Book of the Dead

Chapter 21

The Forensic Science Laboratories.

The main building is red brick and concrete with expansive windows that are UV-protected and mirror-finished, so the world outside sees a reflection of itself, and what’s inside is protected from prying eyes and damaging rays from the sun. A smaller building isn’t finished, and the landscaping is mud. Scarpetta sits in her car and watches a big bay door roll up and wishes hers wasn’t so noisy. It adds to the unfortunate ambience of a morgue when the bay door screeches and scrapes like a drawbridge.

Inside, everything is new and pristine, brightly lighted and painted in shades of white and gray. Some labs she passes are empty rooms, while others are fully equipped. But countertops are uncluttered, work spaces clean, and she looks forward to the day when it feels like someone’s home. Of course, it’s after hours, but even during them, at most twenty people show up for work, and about half of those followed Lucy from her former labs in Florida. Eventually, she will have the finest private forensic facility in the country, and Scarpetta realizes why that makes her more unsettled than glad. Professionally, Lucy is as successful as anyone can be, but her life is sadly flawed, and so is Scarpetta’s. Neither of them adeptly manages to have or sustain personal relationships, and until now, Scarpetta has refused to see that they have this in common.

Despite Benton’s kindness, all his talk with her really did was remind her why she needed it. What he said is depressingly true. She’s run so fast for fifty years, she has little to show for it beyond an unusual ability to handle pain and stress that results in the very problem she faces. It’s much easier to just do her job and live out her days with long, busy hours and long, empty spaces. In fact, if she’s honest in examining herself, when Benton gave her the ring it didn’t make her feel happy or safe. It symbolizes what scares the hell out of her, and that is whatever he gives, he might take back or realize he didn’t mean it.

No wonder Marino finally snapped. Yes, he was drunk and hyped up on hormones, and probably Shandy and Dr. Self helped drive him to it. But if Scarpetta had taken a good look at him all these years, she probably could have saved him from himself and prevented a violation that was hers, too. She violated him, too, because she wasn’t a truthful or trustworthy friend. She didn’t tell him no until he finally went too far, and she should have told him no some twenty years ago.

I’m not in love with you, and I never will be, Marino. You’re not my type, Marino. It doesn’t mean I’m better than you, Marino. It just means I can’t.

She scripts what she should have said and demands an answer to why she didn’t. He might leave her. She might lose his constant presence, as annoying as it sometimes is. She might inflict on him that very thing she has done such a fine job evading: personal rejection and loss, and now she has both and so does he.

The elevator doors open on the second floor, and she follows an empty corridor to a series of labs that are individually sealed off by metal doors and airlocks. In an outer room, she puts on a white disposable gown, a hairnet and cap, shoe covers, gloves, and a face shield. She passes through another sealed area that decontaminates with ultraviolet light, and from there she enters a fully automated lab, where DNA is extracted and replicated — and where Lucy, also in white from head to toe, said to meet her for reasons unknown. She’s sitting near a fume hood, talking to a scientist who is covered up, too, and therefore unrecognizable at a glance.

“Aunt Kay?” Lucy says. “I’m sure you remember Aaron. Our interim director.”

The face behind the plastic shield smiles and suddenly is familiar, and the three of them sit.

“I know you’re a forensic specialist,” Scarpetta says. “But I didn’t know you had a new position.” She asks what happened to the previous lab director.

“Quit. Because of what Dr. Self put on the Internet,” Lucy says, anger in her eyes.

“Quit?” Scarpetta asks, baffled. “Just like that?”

“Thinks I’m going to die and scuttled off to take another job. Anyway, he was a jerk, and I’d been wanting to get rid of him. Kind of ironic. The bitch did me a favor. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’ve got lab results.”

“Blood, saliva, epithelial cells,” Aaron says. “Start with Lydia Webster’s toothbrush and blood from the bathroom floor. We have a good idea about her DNA, mainly important so we can exclude her. Or identify her eventually.” As if there’s no doubt she’s dead. “Then there’s a different profile from the skin cells, the sand and glue recovered from the broken window in her laundry room. And the burglar-alarm keypad. The dirty T-shirt from the laundry basket. All three have her DNA, unsurprisingly. But also a profile from someone else.”

