“I wrote Oscar a letter,” she said as she opened her handbag and pulled out an envelope. “I’m thinking everyone should read it, that I’ll show it to them. But I want to read it to you first. Not an e-mail but a real letter on real paper, my personal stationery, which I haven’t used since God knows when. I didn’t write it in longhand, though. My penmanship gets only worse with time. Since there will never be a court case, Jaime said it’s perfectly fine to tell Oscar whatever I want, and I have. I’ve done my best to explain to him that Terri was dealt hardships by her family, and it was this early programming that compelled her to control everything within her reach. She was angry because she’d been hurt, and hurt people often hurt back, but beneath it all she was a good person. I’m giving you a bit of a summary, because it’s long.”
She slipped four folded pages of heavy, creamy paper out of the envelope and carefully smoothed them open. She skimmed until she found the part she wanted Benton to hear.
She quietly read to him:
. . . In the secret room upstairs where she wrote her columns were the yellow roses you gave her. She saved every one of them, and I’m betting she never told you. No one would do something like that if the feelings weren’t profoundly important, Oscar. I want you to remember that, and if you forget, re-read this letter. That’s why I wrote it. Something for you to keep.
I also took the liberty to write her family and express my condolences and tell them what I could, because they have many, many questions. Dr. Lester, I fear, hasn’t been as helpful as they’d like, so I’ve filled in the blanks, most of those conversations over the phone, with a few exchanges by e-mail.
I’ve talked about you, and maybe by now you’ve heard from them. If you haven’t, I feel sure you will. They said they wanted me to tell you what Terri did in her will, and they intend to write you about it. Maybe they have.
I won’t divulge the fine points of her wishes, because it isn’t my place to do that. But in keeping with her family’s request to me, I’ll pass along this much. She left a considerable sum to the Little People of America, to start a foundation that offers assistance in medical care for those who want and need procedures (such as corrective surgeries) that medical insurance won’t cover. As you know, much of what can and should be done is unfairly deemed elective: orthodontic care, for example, and in some instances, bone lengthening.
Suffice it to say, Terri had a very kind heart. . . .
Scarpetta had read as much as she could, because the wave of sadness was rolling over her again. She folded the pages and tucked them back into their envelope.
Louie appeared with their drinks and just as unobtrusively was gone, and she took a sip and it warmed her on its way down and its vapors lifted her brain as if it had retreated into a cloistered place and needed courage.
“If you think it won’t interfere with your patient’s treatment”—she handed Benton the envelope—“would you see that he gets this?”
“It will mean more to him than you imagine,” Benton said, sliding it into the inside pocket of his jacket, a buttery black leather jacket.
It was new, as was the belt with its Winston eagle-head buckle, and the handmade boots he had on. Lucy’s way of celebrating when she, quote, dodged another bullet, was to buy people gifts. Not inexpensive ones. She’d gotten Scarpetta another watch she really didn’t need—a titanium Breguet with a carbon-fiber face—to go with the black Ferrari F43O Spider that she said she’d also gotten Scarpetta. It was a joke, thank God. Scarpetta would rather ride a bicycle than drive one of those things. Marino had a new motorcycle, a racing red Ducati 1098 that Lucy was keeping for him in her hangar in White Plains, because she said he wasn’t allowed to ride anything with fewer than four wheels in the city. She’d rather rudely added that he had to maintain his weight or he wouldn’t fit on a Superbike no matter how super it was.
Scarpetta had no idea what Lucy might have given Berger. She didn’t ask questions unless Lucy wanted her to ask them. Scarpetta was being patient as Lucy continued to wait for judgment that Scarpetta had no intention of rendering because it wasn’t what she felt. Not remotely. After getting over the initial shock of it, although there was no justification for shock, not really, Scarpetta couldn’t be more pleased.
She and Berger had actually gone out to lunch last week, the two of them alone at Forlini’s near One Hogan Place, and had sat in a booth that Berger said was almost named after Scarpetta. She’d said it was a lucky booth because it was the break-up booth. Scarpetta had said she didn’t see how that could be construed as lucky, and Berger, who, it turned out, was a Yankees fan and used to go to games and thought she might do so again, had replied that it depended on who was up to bat in the bottom of the ninth.
Scarpetta didn’t need to watch baseball to get the gist of things. She’d simply been glad that a booth named after New York’s fire commissioner wasn’t the hot seat it might have been in the not-so-distant past. Few people knew as much about Scarpetta as Jaime Berger did.
“I didn’t answer your question,” Benton said, watching the door. “I’m sorry.”
“I forgot the question.”
“Your letter. Thank you for reading it to me, but don’t read it to them.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“They don’t need proof that you’re a decent human being.” Benton’s eyes on hers.
“It’s that obvious.”
“Everyone knows that shit on the Internet, the e-mails Morales sent pretending to be you, and all the rest of it? We know who you are and who you aren’t. Nothing that’s happened is your fault, and you and I will continue to talk about this, say the same thing again and again. It takes a long time for your emotions to catch up with your intellect. Besides. I should feel guilty. Morales got all that shit from Nancy what’s-her-name, and Marino never would have had that flake for a therapist had I not sent him to that damn treatment center and even wasted my time conferring with her.”
“She should never have talked to Morales, I agree. But I can see why she would.”
“Nope,” Benton said. “Never should have happened. He probably seduced her over the phone. I don’t know what he said, but she should never have told him one word of what Marino had confided in her. It’s such a HIPAA violation, she’s history. I’m seeing to that.”
“Let’s don’t punish anybody. There’s been enough punishment, enough of people not getting along and fighting each other’s battles and making each other’s decisions and paying people back. Indirectly, that’s why Terri’s dead. That’s why Eva’s dead. If Terri hadn’t been paying everybody back . . . Well, if Marino wants to go after his former lamebrain therapist, let him do it himself.”
“You’re probably right,” Benton said. “And they’re here.”
He got up so Marino would see him in the crowded dark, and the party of four, which included Marino’s new girlfriend, Bacardi, who did have a first name—it was Georgia—and also Berger and Lucy, squeezed their way through the crowded dining room and paid their respects to Elaine and bantered about things Scarpetta couldn’t hear. Then everyone was pulling out chairs and sitting down, and seemed in fine spirits. Lucy had on a Red Sox baseball cap, probably to tease Berger, who naturally hated the Red Sox, but mainly to cover a small shaved spot.
That was it. An insult to Lucy’s vanity, the bullet wound on the back of her head healed, the minor contusion to her brain gone. Marino had rather much summarized as only he could that Lucy was a-okay because there was nothing up there to hit but bone.