“I guess it could be battery-operated cookies and a test tube- shaped bottle of liquor that smells like an accelerant.”
“And Marino wants you to go, too? Not just me? Both of us?” She combed her hair, but the mirror over the sink was too steamed up to see.
“What’s the matter, Kay?”
“I’m just wondering if Marino specifically invited you, that’s all.” She wiped off the mirror with a washcloth.
“What’s wrong?”
“Let me guess. He didn’t invite you. Or if he did, he didn’t mean it.” Combing her hair, looking at her reflection. “I’m not surprised he didn’t invite you or didn’t mean it if he did. After the way you treated him today. On the conference call. Then in his car.”
“Let’s don’t get started about him.” Benton lifted his glass, straight bourbon on the rocks.
She could smell Maker’s Mark, reminding her of a case she’d worked in the long-ago past. A man scalded to death in a river of fire when barrels of whisky began bursting in a distillery warehouse engulfed in flames.
“I wasn’t friendly or unfriendly,” Benton added. “I was professional. Why are you in such a bad mood?”
“ ‘Why’?” she asked, as if he couldn’t possibly be serious.
“Besides the obvious.”
“I’m tired of the cold war you have with Marino. No point in pretending. You have one, and you know it,” she said.
“We don’t have one.”
“I don’t think he does anymore; God knows he used to. He honestly seems beyond it, but you don’t, and then he gets defensive, gets angry. I find it a remarkable irony, after all those years he had a problem with you.”
“Let’s be accurate, his problem was with you.” Benton ’s patience was dissipating with the steam. Even he had his limits.
“I’m not talking about me right this minute, but if you’re going to bring it up, yes, he had a significant problem with me. But now he doesn’t.”
“I agree he’s better. We’ll hope it lasts.” Benton played with his drink as if he couldn’t make up his mind what to do with it.
In the diffusing steam, Scarpetta could make out a note she’d left for herself on the granite countertop: Jaime-call Fri. a.m. In the morning she would have an orchid delivered to One Hogan Place, Berger’s office, a belated birthday gesture. Maybe a sumptuous Princess Mikasa. Berger’s favorite color was sapphire blue.
“ Benton, we’re married,” Scarpetta said. “Marino couldn’t be more aware of that and he’s accepted it, probably with relief. I imagine he must be much happier because he’s accepted it, has a serious relationship, has made a new life for himself.”
She wasn’t so sure about Marino’s serious relationship or his new life, not after the loneliness she’d sensed earlier when she was sitting next to him in his car. She imagined him dropping by the ESU garage, by the Two, as he called it, in Harlem, to hang out with a rescued dog.
“He’s moved on, and now you need to,” she was saying. “I want it to end. Whatever you have to do. End it. Don’t just pretend. I can see through it, even if I don’t say anything. We’re all in this together.”
“One big happy family,” Benton said.
“That’s what I mean. Your hostility, your jealousy. I want it to end.”
“Have a sip of your drink. You’ll feel better.”
“Now I’m feeling patronized and getting angry.” Her voice was shaking again.
“I’m not patronizing you, Kay.” Softly. “And you’re already angry. You’ve been angry for a long time.”
“I feel you’re patronizing me, and I’ve not been angry for a long time. I don’t understand why you’d say something like that. You’re being provocative.” She didn’t want to fight, hated fighting, but she was pushing things in that direction.
“I’m sorry if it feels I’m patronizing you. I’m not, honest to God. I don’t blame you for being angry.” He sipped his drink, staring at it, moving the ice around in it. “The last thing I want to be is provocative.”
“The problem is you really don’t forgive and you certainly don’t forget. That’s your problem with Marino. You won’t forgive him and you certainly won’t forget, and in the end, how does that help anything? He did what he did. He was drunk and drugged and crazy and he did something he shouldn’t have done. Yes, he did. Maybe I should be the one who doesn’t forgive or forget. It was me he goddamn manhandled and abused. But it’s the past. He’s sorry. So sorry, he avoids me. I go weeks and have no contact with him. He’s overly polite when he’s around me, around us, overly inclusive toward you, almost obsequious, and all it does is make things more uncomfortable. We’ll never get past this unless you allow it. It’s up to you.”
“It’s true I don’t forget,” he said grimly.
“Not exactly equitable when you consider what some of us have had to forgive and forget,” she said, so upset it frightened her. She felt as if she might explode like the package that was hauled away.
His hazel eyes looked at her, watching her carefully. He sat very still, waiting for whatever would come next.
“Especially Marino. Especially Lucy. The secrets you forced them to keep. It was bad enough for me but so unfair to them, having to lie for you. Not that I’m interested in dredging up the past.” But she couldn’t stop herself. The past was climbing up and halfway out her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to stop the past from spilling out of her and all over their life, Benton ’s and her life together.
He watched her, a softness, a sadness, in his eyes that was immeasurable, sweat collecting in the hollow of his neck, disappearing into the silver hair on his chest, trickling down his belly, soaking into the waistband of the polished-cotton gray pajamas she’d bought for him. He was lean and well-defined, with tight muscles and skin, still a striking man, a beautiful man. The bathroom was like a greenhouse, humid and warm from the long shower that had made her feel no less contaminated, no less filthy and foolish. She couldn’t wash away the peculiar-smelling package or Carley Crispin’s show or the CNN marquee or anything, and she felt powerless.
“Well, don’t you have a comment?” Her voice shook badly.
“You know what this is.” He got up from the chair.
“I don’t want us to argue.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I must be tired. That’s all. I’m tired. I’m sorry I’m so tired.”
“The olfactory system is one of the oldest parts of our brain, sends information that governs emotions, memory, behavior.” He was behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, both of them looking into the hazy mirror. “Individual odor molecules stimulating all sorts of receptors.” Kissing the back of her neck, hugging her. “Tell me what you smelled. Tell me in as much detail as you can.”
She couldn’t see anything in the mirror now, her eyes flooded with tears. She muttered, “Hot pavement. Petroleum. Burning matches. Burning human flesh.”
He reached for another towel and rubbed her hair with it, massaging her scalp.
“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly,” she said.
“You don’t need to know exactly. It’s what it made you feel, that’s what we need to know exactly.”
“Whoever left that package got what he wanted,” she said. “It was a bomb even if it turns out it’s not.”
11
Lucy hovered the Bell 407 helicopter at the hold line on taxiway Kilo, the wind shoving her around like huge hands as she waited for the tower to clear her to land.
“Not again,” she said to Berger, in the left seat, the copilot’s seat, because she wasn’t the sort to ride in back when given the choice. “I don’t believe where they put the damn dolly.”
Westchester County Airport ’s west ramp was crowded with parked planes, ranging from single-engine and experimental home-built on up to the super-midsize Challenger and ultra-long-range Boeing business jet. Lucy willed herself to stay calm, agitation and flying a dangerous combination, but it didn’t take much to set her off. She was volatile, couldn’t settle down, and she hated it, but hating something didn’t make it go away, and she couldn’t get rid of the anger. After all her efforts to manage it and some good things happening, happy things, which had made it easier, now the anger was back out of its bag, maybe more volatile than ever after too much time unattended and ignored. Not gone. She’d just thought it was. “Nobody more intelligent or physically gifted than you or more loved,” her Aunt Kay liked to say. “Why are you so aggravated all the time?” Now Berger was saying it. Berger and Scarpetta sounding the same. The same language, the same logic, as if their communications were broadcast over the same frequency.