Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(96)

She will not come back to administer the lethal injection. Lying to him doesn't bother her in the least.

He says nothing about Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin.

Instead, he tells her, "Rocco has a small ch?teau in Baton Rouge. It is quaint, in a restored neighborhood where many homosexuals live. Near downtown. I have stayed there many times."

"Have you ever heard of a Baton Rouge woman named Charlotte Dard?"

"Of course. Not beautiful enough for my brother."

"Did Rocco Caggiano murder her?"

"No." Chandonne sighs as if he is getting bored. "As I said, and you must listen to me more closely. She was not beautiful enough for my brother. The Red Stick." He subjects her to his hideous open-mouthed grin as his eyes continue to drift. "Did you know that everything you are is visible in your hands?"

Her hands are in her lap, holding the notepad and the pen. He talks about her hands as if he can see them, yet his eyes float as if he is blind.

Malingerer.

"In the hands of all the sons of men God places marks, that all the sons of men may know their own works. Every working of the mind leaves marks on the hand, forms the hand, which is the measure of intelligence and creativity."

She listens, wondering if he is on his way to an important point.

"In France, you find mostly artistic hands. Like mine." He holds up a shaved hand, his long, tapered fingers splayed. "And like yours, Madame Scarpetta. You have the elegant hands of an artist. And now you know why I do not touch the hands. The Psychonomy of the Hand, or The Hand an Index of Mental Development. Monsieur Richard Beamish. A very good book with many tracings of living hands, if you can find it, but alas, it was written in 1865 and not in your local library. There are two tracings that are you. The square hand, elegant but strong. And the artist's hand, elastic and flexible, again elegant. But more associated with an impulsive personality."

She does not comment.

"Impulsive. Here you are without notice. Suddenly here. A rather nervous sort. But sanguine."

He savors the word sanguine, which in medieval medicine meant the blood was the most dominant of the bodily humors. Sanguine people are supposed to be optimistic and cheerful. She is neither at the moment.

"You say you don't touch the hands. An explanation for why you didn't bite the hands of the women you slaughtered," she says blandly.

"The hands are the mind and the soul. I would not harm a manifestation of what I am releasing with my chosen ones. I only lick the hands."

Now he is moving in to disgust and degrade her, but she isn't finished with him yet.

"You didn't bite the bottoms of their feet, either," she reminds him.

He shrugs, fiddling with the can of Pepsi, which sounded empty the last time he set it down. "Feet are of no interest to me."

"Where are Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin?" she asks again.

"I am getting tired."

"Why would you protect your brother after the way he has treated you all of your life?"

"I am my brother," he weirdly says. "So your finding me makes it unnecessary for you to find him. Now, I am very tired."

Jean-Baptiste Chandonne begins rubbing his stomach and wincing as his eyes wander. "I think I am getting sick."

"You have nothing more to tell me? If not, I'm leaving."

"I am blind."

"You are a malingerer," Scarpetta replies.

"You took my physical eyesight, but not before I saw you." He touches his tongue to his pointed teeth. "Remember your lovely home with the shower in the garage? When you returned from a crime scene at the Richmond port, you went into that garage to change and disinfect, and you showered in there."

Anger and humiliation tighten her body. She had been examining a putrid, decomposing body inside a cargo container, and, yes, she went through her routine: taking off her protective coveralls and boots and tying them inside a heavy plastic bag that went in the trunk; then she drove home. Once inside her garage, which certainly was not a typical garage, she threw her scene clothes into an industrial-size stainless-steel sink. She stripped and stepped into the shower, because she will not track death into her house.

"The small windows in your garage door. Very much like the small window in my cell," he goes on. "I saw you."

Those unfocused eyes and that f?shlike smile again.

His tongue is bleeding.

Scarpetta's hands are cold, her feet getting numb. The hair rises on her arms and the back of her neck.

"Naked. "He savors the word, sucking his tongue. "I watched you undress. I saw you naked. Such a joy, like a fine wine. You were Burgundy then, round and firm, complicated and to be drunk, not sipped. Now you are a Bordeaux, because when you speak, you are heavier, you see. Not physically, I don't think. I would have to see you naked to make that determination." He presses a hand against the glass, a hand that has battered human beings to splinters and mush. "A red wine, of course. You are always..."

"That's enough!" Scarpetta yells as her rage crashes out of its camouflage like a wild boar. "Shut up, you worthless piece of shit." She leans closer to the glass. "I'm not going to listen to your masturbatory talk. It doesn't bother me. / don't care if you saw me naked. Do you think it intimidates me to hear you babble on about your voyeurism and what you think of my body? Do you think I care if I blinded you when you were swinging that f*cking hammer at me?