Book of the Dead

Chapter 16

Applause and music and Dr. Self’s voice. Her website.

Scarpetta can’t hide her extreme distress as she reads Lucy’s bogus confessional article about her brain scans at McLean and why she has them and what it’s like to live with it. Scarpetta reads the blogs until it’s too much, and Lucy can’t help but think her aunt’s upset is easier than what she ought to be feeling.

“There’s nothing I can do. What’s done is done,” Lucy says as she scans partial fingerprints into a digital imaging system. “Even I can’t un-send things, un-post things, un-anything. One way to look at it is once it’s out there, I don’t have to dread being outed because of it anymore.”

“Outed? That’s a telling way to describe it.”

“By my definition, having a physical liability is worse than anything else I’ve been outed for. So maybe it’s better to have people finally know and get it over with. Truth is a relief. Better not to hide something, don’t you think? Funny thing about people knowing is it opens up the possibility of unexpected gifts. People reaching out when you didn’t know they cared. Voices from the past talking to you again. Other voices finally shutting up. Some people finally getting out of your life.”

“Who are you referring to?”

“Let’s just say I’ve not been surprised.”

“Gift or not. Dr. Self had no right,” Scarpetta says.

“You should listen to what you’re saying.”

Scarpetta doesn’t answer her.

“You want to consider how it might be your fault. You know, if I weren’t the niece of the infamous Dr. Scarpetta, there wouldn’t be the interest. You have this unrelenting need to make everything your fault and try to fix it,” Lucy says.

“I can’t look at this anymore.” Scarpetta logs out.

“That’s your flaw,” Lucy says. “One I have a hard time with, if you must know.”

“We need to find a lawyer who specializes in things like this. Internet libel. Defamation of character on the Internet, which is so unregulated, it’s like a society with no laws.”

“Try proving I didn’t write it. Try making a case for any of it. Don’t focus on me because you don’t want to focus on something about yourself. I’ve left you alone about it all morning, and now it’s enough. I can’t anymore.”

Scarpetta starts clearing off a countertop, putting things away.

“I sit here listening to you talk so calmly on the phone to Benton. To Dr. Maroni. How can you do it and not choke on denial and avoidance?”

Scarpetta runs water in a steel sink near an eyewash station. She scrubs her hands as if she’s just done an autopsy instead of working inside a pristinely clean lab where nothing much goes on except photography. Lucy sees the bruises on her aunt’s wrists. She can try all she likes, but she can’t hide them.

“Are you going to protect that bastard for the rest of your life?” Lucy means Marino. “All right. Don’t answer me. Maybe the biggest difference between him and me isn’t what’s obvious. I won’t let Dr. Self drive me to doing anything fatal to myself.”

“Fatal? I hope not. I don’t like it when you use that word.” Scarpetta busies herself with repackaging the gold coin and its chain. “What are you talking about? Something fatal.”

Lucy takes off her lab coat, hangs it on the back of the shut door. “I’m not going to give her the pleasure of goading me into something that can’t be repaired. I’m not Marino.”

“We need to get these to DNA immediately.” Scarpetta tears off evidence tape to seal envelopes. “I’ll hand them over directly to keep the chain of evidence intact, and maybe in thirty-six hours? Maybe less? If there are no unforeseen complications. I don’t want the analysis to wait. I’m sure you understand why. If someone came to visit me with a gun.”

“I remember that time in Richmond. Christmas, and I was spending it with you, home from UVA, had brought a friend with me. He hit on her right in front of me.”

“Which time? He’s done that more than once.” Scarpetta has an expression on her face that Lucy’s never seen before.

Her aunt fills out paperwork, busies herself with one thing after another, anything so she doesn’t have to look at her, because she can’t. Lucy doesn’t recall a time when her aunt seemed angry and shamed. Maybe angry but never shamed, and Lucy’s bad feeling gets worse.

“Because he couldn’t handle being around women he wanted desperately to impress, and worse than not being impressed, at least in the way he’s always wanted, we had no interest in him except in a way he’s never been able to handle,” Lucy says. “We wanted to relate to him as one person to another, and so what does he do? He tries to grope my girlfriend right in front of me. Of course, he was drunk.”

She gets up from the work station and walks over to the counter where her aunt is now preoccupied with removing color markers from a drawer and taking off their caps, testing each one to make sure the ink hasn’t been used up or dried out.