“What about Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?” Scarpetta asks. “The blood on them.”

Aaron says, “Same donor as the three I just mentioned.”

“The killer, we think,” Lucy says. “Or whoever broke into her house.”

“I think we should be careful saying that,” Scarpetta says. “There have been other people in her house, including her husband.”

“The DNA’s not his, and we’ll tell you why in a minute,” Lucy says.

Aaron says, “What we did was your idea — going beyond the usual profile matching in CODIS and opening up the search by using the DNAPrint technology platform you and Lucy have discussed — an analysis that uses paternity and sibship indices to arrive at a probability of relatedness.”

“First question,” Lucy says. “Why would her ex-husband leave blood on Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?”

“Okay,” Scarpetta agrees. “That’s a good point. And if the blood is the Sandman’s — and to be clear, I’m going to call him that — then he must have injured himself somehow.”

“We might know how,” Lucy says. “And we’re beginning to have an idea of who.”

Aaron picks up a file folder. He takes out a report and hands it to Scarpetta.

“The unidentified little boy and the Sandman,” Aaron says. “Knowing that each parent donates approximately half of his or her genetic material to their child, we can have an expectation that samples from a parent and a child are going to indicate their relationship. And in the case of the Sandman and the unidentified little boy, a very close family relationship is implicated.”

Scarpetta looks at the test results. “I’ll say the same thing I did when we got the fingerprint match,” she says. “Are we sure there’s no mistake? No contamination, for example?”

“We don’t make mistakes. Not like that,” Lucy says. “You get only one and you’re done.”

“The boy is the Sandman’s son?” Scarpetta wants to make sure.

“I’d like references and investigation, but I certainly suspect it,” Aaron replies. “At the very least, as I said, they’re closely related.”

“You mentioned his being injured,” Lucy says. “The Sandman’s blood on the shorts? It’s also on the broken crown you found in Lydia Webster’s bathtub.”

“Maybe she bit him,” Scarpetta says.

“A very good chance,” Lucy says.

“Let’s get back to the little boy,” Scarpetta says. “If we’re implying the Sandman killed his own son, I’m not sure what I think. The abuse went on for a while. The child was being looked after by someone when the Sandman was in Iraq, in Italy, if the information we have is correct.”

“Well, I can tell you about the kid’s mother,” Lucy says. “We do have that reference, unless the DNA on Shandy Snook’s underwear came from somebody else. Maybe makes more sense why she was so hot to tour the morgue and look at his body and find out whatever you might know about the case. Find out what Marino might know.”

“Have you told the police?” Scarpetta says. “And should I ask how you got her underwear?”

Aaron smiles. Scarpetta realizes why the question could be construed as funny.

“Marino,” Lucy says. “And it’s sure as hell not his DNA. We have his profile for exclusionary purposes just like we have yours, mine. The police will need more to go on than underwear found on Marino’s floor, but even if she didn’t beat her son to death, she has to know who did.”

“I have to wonder if Marino did,” Scarpetta says.

“You saw the recording of him in the morgue with her,” Lucy says. “Sure didn’t appear to me he had any idea. Besides, he may be a lot of things, but he would never protect someone who did something like that to a kid.”

There are other matches. All pointing to the Sandman and revealing another stunning fact: The two sources of DNA recovered from Drew Martin’s fingernail scrapings are from the Sandman and someone else who is a close relative.

“Male,” Aaron explains. “According to the Italian analysis, ninety-nine percent European. Maybe another son? Maybe the Sandman’s brother? Maybe his father?”

“Three sources of DNA from one family?” Scarpetta is amazed.

“And another crime,” Lucy says.

Aaron hands Scarpetta another report and says, “A match with a biological sample left in an unsolved crime no one has connected to Drew or to Lydia or to any other case.”

