Blow Fly

99

ASSISTANT PIO JAYNE GITTLEMAN apologizes profusely for making Scarpetta wait.

For fifteen minutes, Scarpetta has stood outside the front door, right below the sign that reads Allan B. Polunsky Unit, the bright sun making her perspire. She feels dirty and disheveled from travel. Her patience is thin, despite her resolve to contain her emotions completely. More than anything right now, she wants to get this over with at last, at long last.

"The media's calling nonstop because we've got an execution tonight," Miss Gittleman explains.

She hands Scarpetta a visitor's tag, which she clamps to the lapel of the same suit she's worn on different planes since she left Florida. The pantsuit is black, and at least she ironed it inside her room at New York's Melrose Hotel last night after leaving her niece. Lucy does not know where Scarpetta is right now. If Scarpetta had mentioned it, Lucy would have tried to stop her or insisted on going with her. Taking a chance, Scarpetta headed west without an appointment, having no choice but to call the Polunsky Unit when she landed in Houston. Her confidence that Chandonne would see her was rewarded by the additional unpleasantry of learning she is on his visitors list. At least his sick joke proved useful.

She is here. And perhaps the less time he has to think about her seeing him, the better.

Officers check Scarpetta's identification, and Miss Gittleman leads her through a series of loud steel doors, then through a garden with picnic tables under umbrellas, obviously meant for staff. She is cleared through five electronically locking doors, the walk far too short to suit her as she reaches the unnerving conclusion that she should not have come here. Chandonne is manipulating her, and she is going to regret this visit because it gives him what he wants and makes a fool of her.

Inside the visitors lobby, her shoes seem loud, and she is acutely aware of her appearance as she crosses the shiny tile floor. A strong believer in the psychology of dress and demeanor, her entrance is out of character and embarrassing. She would have preferred to be perfectly groomed in a power suit, probably pinstripe, and perhaps a white shirt with cufflinks. Possibly, she considers, power dressing wouldn't have sent the best message to this bastard who tried to kill her, but it would have made her feel less vulnerable to him.

Her knees weaken at the sight of Jean-Baptiste Chandonne sitting inside Booth 2. Clean-shaven, including his hands and head, he relaxes behind glass, drinking a Pepsi and eating a chocolate cupcake, pretending not to notice her.

She openly stares at him, refusing to play the game he has already begun, and it amazes her to see him shaven and dressed in white. He is ugly but almost looks normal without his long swirls of baby-fine hair that hung from him in a long, filthy fringe last time she saw him. He sips his Pepsi and licks his fingers as Scarpetta sits across from him and picks up the black phone.

His asymmetrical eyes drift, and he gives her his barracuda smile, his skin as pale as parchment. She notices his highly defined, muscular arms and that he has torn the sleeves off his white shirt, and then she sees that long, horrible hair. It peeks out from the armholes and the opening at his neck. Apparently, he has shaven only those areas of his body that are uncovered.

"How nice," she says coldly into the phone. "You cleaned up for me."

"But of course. It is lovely for you to come. I knew you would." His filmy eyes don't seem to focus when they briefly turn her way.

"Did you shave yourself?"

"Yes. Today. Just for you."

"Rather hard to do if you can't see," she remarks in a steady, strong voice.

"I don't need my eyes to see." He touches his tongue to a small, sharp tooth and reaches for his Pepsi. "What did you think about my letter?"

"What did you want me to think about it?"

"That I am an artist, of course."

"Did you learn your penmanship here in prison?"

"I have always been able to write in a beautiful hand. When my parents kept me locked in the basement as an innocent petit boy, I had endless hours to develop many talents."

"Who mailed the letter for you?" Scarpetta dominates with her questions.

"My dear dead lawyer." He clucks his tongue. "I honestly do not know why he committed suicide. But perhaps it is a good thing. He was worthless, you know. It runs in his bloodline."

Scarpetta bends down and takes a notepad and pen out of her pocketbook. "You told me you have information for me. That's why I'm here. If you simply want to chat, I'm leaving right now. I have no interest in visiting with you."

"The other part of the bargain, Madame Scarpetta," he says as his crooked eyes float, "is my execution. Will you?"

"I have no problem with that."

He smiles and seems delighted.

"Tell me." He rests his chin on his hand. "What is it like?"

"Painless. An IV of sodium thiopental, which is the sedative. And pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant. Potassium chloride stops the heart." She clinically describes as he listens, enraptured. "Fairly inexpensive drugs, ironically and appropriately, considering their purpose. Death occurs in several minutes."

"And I will not suffer when you do this to me?"

"You will never suffer the way you've made others suffer. You'll instantly go to sleep."

"Then you promise you will be my doctor in the end?" He begins stroking the can of Pepsi, the hideous long nail on his right thumb caked with what looks like chocolate, probably from his cupcakes.

"I will do as you wish if you are willing to help the police. What is the information?"

He gives her names and locations, none of which mean anything to her. She fills twenty pages in her notepad, becoming increasingly suspicious that he is toying with her. The information is meaningless. Maybe.

At a pause, when he decides to take his time eating a cupcake, she says, "Where are your brother and Bev Kiffin?"

He wipes his hands and mouth on his shirt, sinewy muscles jumping with his every motion. Chandonne is strong and frighteningly fast. Repressing images is becoming increasingly difficult. She tries to shut off memories of that night in her house, when this very man who is separated from her only by glass tried to beat her to death. Then Jay Talley's face is there, when he fooled her, and later he came after her, too. That the fraternal twin brothers share a murderous obsession for her is incomprehensible. She doesn't quite believe it, and it surprises her that as she stares at Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, all she feels is a determination to forget past horrors. He is harmless in this place. In days, he will be dead.

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 chвteau 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 fмshlike 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 fucking hammer at me?

"You know what the best part is, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne? You're in here because of me. So who won? And, no, I won't be back here to put you to death. A stranger will do that. Just as you were a stranger to those you killed."

Jean-Baptiste suddenly turns back to the wire-mesh screen behind him.

"Who's there?" he whispers.

Scarpetta hangs up the black phone. She walks away. "Who's there!"he, screams.