“I didn’t put up with it,” Lucy says. “I fought back. I was only eighteen and I called him on it, and he’s lucky I didn’t do something worse. Are you going to keep distracting yourself as if somehow that will make it go away?”

Lucy takes her aunt’s hands and gently pushes up the sleeves. Her wrists are a bright red. Deep tissue damage, as if she’s been clamped hard by iron manacles.

“Let’s don’t get into this,” Scarpetta says. “I know you care.” She pulls her wrists away, pulls down her sleeves. “But please leave me alone about it, Lucy.”

“What did he do to you?”

Scarpetta sits.

“You’d better tell me everything,” Lucy says. “I don’t care what Dr. Self did to provoke him, and we both know it doesn’t take much. He’s gone too far, and there’s no going back and there’s no exception to the rule. I’ll punish him.”

“Please. Let me deal with it.”

“You aren’t, and you won’t. You always make excuses for him.”

“I’m not. But punishing him isn’t the answer. What good will it do?”

“What exactly happened?” Lucy is quiet and calm. But inside she goes numb, the way she gets when she’s capable of anything. “He was at your house all night. What did he do? Nothing you wanted, that’s for sure, or you wouldn’t be bruised. You wouldn’t want anything from him anyway, so he forced you, didn’t he? He grabbed your wrists. What did he do? Your neck is raw. Where else? What did the son of a bitch do? All the trash he sleeps with, no telling what diseases…”

“It didn’t go that far.”

“How far is that far? What did he do.” Lucy says it not as a question but as a point of fact that demands further explanation.

“He was drunk,” Scarpetta says. “Now we find out he’s probably on a testosterone supplement that could make him very aggressive, depending on how much he’s using, and he doesn’t know the meaning of moderation. His excesses. Too much. Too much. You’re right, his drinking this past week, and his smoking. He’s never good with boundaries, but now there are none. Well, I suppose it’s all been leading up to this.”

“All been leading up to this? After all these years, your relationship has been leading up to his sexually assaulting you?”

“I’ve never seen him like that. He was someone I didn’t know. So aggressive and angry, completely out of control. Maybe we should be more worried about him than me.”

“Don’t start.”

“Please try to understand.”

“I’ll understand better when you tell me what he did.” Lucy’s voice is flat, the way she sounds when she’s capable of anything. “What did he do? The more you dodge it, the more I want to punish him, and the worse it will be when I do. And you know enough to take me seriously, Aunt Kay.”

“He went only so far then stopped and started crying,” Scarpetta says.

“How far is ‘only so far’?”

“I can’t talk about this.”

“Really? And if you’d called the police? They’d demand details. You know how it goes. Violated once. Then violated again when you tell all and some cop starts imagining it happening, and secretly gets off on it. These perverts who go from courtroom to courtroom looking for rape cases so they can sit in the back and listen to all the details.”

“Why are you going off on this tangent? It has nothing to do with me.”

“What do you think would have happened had you called the police and Marino were charged with sexual battery? At the very least? You’d end up in court, and God knows what a spectator sport that would be. People listening to all the details, imagining all of it, as if, in a sense, you were undressed in public, viewed as a sexual object, degraded. The great Dr. Kay Scarpetta naked and manhandled for all the world to see.”

“It didn’t go that far.”

“Really? Open your shirt. What are you hiding? I can see abrasions on your neck.” Lucy reaches for Scarpetta’s shirt, starts on the top button.

Scarpetta pushes her hands away. “You’re not a forensic nurse, and I’ve heard enough. Don’t make me angry with you.”

Lucy’s own anger begins to work its way to the surface. She feels it in her heart, in her feet, in her hands. “I’ll take care of this,” she says.

“I don’t want you to take care of it. Clearly, you’ve already broken into his house and searched it. I know how you take care of things, and I know how to take care of myself. What I don’t need is some confrontation between the two of you.”

“What did he do? What exactly did that drunk, stupid son of a bitch do to you?”

Scarpetta is silent.

“He takes that garbage girlfriend on a tour of your building. Benton and I watch every second of it, can see as plain as day he has a hard-on in the morgue. No wonder. He’s a walking hard-on doped up on some hormone gel so he can please that fucking bitch who’s less than half his age. And then he does this to you.”

“Stop it.”