“From a rape in 2004,” Lucy says. “Apparently, the guy who broke into Lydia Webster’s house and probably also murdered Drew Martin raped a tourist in Venice three years ago. The DNA profile from that evidence is in the Italian database, which we decided to search. Of course, there’s no suspect to match, because to date they can’t enter the profiles of known individuals. In other words, we don’t have a name. Just semen.”

“By all means, protect the privacy of rapists and murderers,” Aaron says.

“News accounts are sketchy,” Lucy says. “Twenty-year-old student in Venice, a summer program to study art. Out at a bar late at night, walked back to her hotel near the Bridge of Sighs and was attacked. So far, that’s all we know about the case. But since it was worked by the Carabinieri, your friend the captain should have access to the information.”

“Possibly the Sandman’s first violent crime,” Scarpetta says. “At least as a civilian. Assuming it’s true this guy served in Iraq. Frequently, a first-time offender leaves evidence and then gets smart. This guy’s smart, and his MO has evolved considerably. He’s careful about evidence, is ritualistic and much more violent, and after he finishes, his victims aren’t alive to tell. Thankfully, it didn’t occur to him he might leave his DNA in surgical glue. Does Benton know about this?” she asks.

“Yes. And he knows we’ve got a problem with your gold coin,” Lucy says, just getting to that. “DNA on it and the chain are the Sandman’s, too, and that places him behind your house the night you and Bull found the gun in the alley. I might ask what that implies about Bull. The necklace could have been his. I’ve asked that question before. We don’t have Bull’s DNA to tell us.”

“That he’s the Sandman?” Scarpetta doesn’t believe it for a minute.

“I’m just saying we don’t have his DNA,” Lucy says.

“And the gun? The cartridges?” Scarpetta asks.

“Not the Sandman’s DNA on any of those swabs,” Lucy says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. His DNA on a necklace is one thing. Leaving it on a gun is another, because he might have gotten the gun from someone else. He might have been careful leaving his DNA or his fingerprints on it because of the story he gave — that the asshole who threatened you is the one who dropped it, when we can’t swear that guy ever came near your house. It’s Bull’s word, because it was unwitnessed.”

“You’re suggesting that Bull — assuming he’s the Sandman, which I don’t believe — might have deliberately, quote, lost the gun. But didn’t mean to lose his necklace,” Scarpetta says. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for two reasons. Why did his necklace break? And secondly, if he didn’t know it broke and fell off until he found it, why would he draw my attention to it? Why not just tuck it into his pocket? I could add the third rather strange thought of him having a gold coin necklace to begin with that is reminiscent of the silver-dollar necklace Shandy gave Marino.”

“It sure would be nice to get Bull’s prints,” Aaron says. “It sure would be nice to swab him. It sure bothers me he seems to have disappeared.”

“That’s it for now,” Lucy says. “We’re working on cloning him. Going to create a copy of him in a petri dish so we know who it is,” she says drolly.

“I remember not so long ago waiting weeks, months for DNA.” Scarpetta rues those days, painfully reminded of how many people were brutalized and murdered because a violent offender couldn’t be identified quickly.

“Ceiling’s at three thousand feet, vis three miles,” Lucy says to Scarpetta. “We’re VFR. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

Inside Marino’s office, his bowling trophies are silhouetted against the old plaster wall, and there is an emptiness in the air.

Benton shuts the door and doesn’t turn on the light. He sits in the dark at Marino’s desk and for the first time realizes that no matter what he’s said, he’s never taken Marino seriously or been particularly inclusive. If he’s truthful about it, he’s always thought of him as Scarpetta’s sidekick — an ignorant, bigoted, crass cop who doesn’t belong in the modern world, and as a result of that and any number of other factors, is unpleasant to be around and not entirely helpful. Benton has endured him. He’s underestimated him in some departments and understood him perfectly fine in others, but failed to recognize the obvious. As he sits at Marino’s little-used desk and stares out the window at the lights of Charleston, he wishes he had paid more attention to him, to everything. What he’s needed to know is in his reach and has been.

The time in Venice is almost four o’clock in the morning. It’s no wonder Paulo Maroni left McLean, and now has left Rome.

