Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(85)

"Notebook paper. Lined paper."

"The paper in the prison commissary is plain white, twenty-pound cheap stock. The same thing most of us use in our printers."

"If he didn't send those letters to Marino and me, then who did?" Lucy feels sluggish, her system overloaded.

Based on the information in the letter to her, she orchestrated Rocco Caggiano's death. When she and Rudy held him hostage in the hotel room, Rocco never actually admitted to murdering the journalists. Lucy recalls him rolling his eyes toward the ceiling-his only response. She can't know as fact what he really meant by that gesture. She can't know as fact that the information she sent to Interpol is correct. What she offered was enough for an arrest, but not necessarily a conviction because, in fact, Lucy doesn't know the facts. Did Rocco really meet with the two journalists mere hours before their murders? Even if he did, was he the one who shot them?

Lucy is responsible for the Red Notice. The Red Notice is why Rocco knew his life was over, no matter what he confessed or didn't confess. He became a fugitive, and if Lucy and Rudy hadn't brought about his death, the Chandonnes would have. He should be dead. He needed to be dead. Lucy tells herself the world is better off because Rocco isn't in it.

"Who wrote me that goddamn letter?" Lucy says. "Who wrote the one to Marino and the first one to you?" She looks at Scarpetta. "The ones that came in those National Academy of Justice postage-paid envelopes? They sound like they were written by Chandonne."

"I agree with that," Scarpetta says. "And the coroner in Baton Rouge got one, too."

"Maybe Chandonne changed his handwriting and paper when he wrote this one." Lucy indicates the letter with its beautiful calligraphy. "Maybe the bastard's not in prison at all."

"I heard about the phone calls to your office. Zach got hold of me on my cell phone. I think we can't assume at all that Chandonne is still in prison," Scarpetta replies.

"Seems to me," Berger says, "that he wouldn't have access to lined paper or National Academy of Justice envelopes if he's still in prison. How hard do you suppose it would it be to create facsimiles of those postage-paid envelopes on a computer?"

"God, I feel so stupid," Lucy says. "I can't tell you what I feel. Of course it could be done. Just scan in an envelope, then type in the address you want, and print it on the same type of envelope. I could do it in five minutes."

Berger looks at her for a long time. "Did you, Lucy?"

She is stunned. "Me do it? Why would I do it?"

"You just admitted that you could," Berger somberly says. "It appears you're quite capable of doing a lot of things, Lucy. And it's convenient that information in the letter to you resulted in your going to Poland to find Rocco, who is now dead. I'm leaving the room. The prosecutor in me doesn't want to hear any further lies or confessions. If you and your aunt want to talk for a while, please help yourselves. I have to put the phone back on the hook. I have calls to make."

"I haven't lied," Lucy says.

84

"SIT DOWN," SCARPETTA SAYS, as if Lucy is no longer a grown-up.

The lights are out in the living room, and the New York skyline surrounds them with its brilliant possibilities and soaring power. Scarpetta could stare at it for hours, the way she does the sea. Lucy sits next to her on Berger's couch.

"This is a good place to be," Scarpetta says, gazing out at millions of lights.

She looks for the moon but can't find it behind buildings. Lucy is quietly crying.

"I've often wondered, Lucy, what would have happened had I been your real mother. Would you have adopted such a dangerous world and stormed through it so brazenly, so outrageously, so stunningly? Or would you be married with children?"

"I think you know the answer to that," Lucy mutters, wiping her eyes.

"Maybe you would have been a Rhodes scholar, gone to Oxford and become a famous poet."

Lucy looks at her to see if she's joking. She's not.

"A gentler life," her aunt says softly. "I raised you, or, better stated, I attended to you as best I could and can't imagine loving any child more than I did-and do-love you. But through my eyes, you found the ugliness in the world."

"Through your eyes I found decency, humanity and justice," Lucy replies. "I wouldn't change anything."

"Then why are you crying?" She picks out distant planes glowing like small planets.

"I don't know."

Scarpetta smiles. "That's what you used to say when you were a little girl. Whenever you were sad and I'd ask you why, you'd say I don't know. Therefore, my very astute diagnosis is that you are sad."

Lucy wipes more tears from her face.

"I don't know exactly what happened in Poland," her aunt then says.

Shifting her position on the couch, Scarpetta arranges pillows behind her back, as if inviting a long story. She continues to look past Lucy, out windows into the glittering night, because it is harder for people to have difficult conversations while they are looking at each other.

"I don't need you to tell me. But I think you need to tell me, Lucy."

Her niece stares out at the city crowded around them. She thinks of dark, high seas and ships lit up. Ships mean ports, and ports mean the Chandonnes. Ports are the arteries for their criminal commerce. Rocco may have been only one vessel, but his connection to Scarpetta, to all of them, had to be severed.