“I won’t stop it. What did he do? He rip your clothes off? Where are they? They’re evidence. Where are your clothes?”

“Stop it, Lucy.”

“Where are they? I want them. I want the clothes you had on. What did you do with them?”

“You’re making it worse.”

“You threw them out, didn’t you?”

“Leave it alone.”

“Sexual battery. A felony. And you aren’t going to tell Benton or you would have already. And you weren’t going to tell me. Rose had to tell me, at least tell me she suspected it. What’s wrong with you? I thought you were a strong woman. I thought you were powerful. All my life I’ve thought it. There. The flaw. Someone who lets him do this and doesn’t tell. Why did you let him?”

“And that’s what this is about.”

“Why did you?”

“That’s what this is about,” Scarpetta says. “Let’s talk about your flaw.”

“Don’t turn this on me.”

“I could have called the police. I was within reach of his gun and could have killed him and it would have been justified. There are a lot of things I could have done,” Scarpetta says.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I chose the lesser of evils. It will be all right. All other choices wouldn’t have been,” Scarpetta says. “You know why you’re doing this.”

“It’s not what I’m doing. It’s what you did.”

“Because of your mother — my pathetic sister. Bringing one man after another into the house. Worse than male-dependent. She’s male-addicted,” Scarpetta says. “Do you remember what you asked me once? You asked why men were always more important than you.”

Lucy clenches her hands.

“You said any man in your mother’s life was more important than you. And you were right. Remember my telling you why? Because Dorothy’s an empty vessel. It’s not about you. It’s about her. You always felt violated because of what went on in your home…” Her voice trails off and a shadow turns her eyes a deeper blue. “Did something happen? Something else? Did one of her boyfriends ever act inappropriately with you?”

“I probably wanted attention.”

“What happened?”

“Forget it.”

“What happened, Lucy?” Scarpetta says.

“Forget it. This isn’t about me right now. And I was a little kid. You aren’t a little kid.”

“I may as well have been. How could I have fought him off?”

They get quiet for a while. The tension between them suddenly goes slack. Lucy doesn’t want to fight with her anymore, and she resents Marino as much as she’s resented anyone in her life because, for an instant, he made her unkind toward her aunt. She showed no mercy toward her aunt, who did nothing but suffer. He inflicted an injury that can’t ever heal, not really, and Lucy just made it worse.

“That wasn’t fair,” Lucy says. “I just wish I’d been there.”

“You can’t always fix things, either,” Scarpetta says. “You and I are more alike than we’re different.”

“Drew Martin’s coach has been to Henry Hollings’s funeral home,” Lucy says, because they shouldn’t talk about Marino anymore. “The address is stored in his Porsche’s GPS. I can check it out if you’d prefer to stay away from the coroner.”

“No,” she says. “I think it’s time we meet.”

An office tastefully furnished with fine antiques and damask draperies pulled back to let the outdoors in. On mahogany-paneled walls are oil portraits of Henry Hollings’s ancestors, an array of somber men watching over their past.

His desk chair is swiveled around as he faces the window. Beyond it is yet another perfectly splendid Charleston garden. He doesn’t seem aware that Scarpetta is standing in the doorway.

“I have a recommendation I think you just might like.” He talks on the phone in a soothing voice with a thick southern cadence. “We have urns made just for that, an excellent innovation most people don’t know about. Biodegradable, dissolve in water, nothing ornate or expensive…Yes, if you plan on a water committal…That’s right…Scatter his ashes at sea…Indeed. You prevent them from blowing everywhere by simply immersing the urn. I understand it might not seem the same. Of course, you can choose whatever’s meaningful to you, and I’ll assist in any way I can…Yes, yes, it’s what I recommend…No, you don’t want them blowing everywhere. How do I put this delicately? Blowing in the boat. That would be unfortunate.”

He adds several sympathetic comments and hangs up. When he turns around, he doesn’t seem surprised to see Scarpetta. He’s expecting her. She called first. If it occurs to him she was listening to his conversation, he doesn’t seem concerned or the least bit offended. It disconcerts her that he seems sincerely thoughtful and kind. There’s a certain comfort in assumptions, and hers has always been that he is greedy, unctuous, and full of self-importance.

“Dr. Scarpetta.” He smiles as he gets up and walks around his perfectly organized desk to shake her hand.

