Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(86)
Yes. It had to be.
Please forgive me, Aunt Kay. Please say it's all right. Please don't lose your respect for me and think I've become one of them.
"Ever since Benton died, you've been a Fury, a spirit of punishment, and there isn't enough power in this entire city to satisfy your hunger for it," Scarpetta talks on, still gently. "This is a good place for you to be," she says, as both of them stare out at the lights of the most powerful city on Earth. "Because one of these days when you're glutted with power, maybe you'll realize that too much of it is unbearable."
"You say that to explain yourself," Lucy comments with no trace of rancor. "You were the most powerful medical examiner in the country, perhaps in the world. You were the Chief. Maybe it was unbearable, that power and admiration."
Lucy's beautiful face is not quite as sad now.
"So much has seemed unbearable," Scarpetta replies. "So much. But no. I didn't find my power unbearable when I was the Chief. I have found losing my power unbearable. You and I feel differently about power. I am not proving anything. You are always proving something when it is so unnecessary."
"You haven't lost it," Lucy tells her. "Your removal from power was an illusion. Politics. Your true power has never been imposed by the outside world, and it follows that the outside world can't take it away from you."
"What has Benton done to us?"
Her question startles Lucy, as if Scarpetta somehow knows the truth.
"Since he died... I still can scarcely bring myself to say that word. Died. "She pauses. "Since then it seems the rest of us have gone to ruin. Like a country under seige. One city falling after another. You, Marino, me. Mostly you."
"Yes, I am a Fury." Lucy gets up, moves to the window and sits cross-legged on Jaime Berger's splendid antique rug. "I am the avenger. I admit it. I feel the world is safer, that you are safer, all of us are safer with Rocco dead."
"But you can't play God. You're not even a sworn law-enforcement officer anymore, Lucy. The Last Precinct is private."
"Not exactly. We are a satellite of international law enforcement, work with them, usually behind the curtain of Interpol. We are empowered by other high authorities I can't talk to you about."
"A high authority that empowered you to legally rid the world of Rocco Caggiano?" Scarpetta asks. "Did you pull the trigger, Lucy? I need to know that. At least that."
Lucy shakes her head. No, she didn't pull the trigger. Only because Rudy insisted on firing that round and having gunpowder and tiny drops of Rocco's blood blow back on his hands, not hers. Rocco's blood on Rudy's hands. That wasn't fair, Lucy tells her aunt.
"I shouldn't have allowed Rudy to put himself through that. I take equal responsibility for Rocco's death. Actually, I take full responsibility, because it was by my instigation that Rudy went on the mission to Poland."
They talk until late, and when Lucy has relayed all that happened in Szczecin, she awaits her aunt's condemnation. The worst punishment would be exile from Scarpetta's life, just as Benton has been exiled from it.
"I'm relieved that Rocco's dead," Scarpetta says. "What's done is done," she adds. "At some point, Marino will want to know what really happened to his son."
85
DR. LANIER SOUNDS AS IF he is on the mend, but he is as taut as a cocked catapult.
"You got a safe place for me to stay down there?" Scarpetta asks him over the phone inside her single room at the Melrose Hotel at 63rd and Lexington.
She opted not to spend the night with Lucy, resisting her niece's persistent urging. Staying with her would make it impossible for Scarpetta to leave for the airport in the morning without Lucy's knowing.
"The safest place in Louisiana. My guest house. It's small. Why? Now you know I can't afford consultants...."
"Listen," she cuts him off. "I've got to go to Houston first." She avoids being specific. "I can't get down your way for at least another day."
"I'll pick you up. Just tell me when."
"If you could arrange a rental car for me, that's what would work best. I have no idea about anything right now. I'm too tired. But I'd rather take care of myself and not inconvenience you. I just need directions to your house."
She writes them down. They seem simple enough. "Any particular kind of car?" "A safe one."
"I know all about that," the coroner replies. "I've peeled enough people out of unsafe cars. I'll get my secretary on it first thing."
86
TRIXIE LEANS AGAINST THE COUNTER, smoking a menthol cigarette and glumly watching Marino pack a large ice chest with beer, luncheon meats, bottles of mustard and mayonnaise, and whatever his huge hands grab out of the refrigerator.
"It's way past midnight," Trixie complains, fumbling for a bottle of Corona in a longneck bottle that she clogged by stuffing in too large a slice of lime. "Come on to bed and then you can leave, can't you? Don't that make more sense than zooming out of here, half-lit and all upset, in the middle of the night?"
Marino has been drunk since he returned from Boston, sitting in front of the TV, refusing to answer the phone, refusing to talk to anyone, not even to Lucy or Scarpetta. About an hour ago, he was kicked hard by a message on his cell phone from Lucy's office. That sobered him enough to pry him out of his reclining chair.