Lucy didn’t answer.
“What have you misread this time?” Scarpetta was going to make her talk.
But Lucy wouldn’t. For a moment the two of them were silent, keys clicking as Lucy typed and the sound of paper moving as Scarpetta sifted through printouts in her lap. She skimmed more Internet searches pertaining to Hannah Starr, and also to Carley Crispin and her failing show, news stories about what one reviewer described as Carley’s free fall in the Nielsen ratings, and there were mentions of Scarpetta and the Scarpetta Factor. The only entertainment Carley had provided this season, said a blogger, was the guest appearances of CNN’s senior forensic analyst, the intrepid and steely and scalpel-sharp Scarpetta, whose commentaries were dead-on. “Kay Scarpetta cuts to the heart of the problem with her pointed remarks and is stiff competition-much too stiff-for the flaccid-minded, overblown Carley Crispin.” Scarpetta got up from her chair.
She said to her niece, “Remember one of those visits to Windsor Farms when you were angry with me and formatted everything on my computer and then took it apart? I believe you were ten and misread something I’d said or done, misinterpreted, misunderstood, overreacted, to put it mildly. Are you formatting your relationship with Jaime and in the process of completely dismantling it, and have you asked her if it’s merited?”
She opened her kit bag and got out another pair of gloves. Walking past Warner Agee’s messy, clothes-strewn bed, she began looking in drawers in the bowfront dresser.
“What has Jaime done that you’ve possibly misread?” Scarpetta filled the silence.
More men’s clothing, none of it folded. Undershorts, under-shirts, socks, pajamas, handkerchiefs, and small velvet boxes of cuff links, some of them antique, none expensive. In another drawer were sweatshirts, T-shirts with logos. The FBI Academy, various FBI field offices, the Hostage Rescue and National Response teams, all old and faded and representing memberships Agee had coveted and would never have. She didn’t have to know Warner Agee to figure out that what drove him was a desperate need for validation and an unflagging belief that life wasn’t fair.
“What might you have misread?” Scarpetta asked again.
“It’s not easy to talk about.”
“At least try.”
“I can’t talk about her. Not with you,” Lucy replied.
“Not to anyone, let’s be honest.”
Lucy looked at her.
“It’s not easy for you to talk to anyone about anything deeply relevant and profoundly important,” Scarpetta said. “You talk incessantly about things that ultimately are heartless, trifling, meaningless. Machines, the invisible intangibles of cyberspace and the people who inhabit these nothing places, people I call shades, who fritter away their time Twittering and chattering and blogging and blathering about nothing to no one.”
The bottom dresser drawer was stuck and Scarpetta had to work her fingers in, trying to dislodge what felt like cardboard and hard plastic.
“I’m real, and I’m here in a hotel room last inhabited by a man who is in a broken heap in the morgue because he decided life was no longer worth it. Talk to me, Lucy, and tell me exactly what’s wrong. Tell me in the language of flesh and blood, in the language of feelings. Do you think Jaime doesn’t love you anymore?”
The drawer pulled free, and crammed inside were empty Tracfone and Spoof Card packages and instruction booklets and guides, and activation cards that didn’t appear to have been used because the PIN strips on the backs hadn’t been scratched off. There were printed instructions for a Web-based service that allowed users who can speak but have difficulty hearing to read word-for-word captioned telephone calls in real time.
“Are the two of you not communicating?” She continued asking questions, and Lucy continued her silence.
Scarpetta dug through tangles of chargers and shiny plastic envelopes for recycling prepaid cell phones, at least five of them.
“Are you fighting?”
She returned to the bed and began digging through the dirty clothing on it, pulling back the linens.
“Are you not having sex?”
“Jesus,” Lucy blurted out. “For God’s sake, you’re my aunt.”
Scarpetta started opening bedside drawers and said, “I put my hands on naked dead bodies all day long, and having sex with Benton is how we exchange energy and empower each other and belong to each other and communicate with each other and are reminded we exist.” Journal articles, more printouts in the drawers, nothing else, still no Tracfone. “Sometimes we fight. We fought last night.”
She got on the floor to look under furniture.
“I used to bathe you and tend to your wounds and listen to your tantrums and fix the messes you made, or at least snatch you out of them one way or other, and sometimes I cried in my goddamn room, you drove me so wild,” Scarpetta said. “I’ve met your long string of partners and dalliances and have quite a good idea exactly what you do with them in bed because we’re all the same, have basically the same body parts and use them similarly, and I dare say I’ve seen and heard a lot that even you can’t imagine.”
She got up, not seeing any sign of a Tracfone anywhere.
“Why on earth would you be shy around me?” she asked. “And I’m not your mother. Thank God I’m not that wretched sister of mine, who practically gave you away, only I wish she had. I wish she had given you to me and I’d had you all the time from day one. I’m your aunt. I’m your friend. At this stage in our lives, we’re colleagues. You can talk to me. Do you love Jaime?”
Lucy’s hands were quiet in her lap, and she was staring down at them.
“Do you love her?”
Scarpetta started emptying wastepaper baskets, digging through balled-up paper.
“What are you doing?” Lucy finally asked.
“He had Tracfones, maybe as many as five. Possibly purchased after he moved in two months ago. Just bar codes, no stickers that might say where he bought them. Probably was using them in conjunction with Spoof Cards to disguise and fake caller ID. Do you love Jaime?”
“How much time on the Tracfones?”
“Each came with sixty minutes’ airtime and/or ninety days’ service.”
“So, you pick it up in an airport kiosk, a tourist shop, a Target, a Walmart, and pay cash. When you’ve used up your sixty minutes, instead of adding more airtime, which usually requires a credit card, you toss the phone and get a new one. About a month ago, Jaime stopped wanting me to stay over.” Lucy’s face was turning red. “First it was one or two nights a week, then three or four. She said it’s because she’s so frantic with work. Obviously, if you’re not sleeping with someone…”
“Jaime’s always been frantic with work. People like us are always frantic with work,” Scarpetta said.
She opened the closet, noting a small wall safe. It was empty, the door open wide.
“That’s worse, isn’t it? That’s the fucking point, isn’t it?” Lucy looked miserable, her eyes angry and hurt. “That means it’s different for her, doesn’t it? You still want Benton no matter how busy you are, even after twenty years, but Jaime doesn’t want me and we’ve barely been together one. So it’s not about being fucking busy.”
“I agree. It’s about something else.”
Scarpetta walked her gloved fingers through clothes that had been stylish in the eighties and nineties, pin-striped three-piece and double-breasted suits with wide lapels and pocket kerchiefs, and French-cuffed white shirts that brought to mind caricatures of gangsters during the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Draped over hangers were five striped ties, and looped around another hanger were two reversible belts-one stitched, the other a crocodile print-that were compatible with the brown and black Florsheim wing-tip dress shoes on the floor.
She said, “When you and I were trying to track my missing BlackBerry, it became patently clear what your WAAS GPS receiver can do. It’s why we’re sitting in this room. These nights when Jaime has been away from you and you’ve been tracking her remotely? Did you get information that was helpful?”