“I appreciate your seeing me, especially on such short notice,” she says, choosing the wing chair while he settles on the couch, his choice of where he sits significant. If he wanted to overpower or belittle her, he would remain enthroned behind his massive burlwood partner’s desk.

Henry Hollings is a distinguished man in a beautiful hand-tailored dark suit with creased trousers, and a black silk-lined single-button jacket, and a pale blue shirt. His hair is the same silver as his silver silk tie, his face lined but not in a harsh way, the wrinkles indicating that he smiles more than he frowns. His eyes are kind. It continues to disturb her that he doesn’t fit the image of the cunning politician she expected, and she reminds herself that that’s the problem with cunning politicians. They fool people right before they take advantage of them.

“Let me be forthright,” Scarpetta says. “You’ve had ample opportunity to acknowledge I’m here. It’s been almost two years. Let me just say that and we’ll move on.”

“Seeking you out would have been forward of me,” he says.

“It would have been gracious. I’m the new person in town. We have the same agendas. Or should.”

“Thank you for your candor. It affords me an opportunity to explain. We tend to be ethnocentric in Charleston, quite skilled at taking our time, waiting to see what’s what. I suspect you may have noticed by now that things don’t tend to happen speedily. Why, people don’t even walk fast.” He smiles. “So I’ve been waiting for you to take the initiative, if you ever made that choice. I didn’t think you would. If you’ll allow me to explain further? You’re a forensic pathologist. Of considerable reputation, I might add, and people such as yourself generally have a low opinion of elected coroners. We’re not doctors or forensic experts, as a rule. I expected you would experience some defensive feelings about me when you set up your practice here.”

“Then it would seem both of us have made assumptions.” She’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least pretend.

“Charleston can be gossipy.” He reminds her of a Matthew Brady photograph — sitting straight, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. “A lot of it spiteful and small-minded,” he says.

“I’m sure you and I can get along as professionals.” She’s not sure of any such thing.

“Are you familiar with your neighbor Mrs. Grimball?”

“I mainly see her when she’s looking out her window at me.”

“Apparently, she complained about a hearse being in the alley behind your house. Twice.”

“I’m aware of once.” She can’t think of a second time. “Lucious Meddick. And a mysterious and erroneous listing of my address, which I’m hoping has been cleared up.”

“She made a complaint to people who could have caused you quite a lot of trouble. I got a call about it and interceded. I said I knew for a fact you didn’t have body deliveries at your house, and there must be a misunderstanding.”

“I’m wondering if you would have told me this if I hadn’t happened to call you.”

“If I were out to get you, why would I have protected you in this instance?” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“I happen to think there’s plenty of death and tragedy to go around. But not everybody feels the same way,” he says. “There’s not a funeral home in South Carolina that doesn’t want my business. Including Lucious Meddick’s. I don’t believe for one minute he truly thought your carriage house was the morgue. Even if he read the wrong address somewhere.”

“Why would he want to hurt me? I don’t even know him.”

“That’s your answer. He doesn’t view you as a source of revenue because, and this is just my guess, you aren’t doing anything to help him,” Hollings says.

“I don’t do marketing.”

“If you’ll allow me, I’ll send an e-mail to every coroner, funeral home, and removal service you might deal with and make sure they have your correct address.”

“That’s not necessary. I can do it myself.” The nicer he is, the less she trusts him.

“Frankly, it’s better if it comes from me. It sends the message that you and I are working together. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Gianni Lupano,” she says.

His expression is blank.

“Drew Martin’s tennis coach.”

“I’m sure you know I have absolutely no jurisdiction in her case. No information beyond what’s been in the news,” Hollings says.

“He’s visited your funeral home in the past. At least once.”

“If he came here to ask questions about her, I most assuredly would be aware of it.”

“He’s been here for some reason,” she says.

“Might I ask how you can know that for a fact? Perhaps you’ve heard more Charleston gossip than I have.”

“At the very least, he’s been in your parking lot, let me put it that way,” she says.

“I see.” He nods. “I suppose the police or someone looked at the GPS in his car and my address was in there. And that would lead me to ask if he’s a suspect in her murder.”

“I imagine everyone associated with her is being questioned. Or will be. And you said ‘his car.’ How do you know he has a car in Charleston?”

“Because I happen to know he has an apartment here,” he says.

“Most people — including people in his building — don’t know he has an apartment here. I’m wondering why you do.”

