“ Benton!”
Scarpetta headed down the hallway toward the master bedroom. She took deep breaths and swallowed repeatedly, trying to slow her heart and settle her gut. She heard a toilet flush.
“Christ, what the hell’s going on with your phone?” Benton ’s voice was followed by him appearing in the bedroom doorway. “Have you gotten any of my messages? Kay? What the hell’s the matter?”
“Don’t come any closer,” she said.
He was still in his suit, simple dark-blue flannel that didn’t suggest money because he never wore anything expensive on prison wards or in forensic units, was careful what he telegraphed to prisoners and psychiatric patients. He had taken off his tie and his shoes, and his white shirt was open at the neck and untucked. His silver hair looked the way it did when he’d been running his fingers through it.
“What’s happened?” he said, not moving from the doorway. “Something’s happened. What?”
“Get your shoes and coat,” Scarpetta said, clearing her throat. “Don’t come close. I don’t know what I’ve got on me.” Desperate to scrub her hands with a solution of bleach, to decon, to take a long, hot shower and remove layers of makeup and shampoo her hair.
“What’s happened? Did you run into someone? Did something happen? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” Benton was a statue in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes looking past her, toward the front door, as if he feared someone had come in with her.
“We need to leave.” Her television makeup felt sticky, cloying, like glue. She smelled the smell, thought she did. Tar, sulfur, its molecules trapped in her makeup, in her hairspray, trapped in the back of her nose. The smell of fire and brimstone, of hell.
“The caller from Detroit? I tried to get hold of you,” Benton said. “What’s going on? Did someone do something?”
She took off her coat, her gloves and dropped them in the hallway, kicking them out of the way, and said, “We need to leave. Now. A suspicious package. It’s in the living room. Get warm coats for both of us.” Don’t be sick. Don’t throw up.
He disappeared inside the bedroom and she heard him go into his closet, hangers scraping along the rod. He reappeared carrying a pair of hiking boots, a wool coat, and a ski jacket he hadn’t worn in so long, it still had a lift ticket attached to the zipper. He handed her the jacket and they hurried down the hallway. Benton ’s face was hard as he looked at the wide-open door, as he looked at the FedEx box in the living room, at the art glass bowl on the Oriental rug. Open the windows to minimize pressure and damage if there’s an explosion. No, you can’t. Do not go into the living room. Do not go near the coffee table. Do not panic. Evacuate the apartment, close the door, and keep others from entering. Do not make noise. Do not create shock waves. She shut the door softly, leaving it unlocked so the police could get in. There were two other apartments on this floor.
“You ask the desk how it got here?” Benton said. “I’ve been up here all night. They didn’t call to say anything was delivered.”
“I didn’t notice certain details until I was already in the elevator. No, I didn’t ask. It has a strange odor.” She put on his ski jacket and it engulfed her, was almost to her knees. Aspen. When were they there last?
“What sort of odor?”
“A sweet, tarry, rotten-egg sort of smell. I don’t know. I might have imagined it. And the airbill, the way it was addressed. I shouldn’t have carried it upstairs. Should have left it on the desk and made Ross get out of the way, kept everybody out of the way until the police got here. God, I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“Oh, I’m stupid, all right. Distracted by Carley Crispin and stupid as hell.”
She rang the bell of the apartment nearest theirs, a corner unit belonging to a clothing designer she’d seen only in passing. That was New York. You could live next door to someone for years and never have a conversation.
“Don’t think he’s here,” Scarpetta said, ringing the bell, knocking on the door. “I’ve not seen any sign of him lately.”
“How was it addressed?” Benton asked.
She told him about the sender’s copy still being attached, about the reference to her being the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. She described the unusual handwriting as she rang the bell one more time. Then they headed to the third apartment, this one lived in by an elderly woman who had been a comedic actress decades ago, best known for a number of appearances on The Jackie Gleason Show. Her husband died a year or so ago, and that was the sum of what Scarpetta knew about her, about Judy, except that she had a very nervous toy poodle that began its cacophony of barking the instant Scarpetta rang the bell. Judy looked surprised and not especially pleased when she opened her door. She blocked the doorway, as if hiding a lover or a fugitive, her dog dancing and darting behind her feet.
“Yes?” she said, looking quizzically at Benton, his coat on but in his socks and holding his boots.
Scarpetta explained that she needed to borrow the phone.
“You don’t have a phone?” Judy slurred her words a little. She had fine bones but a wasted face. A drinker.
“Can’t use cell phones or the phone in our apartment, and we don’t have time to explain,” Scarpetta said. “We need to use your land line.”
“My what?”
“Your house phone, and then you need to come downstairs with us. It’s an emergency.”
“Certainly not. I’m certainly not going anywhere.”
“A suspicious package was delivered. We need to use your phone, and everyone on this floor needs to go downstairs as quickly as possible,” Scarpetta explained.
“Why would you bring it up here! Why would you do that?”
Scarpetta smelled booze. No telling what prescriptions she’d find in Judy’s medicine cabinet. Irritable depression, substance abuse, nothing to live for. She and Benton stepped inside a paneled living room overwhelmed by fine French antiques and Lladró porcelain figurines of romantic couples in gondolas and carriages, on horseback and swings, kissing and conversing. On a windowsill was an elaborate crystal Nativity scene and on another one an arrangement of Royal Doulton Santas, but no lights or Christmas tree or menorah, only collectibles and photographs from an illustrious past that included an Emmy in a curio cabinet with a Vernis Martin- style finish and hand-painted scenes of cupids and lovers.
“Did something happen inside your apartment?” Judy asked as her dog yapped shrilly.
Benton helped himself to the phone on a giltwood console. He entered a number from memory, and Scarpetta was pretty sure she knew who he was trying to reach. Benton always handled situations efficiently and discreetly, what he referred to as “mainlining,” getting information directly to and from the source, which in this instance was Marino.
“They brought a suspicious package up? Why would they do that? What kind of security are they?” Judy continued.
“It’s probably nothing. But to be safe,” Scarpetta assured her.
“You at headquarters yet? Well, don’t bother with that right now,” Benton told Marino, adding that there was a remote possibility someone had delivered a dangerous package to Scarpetta.
“I guess someone like you has all sorts of crazies out there.” Judy was putting on a full-length coat, sheared chinchilla with scalloped cuffs. Her dog jumped up and down, yapping more frantically as Judy collected her leash from a satinwood étagère.
Benton hunched his shoulder, using the phone hands-free while he put on his boots, and said, “No, in a neighbor’s apartment. Didn’t want to use ours and send out an electronic signal when we didn’t know what’s in it. An alleged FedEx. On the coffee table. Going downstairs right now.”