Autopsy(Kay Scarpetta #25)(97)
“She’s going to work with us, supplying assays,” Rex says, his attention lingering on me, and he knows.
I can see it in his eyes.
“Hopefully, we can find better ways to identify what’s hitting the streets, bad stuff like iso,” he says. “And that might be what was used to poison the wine you carried home from France.”
“What we’re looking at right now is microscopic evidence that was in samples we took from the bottle.” Lee indicates the images on flat screens above a console as complicated as any cockpit.
At a magnification of 2000X, he’s identified trace evidence that includes multicolored paint pigments, copper, lead, silica, bat hair and periwinkle pollen grains that look like pinkish-yellow coral.
“Periwinkle?” I inquire, and while it’s not indigenous to Virginia, the creeper vines had overtaken the garden when we moved into our new home.
The perennial is native to Europe, and was brought to America in the 1700s, the very time our house was built. Without a doubt there’s an abundance of periwinkle pollen on the property inside and out. There would be paint pigments and everything else I’m seeing. Even bat hair, I suppose.
How distressing if it turns out the wine was tampered with inside our own basement. Could I get more things wrong? I’m plagued by doubts that are growing by leaps and bounds.
“What can you tell me about the paint pigments?” I look at them on the video displays.
“They’re old, real old,” Lee lets me know. “The green pigment has arsenic in it, and that’s not been used for centu ries. The white paint you’re seeing is made of lead. The blue is lapis lazuli, one of the most expensive pigments long ago, usually reserved for important works of art like painting the Madonna, for example.”
“I’m wondering if what we’re finding means anything to you,” Rex says to me.
I think of the trace evidence that we’d discover if we started analyzing microscopic samples from my own place. The house was hung with valuable old art while the former ambassador to the U.K. lived there. From what I gather, he collected rare paintings, sculptures and tapestries during his travels, and had them throughout the house.
I don’t let on that what Lee is finding on SEM and X-ray diffraction might have anything to do with me personally. Even Rex doesn’t know the whole truth about the poisoned wine, only that it was given to me overseas, and I made the mistake of tasting it. At least I can be grateful that Elvin is none the wiser about that, not yet at any rate, and it’s time to go home. I’ve done enough damage for one day.
“Carry on no matter what.” I figure Rex knows what I mean, and he walks me into the corridor. “I’ll be around in the morning,” I say to him. “Let me know when you get a confirmation with the drug screen.”
“I know you didn’t really resign,” he says. “Screw Elvin Reddy. Don’t let him run you off. The way people are acting is because of his influence, Kay. You’re the most hopeful thing that’s happened around here, the only chance of getting rid of that influence.”
“For now, it seems he’s gotten his way,” I reply. “But thanks, Rex.” I can feel him watch as I head back to the stairwell.
Maybe Lucy hasn’t lost her touch but I’m worried I may have lost mine. Second thoughts and misgivings are seizing my thoughts, and it plagues me that Cammie’s death will be left unsolved. Once I’m out of the picture, the labs will stop the analysis I told them to restart. Her case will be ignored again, and her family will never get the satisfaction they deserve.
Wyatt is opening the bay door as I walk through, letting in a hearse, and I tell him good night.
“I heard about you quitting,” he says. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Thank you, Wyatt,” I reply. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Climbing into my Subaru, I start it up. I listen to music on the radio all the way home, in no mood to chat with anyone else, dreading what my sister will have to say when she hears the news. Probably she already has, and I imagine Marino getting her lubricated with cosmopolitans, maybe the apple martinis she’s fond of, and lowering the boom.
He’ll let her know I didn’t resign, if he hasn’t already. I was fired, and they aren’t staying here if Benton, Lucy and I don’t. If we return to Massachusetts, so will Dorothy and Marino, and from there it’s simple to script what will happen. She’ll feign shock and upset, and I’ll hear about it forever.
How terrible for me. How unfair, and she’ll hound me with endless advice and questions, all the while secretly pleased by my failure. It’s time to clear out the negativity, I tell myself as I reach the house. I don’t need Lucy worrying about me, and she must have seen me on her many cameras.
In a sweat suit, sneakers and her bomber jacket, she’s waiting by the carriage house when I pull up. She lifts one of the wooden rolling doors, her flat-eared cat pacing nearby, his tail twitching. I wait until she picks him up, making sure he’s safely out of the way as I tuck my take-home car inside. Climbing out, we pull down the door together, and I give her the hug I wanted to give her earlier.
“Lucy, you were amazing today,” I say as we walk to the house. “And it seems your aunt can’t stay out of trouble.”
THE NEWS IS PLAYING as I unlock the front door, and Merlin follows us to the kitchen where spicy ground beef is simmering on the stove, a cookie sheet lined with taco shells, and my stomach growls. An aged a?ejo tequila is on the countertop next to a shaker filled with ice, and two glasses.