“We keep a guest book,” he says. “It’s always on a podium outside the chapel, so those who attend a wake or a service can sign in. Perhaps he attended a funeral here. You’re welcome to look at the book. Or books. Going back as far as you’d like.”

“The last two years would be fine,” she says.

Shackles attached to a wooden chair inside an interrogation room.

Madelisa Dooley wonders if she’ll end up in that room next. For lying.

“A lot of drugs, but we’ve got everything,” Investigator Turkington says as she and Ashley follow him past one unsettling room after another inside the southern branch of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s office. “Burglaries, robberies, homicides.”

It’s larger than she imagined, because it never occurred to her there might be crime on Hilton Head Island. But according to Turkington, there’s enough of it south of the Broad River to keep sixty sworn officers, including eight investigators, busy around the clock.

“Last year,” he says, “we worked more than six hundred serious crimes.”

Madelisa wonders how many of them were trespassing and lying.

“I can’t tell you how shocked I am,” she nervously says. “We thought it was so safe here, haven’t even bothered locking our door.”

He leads them into a conference room and says, “You’d be amazed how many people think just because they’re rich, they’re immune to anything bad happening to them.”

It flatters Madelisa that he must assume she and Ashley are rich. She can’t think of anybody who’s ever thought that about them, and she’s happy for a moment until she remembers why they’re here. Any minute, this young man in his smart suit and tie will figure out the truth about Mr. and Mrs. Ashley Dooley’s economic status. He’ll put two and two together when he finds out about their unimpressive North Charleston address and the cheap town house they rented here, so far back in the pine trees one can’t even see a hint of the ocean.

“Please have a seat.” He pulls out a chair for her.

“You sure are right,” she says. “Money certainly doesn’t make you happy or cause people to get along.” As if she knows.

“That’s quite a camcorder you’ve got there,” he says to Ashley. “How much that set you back? At least a thousand.” He indicates for Ashley to hand it over to him.

“I don’t know why you’ve got to take it from me,” he says. “Why can’t you just look at what I got real quick?”

“What I’m still unclear about”—Turkington’s pale eyes stare right at her—“is why you went up to that house to begin with. Why you walked right on to that property, even though there’s a No Trespassing sign.”

“She was looking for the owner,” Ashley replies, as if he’s talking to his camcorder on the table.

“Mr. Dooley, please don’t answer for your wife. According to what she told me, you weren’t a witness, were out on the beach when she found what she did in the house.”

“I don’t see why you’ve got to keep it.” Ashley obsesses about his camcorder while Madelisa obsesses about the basset hound all alone in the car.

She left the windows cracked so he could get air, and thank God it’s not hot out. Oh, please, don’t let him bark. She loves that dog already. Poor baby. What he’s been through, and she remembers touching the sticky blood on his fur. She can’t mention the dog, even if it might help her explain that the only reason she went near house was to find his owner. If the police discover she has that poor, sweet puppy, they’ll take him, and he’ll end up in the pound and eventually be put to sleep. Just like Frisbee.

“Looking for the owner of the house. So you’ve said a number of times. I’m still unclear as to why you were looking for the owner.” Turkington’s pale eyes are fixed on her again, his pen resting on the legal pad he’s writing on as he continues to make a record of her lies.

“It’s such a beautiful house,” she says. “I wanted Ashley to film it but didn’t think that was right without permission. So I looked for people out by the pool, looked for anybody who might be home.”

“There aren’t many people here this time of year, not up there where you were. A lot of those big places are second, third homes for very wealthy people and they don’t rent them and it’s off-season.”

“That’s exactly true,” she agrees.

“But you assumed someone was home because you said you saw something cooking on the grill?”

“That’s exactly right.”

“How’d you see that from the beach?”

“I saw smoke.”

“You saw smoke from the grill and maybe smelled what was being barbecued.” He writes it down.

“That’s exactly right.”

“What was it?”

“What was what?”

“What was being cooked on the grill?”

“Meat. Pork, maybe. Could have been London broil, I guess.”

“And you took it upon yourself to walk right into the house.” He makes more notes, then the pen goes still and he looks up at her. “You know, that’s the part that I still can’t figure out.”

It’s the part she’s had a hard time figuring out, too, no matter how much she’s thought about it. What lie can she tell that will have the ring of truth?

