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Chapters (36)
  1. Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta
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“I don’t start,” Berger said.

“This time you’re going to have to,” Lucy said. “Because I’m not. Not with you.”

Berger slid her hands out of her coat pockets and touched Lucy’s face, then reached for the door but didn’t open it. She touched Lucy’s face again and kissed her.

22

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

22

Nineteen floors below the prison ward, in the parking lot across East 27th, Marino was a lone figure obscured by hydraulic lifts, most of them empty at this hour, no valet in sight.

He watched them in the bright green field of a long-range night-vision monocular, because he needed to see her. He needed to look at her in person, even if it was covertly and from a distance and for only a moment. He needed to somehow feel reassured that she hadn’t changed. If she was still the same, she wouldn’t be cruel to him when she saw him. She wouldn’t disgrace or humiliate or shun him. Not that she would have in the past, no matter how much he deserved it. But what did he know about her anymore, except what he read or saw on TV?

Scarpetta and Benton had just left the morgue and were taking a shortcut through the park, back to Bellevue. It was dizzying to see her again, and unreal, as if she’d been dead, and Marino imagined what she’d think if she knew how close he’d come to dying. After what he’d done, he hadn’t wanted to be here anymore. While he lay in the guest bed of her carriage house the morning after he’d hurt her, he’d started going through a list of possibilities, intermittently fighting off nausea while the worst headache of his life hammered his brain to pulp.

His first thought was to drive his truck or maybe his motorcycle off a bridge and drown himself. Then again, he might survive, and he was terrified of not being able to breathe. That meant smothering wasn’t a good choice, either, using a plastic bag, for example, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of hanging, of twisting and thrashing after kicking the chair out from under himself and then changing his mind. He’d briefly considered sitting in a bathtub and slashing his throat, but with the first spurt of blood from his carotid, he’d want to take it back and it would be too late.

As for carbon monoxide poisoning? It gave him too much time to think. Poison? Same thing, and it was painful, and if he chickened out and called 911, he’d end up with his stomach pumped and a complete loss of respect from all who knew about it. Jumping off a building? Never. His luck, he’d survive and be maimed beyond recognition. Last on the list was his nine-millimeter pistol. And Scarpetta had hidden it.