he lost. No way. Truth is, Sparkes is screwed any way you slice it. Either he's lost everything he loved in life, or he's gonna die in prison.'

'If we were talking about arson alone, I'd be more inclined to suspect he was the torch,' I said. 'But we're also talking about a young woman who was murdered. And we're talking about all his horses being killed. That's where the picture gets distorted for me.'

'Sounds like O.J. again, you ask me. Rich, powerful black guy. His former white girlfriend gets her throat slashed. Don t the parallels bother you just a little bit? Listen, I gotta smoke. I'll blow it out the window.'

'If Kenneth Sparkes murdered his former girlfriend, then why didn't he do it in some place where nobody might associate it with him?' I pointed out. 'Why destroy everything you own in the process and cause all the signs to point back at you?'

'I don't know, Doc. Maybe things got out of control and went to shit. Maybe he never planned to whack her and torch his joint.'

'There's nothing about this fire that strikes me as impetuous,' I said. 'I think someone knew exactly what he was doing.'

'Either that or he got lucky.'

The narrow road was dappled with sunlight and shade, and birds on telephone lines reminded me of music. When I drew upon the North Pole restaurant, with its polar bear sign, I was reminded of lunches after court in Goochland, of detectives and forensic scientists who since had retired. Those old homicide cases were vague because by now there were so many murders in my mind, and the thought of them and colleagues I missed made me sad for an instant. Red Feather Point was at the end of a long gravel road that led to an impressive farm overlooking the James River. Dust bloomed behind my car as I wound through white fences surrounding smooth green pastures scattered with leftover hay.

The three-story white frame house had the imperfect slanted look of a building not of this century, and silos cloaked in creeper vines were also left over from long ago. Several horses wandered a distant field, and the red dirt riding ring was empty when we parked. Marino and I walked inside a big green barn and followed the noise of steel ringing from the blows of a hammer. Fine horses stretched their splendid necks out of their stalls, and I could not resist stroking the velvet noses of fox hunters, thoroughbreds, and Arabians. I paused to say sweet things to a foal and his mother as both stared at me with huge brown eyes. Marino kept his distance, waving at flies.

'Looking at them is one thing,' he commented. 'But being bit by one once was enough for me.'

The tack and feed rooms were quiet, and rakes and coils of hoses hung from wooden walls. Blankets were draped over the backs of doors, and I encountered no one but a woman in riding clothes and helmet who was carrying an English saddle.

'Good morning,' I said as the distant hammering grew silent. 'I'm looking for the farrier. I'm Dr Scarpetta,' I added. 'I called earlier.'