“Like I told you over the phone,” she says, “I was looking for the owner and then started getting worried. Started imagining some rich old person barbecuing and all of a sudden having a heart attack. Why else would you put something on the grill and then disappear? So I kept calling ‘Anybody home?’ Then I found the laundry-room door open.”

“You mean unlocked.”

“Yes, it was.”

“The door next to the window where you said a pane of glass was missing and another pane was broken,” Investigator Turkington says, writing it down.

“And I went in, knowing I probably shouldn’t. But I thought in my head, What if that rich old person is lying on the floor after having a stroke?”

“That’s the thing — where you make hard choices in life,” Ashley says, his eyes jumping back and forth from the investigator to the camcorder. “Don’t go in? Or never forgive yourself later when you read in the paper that someone could have used your help.”

“Did you film the house, sir?”

“Filmed some porpoises while I was waiting for Madelisa to come back out.”

“I asked if you filmed the house.”

“Let me think. I guess a little bit. Earlier, with Madelisa in front of it. But I wasn’t going to show it to anybody if she couldn’t get permission.”

“I see. You wanted permission to film the house but filmed it anyway without permission.”

“And when we didn’t get permission, I erased it,” Ashley says.

“Really?” Turkington says, looking at him for a long moment. “Your wife runs out of the house afraid somebody’s been murdered in there and it occurs to you to erase part of what you filmed because you failed to get permission from whoever might have been murdered?”

“I know it sounds strange,” Madelisa says. “But what matters is I didn’t mean any harm.”

Ashley says, “When Madelisa ran out and was all upset about what she saw in there, I was desperate to call nine-one-one but didn’t have my phone. She didn’t have hers, either.”

“And you didn’t think to use the one in the house?”

“Not after what I saw in there!” Madelisa says. “I felt like he was still in there!”

“‘He’?”

“It was just this awful feeling. I’ve never been so scared. You don’t really think after what I saw I’d stop to use the phone when I could feel something watching me.” She rummages through her purse for a tissue.

“So we hurried back to our condo, and she got so hysterical, I had to calm her down,” Ashley says. “She just cried like a baby and we missed our tennis clinic. She cried and cried, well into the night. Finally, I said, ‘Honey, why don’t you sleep on it and let’s talk about it again in the morning.’ Truth is, I wasn’t sure I believed her. My wife here has quite the imagination. Reads all these mystery books, watches all these crime shows, you know. But when she kept on crying, I started to get worried maybe there was something to it. So I called you.”

“Not until after another tennis clinic,” Turkington points out. “She’s still so upset, yet you went to tennis this morning, then back to your condo, showered, changed, and packed the car to head back to Charleston. Then finally got around to calling the police? I’m sorry. I’m supposed to believe this?”

“If it wasn’t true, why’d we cut our vacation two days short? We planned it for a whole year,” Ashley says. “You’d think you’d get a refund when there’s an emergency. Maybe you could put in a word for us with the rental agent.”

“If that’s why you called the police,” Turkington says, “you just wasted your time.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep my camcorder. I erased what little bit I filmed in front of the house. There’s nothing to see. Just Madelisa in front of it, talking to her sister for maybe ten seconds.”

“Now her sister was with you?”

“Talking to her on the camcorder. I don’t know what you’d see that’s helpful, because I erased it.”

Madelisa made him erase it because of the dog. He had filmed her petting the dog.

“Maybe if I saw what you recorded,” Turkington says to Ashley, “I would see the smoke rising up from the barbecue. You said that’s what you saw from the beach, didn’t you? So if you filmed the house, wouldn’t the smoke be in it?”

This takes Ashley by surprise. “Well, I don’t think I got that part, wasn’t aiming my camcorder in that direction. Can’t you just watch what’s on it and give it back? I mean, most of what’s on there is Madelisa and a few porpoises and other stuff I’ve filmed at home. I don’t see why you’ve got to keep my camcorder.”

“We have to be sure there’s nothing you recorded that might give us information about what happened, details you might not be aware of.”

“Like what?” Ashley says, alarmed.

“Like, for instance, are you telling the truth about your not going inside the house after your wife told you what she did.” Investigator Turkington is getting very unfriendly now. “I find it unusual you didn’t go in and check out your wife’s story for yourself.”

“If what she said was true, there’s no way I was walking in there,” Ashley says. “What if some killer was hiding in there?”

