She isn’t thinking about Dawn Kincaid, who will never plead guilty to anything. A sensation begins in the pit of my stomach.
“Now, you do have a reputation, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. You have a reputation as big as the great outdoors, don’t you? So it’s not all that simple for you, is it?” She smiles coldly, and her eyes are flat. “I sure am glad we finally met so I could see what all the fuss was about.”
“I don’t know what fuss you’re referring to.”
“I got sick as hell of hearing about you. I guess you haven’t read the letters.”
I don’t answer her about the letters she and Jack supposedly wrote to each other. Letters I’ve never seen.
“I can tell you haven’t read them.” Kathleen is nodding and grinning, and I can see the gaping spaces where she’s missing teeth. “You really don’t know, do you? It makes sense you didn’t. I have to wonder if you would have had any contact with me if you knew. Well, maybe you would but maybe you wouldn’t be so smug. Maybe you wouldn’t think you’re so high and mighty.”
I sit quietly. Perfectly composed. Nothing shows. Not curiosity. Not the anger I feel.
“Before e-mail, we wrote real letters on paper,” she says. “He always wrote to me on lined notebook paper like he was still a schoolboy. This would have been in the early nineties, and Jack was working for you in Richmond and miserable as hell all the time. He used to write that what you needed was to be fucked but good. That you were a frustrated crazy bitch and if someone just went ahead and fucked you good maybe it would improve your disposition. Apparently he and that homicide detective you worked with all the time back then used to joke about it in the morgue and at crime scenes. They’d joke you’d been in the cooler too long and with too many dead bodies and somebody needed to warm you up. Someone needed to show you what it was like to be with a man whose dick could still get stiff.”
Pete Marino was a homicide detective in Richmond when I was chief, and I realize why I’ve not seen any such letters. The FBI would have them. Benton’s the criminal intelligence analyst, the forensic psychologist assisting the Boston field office, and I know for a fact he’s read the e-mails that Kathleen and Jack exchanged. Benton has given me an overview of what is in them, and I have no doubt he would have read any letters written on paper, too. He wouldn’t want me to see what Kathleen Lawler has just described. He wouldn’t want me to know about cruel comments Marino made, about him mocking me behind my back. Benton would shield me from anything that hurtful, arguing that there is nothing to be gained from it. I am steady and calm. I won’t react. I won’t give Kathleen Lawler the satisfaction.
“So here we are at last. Finally, I’m looking at you,” she says. “The big chief. The big boss. The legendary Dr. Scarpetta.”
“I suppose you’re somewhat of a legend to me, too,” I say with no affect.
“He loved me more than he ever loved you.”
“I have no reason to doubt he did.”
“I was the love of his life.”
“I have no reason to doubt you were.”
“He resented the fucking hell out of you,” she says, and the calmer I am the nastier she is. “He used to say you have no idea how hard you are on people and maybe if you ever looked in the mirror you’d understand why you don’t have any friends. He used to call you Dr. Rightand he was Dr. Wrong.And the cops were Detective Wrongor Officer Wrong.Everybody wrong except you. Wrong, Jack. You have to do it this way. Wrong, Jack!” she continues, unable to disguise her delight. “Always telling him what to do and how to do it right. Like the entire fucking world is a crime scene or a court case,he used to complain to me.”
“At times he resented me. It wasn’t a secret,” I reply reasonably.
“Well, he sure as hell did.”
“No one’s ever accused me of being easy to work for.”
“People like you don’t get where they are by being easy. They step on people and have to kick them out of the way or belittle them for the fun of it.”
“That’s one thing I don’t do. It’s a shame if he indicated otherwise.”
“He always blamed you when things didn’t go well.”
“He often did.”
“What he never did even once was blame me.”
“Do you blame him for what’s happened to you?” I ask.
“He might have been twelve, but he wasn’t a boy. He sure as hell wasn’t, take it from me. He started it. Following me around. Trumping up excuses to talk to me, to touch me, telling me how he felt, how smitten he was. Things happen.”
Yes, things happen,I think. Even when they absolutely shouldn’t.“It just broke his heart when they hauled me off in handcuffs, and then later, when he had to look at me in court, it just about killed him,” she says, and her hostility toward me has vanished as suddenly as it appeared. “They separated us, all right, busted us apart, but not our souls. We still had our souls. Jack did admire you. As tedious as it was hearing about it, he did have respect for you. I know he did. The thing about Jack, though, was he never felt just one thing about anybody. If he loved you, he hated you. If he respected you, he disrespected you. If he wanted to be with you, he’d run away. If he found you, he’d lose you. And now he’s gone.”
She looks down at her hands in her lap, and her shackles scrape and clank against the floor as she moves her feet and begins to shake. Her face is red, and she’s about to cry.
“I had to get that out. I know it wasn’t nice.” She doesn’t look at me.
“I understand.”
“I hope you won’t cut me off because of it. I’d like to keep hearing from you.”
“It’s all right to get things out.”
“I didn’t know how I would feel about it after some time has passed, about him being dead,” she says, staring down. “I almost can’t comprehend it. It’s not like he was part of the life I have now, but he was my past. He’s the reason I’m here. And now the reason is gone but I’m not.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It feels so vacant. That’s the word that keeps coming into my mind. Vacant. Like a big vacant lot windswept and barren.”
“I know it’s painful.”
“If people had just left us alone.” She lifts her eyes, and they are bloodshot and swimming with tears. “We didn’t hurt each other. If they’d just left us alone, none of this would have happened. Who were we hurting? It’s everyone else who was hurtful.”
I say nothing. There is nothing to say.
“Well, I hope the rest of your time in Savannah is productive.” It sounds very odd, the way she puts it.
Officer Macon walks past the glass windows on either side of the steel door again, making sure everything is okay, and while Kathleen doesn’t look at him, I can tell he is on her radar.
“I’m glad you came and we had a chance to talk. I’m glad your lawyer and all the lawyers opened that door for us, and I appreciate any pictures or anything else you’re kind enough to give me,” she adds, and it sounds strange, as if she means something other than what she’s saying, something other than what I know, and she waits for Officer Macon to vanish from our view again.
Reaching inside the collar of her white uniform shirt, she withdraws something from her bra. She scoots a tightly folded piece of paper across the table to me.