"I really don't give a damn how your publisher feels about this. Frankly, Dorothy, I don't give a damn how your publisher feels about anything. "
"This could actually discredit my work," she went on as if she had not heard me.
"And I will have to tell my publicist so we can figure out the best strategy."
"You will not breathe a word about Lucy to your publicist."
"You are getting very violent, Kay."
"Maybe I am."
"I suppose that's an occupational hazard when you cut people up all the livelong day," she snapped. Lucy would need her own soap because they wouldn't have what she liked. I went into the bathroom and got her bars of Lazlo mud soap and Chanel as Dorothy's voice followed me. I went into the bedroom where Lucy was and found her sitting up.
"I didn't know you were awake." I kissed her.
"I'm heading out in a few minutes. A car will be coming a little later to get you and your mother."
"What about the stitches in my head?"
"They can come out in a few more days and someone in the infirmary will take care of it. I've already discussed these things with them. They're very aware of your situation. "
"My hair hurts." She made a face as she touched the top of her head.
"You've got a little nerve damage. It will go away eventually."
I drove to the airport through another dreary rain. Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal, and the temperature had dropped to a raw fifty-two degrees.
I flew to Charlotte first, for it did not seem possible to go anywhere from Richmond without stopping in another city that wasn't always on the way.
When I arrived in Knoxville many hours later, the weather was the same but colder, and it had gotten dark.
I got a taxi, and the driver, who was local and called himself Cowboy, told me he wrote songs and played piano when he wasn't in a cab. By the time he got me to the Hyatt, I knew he went to Chicago once a year to please his wife, and that he regularly drove ladies from Johnson City who came here to shop in the malls. I was reminded of the innocence people like me had lost, and I gave Cowboy an especially generous tip. He waited while I checked into my room, then took me to Calhoun's, which overlooked the Tennessee River and promised the best ribs in the USA.
The restaurant was extremely busy, and I had to wait at the bar. It was the University of Tennessee's homecoming weekend, I discovered, and everywhere I looked I found jackets and sweaters in flaming orange, and alumni of all ages drinking and laughing and obsessing about this afternoon's game. Their raucous instant replays rose from every corner, and if I did not focus on any one conversation, what I heard was a constant roar.
The Vols had beat the Gamecocks, and it had been a battle as serious as any fought in the history of the world. When men in UT hats on either side occasionally turned my way for agreement, I was very sincere in my nods and affirmations, for to admit in that room that I had not been there would surely come across as treason. I was not taken to my table until close to ten p.m., by which time my anxiety level was quite high.
I ate nothing Italian or sensible this night, for I had not eaten well in days and finally I was starving. I ordered baby back ribs, biscuits, and salad, and when the bottle of Tennessee Sunshine Hot Pepper Sauce said "Try Me," I did. Then I tried the Jack Daniel's pie. The meal was wonderful. Throughout it I sat beneath Tiffany lamps in a quiet corner looking out at the river. It was alive with lights reflected from the bridge in varying lengths and intensities, as if the water were measuring electronic levels for music I could not hear.
I tried not to think about crime. But blaze orange burned like small fires around me, and then I would see the tape around Emily's little wrists. I saw it over her mouth. I thought of the horrible creatures housed in Attica and of Gault and people like him. By the time I asked the waiter to call for my cab, Knoxville seemed as scary as any city I had ever been in.
My unease grew only worse when I found myself waiting outside on the porch for fifteen minutes, then half an hour, waiting for Cowboy to come. But it seemed he had ridden off to other horizons, and by midnight I was stranded and alone watching waiters and cooks go home.
I went back into the restaurant one last time.
"I've been waiting for the taxi you called for more than an hour now," I said to a young man cleaning up the bar.
"It's homecoming weekend, ma'am. That's the problem."
"I understand, but I must get back to my hotel."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Hyatt."
"They have a shuttle. Want me to try it for ya?"
"Please." The shuttle was a van, and the chatty young driver asked all about a football game I never saw as I thought how easy it would be to find yourself helped by a stranger who was a Bundy or a Gault. That was how Eddie Heath had died. His mother sent him to a nearby convenience store for a can of soup, and hours later he was naked and maimed with a bullet in his head. Tape was used in his case, too. It could have been any color because we never saw it.
Gault's weird little game had included taping Eddie's wrists after he was shot, and then removing the tape before dumping the body. We were never clear on why he had done this. Rarely were we clear on so many things that were manifestations of aberrant fantasies. Why a hangman's noose versus a simple, safer slip knot? Why a duct tape that was blaze orange? I wondered if that bright orange tape was something Gault would use, and felt it was. He certainly was flamboyant. He certainly loved bondage.
Killing Ferguson and placing Emily's skin in the freezer also sounded like him. But sexually molesting her did not, and that had continued to nag at me. Gault had killed two women and had shown no sexual interest in them. It was the boy he had stripped and bitten. It was Eddie he had impulsively snatched so he could have his perverted fun. It was another boy in England, or so it seemed now.
Back at the hotel, the bar was jammed and there were many lively people in the lobby. I heard much laughter on my floor as I quietly returned to my room, and I was contemplating turning on a movie when my pager began to vibrate on the dresser. I thought Dorothy was trying to get hold of me, or perhaps Wesley was. But the number displayed began with 704, which was the area code for western North Carolina. Marino, I thought, and I was both startled and thrilled. I sat on the bed and returned the call.
"Hello?" a woman's soft voice asked. For a moment, I was too confused to speak.
"Hello?"
"I'm returning a page," I said.
"Uh, this number was on my pager."
"Oh. Is this Dr. Scarpetta?"
"Who is this?" I demanded, but I already knew. I had heard the voice before in Judge Begley's chambers and in Denesa Steiner's house.
"This is Denesa Steiner," she said.
"I apologize for calling so late. But I'm just so glad I got you. "
"How did you get my pager number?" I did not have it on my business card because I would be bothered all the time. In fact, I did not let many people have it.
"I got it from Pete. From Captain Marino. I've been having just such a hard time and I told him I thought it would help if I could talk to you. I'm so sorry to bother you."
I was shocked that Marino would have done such a thing, and it was just one more example of how much he had changed. I wondered if he was with her now.
I wondered what could be so important that she would page me at this hour.
"Mrs. Steiner, what can I help you with?" I asked, for I could not be ungracious to this woman who had lost so much.
"Well, I heard about your car wreck."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm just so grateful you're all right."
"I wasn't the person in the accident," I said, perplexed and unsettled.
"Someone else was driving my car."
"I'm so glad. The Lord is looking after you. But I had a thought that I wanted to pass on" - "Mrs. Steiner," I interrupted her, "how did you know about the accident?"