Madelisa remembers the sound of running water, the blood, the clothes, the photograph of the dead tennis player. She envisions the mess in the huge living room, all those prescription bottles and vodka. And the projector turned on with nothing playing on the movie screen. The detective doesn’t believe her. She’s in for a world of trouble. Breaking and entering. Stealing a dog. Lying. He can’t find out about the dog. They’ll take him and put him to sleep. She loves that dog. The hell with lies. She’ll tell lies all the way to hell for that dog.

“I know this isn’t my business,” Madelisa says, and it takes all her nerve to ask, “but do you know who lives in that house and if anything bad’s happened?”

“We know who lives there, a woman whose name I don’t care to divulge. It just so happens she’s not home, and her dog and car are gone.”

“Her car’s gone?” Madelisa’s lower lip starts to tremble.

“Sounds like she went somewhere and took her dog, don’t you think? And you know what else I think? You wanted a free tour of her mansion and then worried someone might have seen you trespassing. So you made up this wild tale to cover your butts. That was almost clever.”

“If you bother to look inside her house, you’ll know the truth.” Madelisa’s voice shakes.

“We did bother, ma’am. I sent a few officers over there to check, and they didn’t find anything you supposedly saw. No pane of glass missing from a window by the laundry-room door. No broken glass. No blood. No knives. The gas grill was turned off, clean as a whistle. No sign something had recently been cooked on it. And the projector wasn’t on,” he says.

In the arrangement office where Hollings and his staff meet with families, Scarpetta sits on a pale gold-and-cream-striped sofa and goes through a second guest book.

Based on everything she’s seen so far, Hollings is a tasteful, thoughtful man. The large, thick guest books are bound in fine black leather with lined creamy pages, and because of the magnitude of his business, three to four books a year are required. A tedious search through the first four months of last year’s hasn’t produced evidence that Gianni Lupano attended a funeral here.

She picks up another guest book and begins to work her way through it, running her finger down each page, recognizing well-known Charleston family names. No Gianni Lupano for January through March. No sign of him for April, and Scarpetta’s disappointment grows. Nothing for May or June. Her finger stops at a generous, looping signature easy to decipher. On July 12 of last year, it seems he attended the funeral service of someone named Holly Webster. It appears the attendance was small — only eleven people signed the guest book. Scarpetta writes down each name and gets up from the sofa. She walks past the chapel, where two ladies inside are arranging flowers around a polished bronze casket. Up a flight of mahogany stairs, she returns to Henry Hollings’s office. Once again, his back is to the door and he’s on the phone.

“Some people prefer to fold the flag in tri-corners and place it behind the person’s head,” he is saying in his soothing, lilting voice. “Well, certainly. We can drape it over the casket. What do I recommend?” He holds up a sheet of paper. “You seem to be leaning toward the walnut with champagne satin. But also the twenty-gauge steel…I sure do know. Everybody says the same thing…. It’s hard. Just as hard as it can be to make decisions like this. You want me to be honest, I’d go for the steel.”

He talks a few minutes longer, turns around, and sees Scarpetta in his doorway again. “Some of these are so hard,” he says to her. “Seventy-two-year-old veteran, recently lost his wife, very depressed. Puts a shotgun in his mouth. We did what we could, but no cosmetics or restorative procedures in the world were going to make him viewable, and I know you know what I’m talking about. You can’t possibly have an open casket, and the family won’t take no for an answer.”

“Who was Holly Webster?” Scarpetta asks.

“Such a terrible tragedy.” He doesn’t hesitate. “One of those cases you never forget.”

“Do you remember Gianni Lupano attending her funeral?”

“I wouldn’t have known him back then,” he oddly says.

“Was he a family friend?”

He gets up from his desk and slides open a cherry cabinet drawer. He looks through files and pulls one out.

“What I have here are details of the funeral arrangements, copies of invoices and such, which I can’t let you look at out of respect for the family’s privacy. But I can let you look at news clippings.” He hands them to her. “I keep them on any death I handle. As you know, the only source of legal records on this will be from police and the medical examiner who worked the case, and the coroner who referred the case here for the autopsy, since Beaufort County doesn’t have an ME’s office. But then, you know all about that, since he’s referring his cases to you now. When Holly died, they weren’t using you yet. Otherwise, I suppose this sad situation would have landed in your lap instead of mine.”

She detects no hint of resentment. He doesn’t seem to care.

He says, “The death occurred at Hilton Head, a very wealthy family.”

She opens the file. There are but a few clippings, the most detailed one in Hilton Head’s Island Packet. According to that account, in the late morning of July 10, 2006, Holly Webster was playing on the patio with her puppy basset hound. The Olympic-size pool was off-limits unless the child was supervised, and on this morning she wasn’t. According to the newspaper, her parents were out of town, and friends were staying at the house. No mention of the parents’ whereabouts or their friends’ names. At almost noon, someone went out to tell Holly it was time for lunch. She was nowhere in sight, the puppy walking back and forth at the edge of the pool, pawing at the water. The little girl’s body was discovered at the bottom, her long, dark hair caught in the drain. Nearby was a rubber bone that police believe the child was trying to retrieve for her dog.

Another clipping, a very brief one. Not even two months later, the mother, Lydia Webster, was a guest on Dr. Self’s talk show.

“I remember hearing about this case,” Scarpetta says. “I believe I was in Massachusetts when it happened.”

“Bad news but not big news. The police played it down as best they could. For one reason, resort areas aren’t particularly keen on publicizing, shall we say, negative events.” Hollings reaches for the phone. “I don’t think he’ll tell you anything, the ME who did the autopsy. But let’s see.” He pauses, then, “Henry Hollings here…Fine, fine…Up to your ears. I know, I know…They really do need to get some help for you down there…No, haven’t been out in my boat for a while…. Right…I owe you a fishing trip. And you owe me for doing a lecture down there to all those wannabe kids who think death investigations are entertainment…The Holly Webster case. I’ve got Dr. Scarpetta here. Wonder if you would mind talking to her for a minute?”

Hollings hands her the phone. She explains to the MUSC assistant chief medical examiner that she has been called in as a consultant on a case that might have a connection to Holly Webster’s drowning.

“What case?” the assistant chief asks.

“I’m sorry but I can’t discuss it,” she replies. “It’s a homicide under investigation.”

“Glad you understand the way it works. I can’t discuss the Webster case.”

What he means is he won’t.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Scarpetta says to him. “Let me go this far out on a limb. I’m here with Coroner Hollings because it appears Drew Martin’s tennis coach, Gianni Lupano, attended Holly Webster’s funeral. I’m trying to figure out why and can’t say more than that.”

“Not familiar. Never heard of him.”

“That was one of my questions — if you had any idea what connection he might have had with the Webster family.”

“No idea.”

“What can you tell me about Holly’s death?”

“Drowning. Accidental, and nothing to indicate otherwise.”

“Meaning no pathognomonic findings. Diagnosis based on circumstances,” Scarpetta says. “Mostly based on the way she was found.”

“That’s correct.”

“Would you mind telling me the name of the investigating officer?”

“No problem. Hold on.” As computer keys click. “Let me see here. Right, I thought so. Turkington of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department. You want to know anything else, you need to call him.”

Scarpetta thanks him again, gets off the phone, and says to Hollings. “Are you aware that the mother, Lydia Webster, appeared on Dr. Self’s talk show not even two months after her child’s death?”

“I didn’t watch the show, don’t watch any of her shows. That woman ought to be shot,” he says.

“Any idea how Mrs. Webster ended up on Dr. Self’s show?”

“I would guess she has quite a team of researchers who scour the news for material. Line up guests that way. In my opinion, it would have been psychologically destructive for Mrs. Webster to expose herself in front of the world when she hadn’t coped with what happened. I understand it was the same sort of situation with Drew Martin,” he says.

“You’re referring to her appearance on Dr. Self’s show last fall?”

“I hear a lot of what goes on around here, whether I want to or not. When she comes to town, she always stays at the Charleston Place Hotel. This last time, not even three weeks ago, she was rarely in her room, certainly never slept there. Housekeeping would come in and find her bed made, no sign of her being there except her belongings, or at least some of them.”

“And how might you know all this?” Scarpetta says.

“A very good friend of mine is the head of security. When relatives, friends of the deceased come to town, I recommend the Charleston Place. Providing they can afford it.”

Scarpetta recalls what Ed the doorman said. Drew was in and out of the apartment building, always tipped him twenty dollars. Maybe it was more than generosity. Maybe she was reminding him to keep his mouth shut.