“Pronto,” he answers his phone.

“Were you asleep?” Benton asks.

“If you cared, you wouldn’t be calling. What’s going on that you need to call me at this unseemly hour? Some development in the case, I hope?”

“Not a good one, necessarily.”

“Then what?” Dr. Maroni’s voice has an undercurrent of reluctance, or maybe it’s resignation that Benton hears.

“The patient you had.”

“I’ve told you about him.”

“You’ve told me what you wanted to tell me, Paulo.”

“What more could I help you with?” Dr. Maroni says. “In addition to what I’ve said, you’ve read my notes. I’ve been a friend and not asked you how that happened. I haven’t blamed Lucy, for example.”

“You might want to blame yourself. Do you think I haven’t figured out that you wanted us to access your patient’s file? You left it on the hospital network. You left file-sharing on, meaning anybody who could figure out where it was could get into it. For Lucy, yes, it would be no effort. For you, it was no mistake. You’re too smart for that.”

“And so you admit Lucy violated my confidential electronic files.”

“You knew we’d want to see your patient notes. So you arranged it before you left for Rome. Which was earlier than you planned, by the way. Conveniently, right after you learned that Dr. Self was about to be a patient at McLean. You allowed it. She couldn’t have been admitted at the Pavilion if you hadn’t allowed it.”

“She was manic.”

“She was calculating. Does she know?”

“Know what?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s interesting you would think I might,” Dr. Maroni says.

“I’ve talked to Dr. Self’s mother.”

“Is she still such an unpleasant woman?”

“I imagine she hasn’t changed,” Benton says.

“People like her rarely do. Sometimes they burn out as they get older. In her case, she’s likely worse. As Marilyn will be. As she already is.”

“I imagine she hasn’t changed much, either. Although her mother blames her daughter’s personality disorder on you,” Benton says.

“And we know that’s not what happens. She doesn’t have a Paulo-induced personality disorder. She came by it honestly.”

“This isn’t amusing.”

“Certainly, it isn’t.”

“Where is he?” Benton asks. “And you know exactly who I mean.”

“In those long-ago days, a person was still a minor at age sixteen. Do you understand?”

“And you were twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-two. Gladys would insult me by making me that much older. I’m sure you can understand why I had to leave,” Dr. Maroni says.

“Leave or flee? If you ask Dr. Self, it’s the latter when she describes your hasty exit of several weeks ago. You were inappropriate with her and fled to Italy. Where is he, Paulo? Don’t do this to yourself, and don’t do it to anyone else.”

“Would you believe it if I told you she was inappropriate with me?”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s not what I give a goddamn about. Where is he?” Benton says.

“Statutory rape is what they would have called it, you know. Her mother threatened it and, indeed, wanted to believe Marilyn wouldn’t have sex with a man she happened to meet during spring break. She was so beautiful and exciting, and offered her virginity, and I took it. I did love her. I did flee from her, this is true. I recognized she was toxic way back then. But I didn’t return to Italy as I led her to believe. I returned to Harvard to finish medical school, and she never knew I was still in America.”

“We’ve done DNA, Paulo.”

“After the baby was born, she still didn’t know. I wrote her letters, you see. And had them mailed from Rome.”

“Where is he, Paulo? Where’s your son?”

“I begged her not to get an abortion, because it’s against my religious beliefs. She said if she had the baby, I would have to raise it. And I did the best I could with what turned out to be a miscreant, a devil with a high IQ. He spent most of his life in Italy, and some of his time with her until he turned eighteen. He’s the one who is twenty-nine. Perhaps Gladys was playing her usual games…. Well. In many ways, he belongs to neither of us and hates both of us. Marilyn more than me, although when I saw him last, I feared for my safety. Perhaps my life. I thought he was going to attack me with a piece of ancient sculpture, but I managed to soothe him.”

“This was when?”

“Right after I got here. He was in Rome.”

“And he was in Rome when Drew Martin was murdered. At some point, he returned to Charleston. We know he was just in Hilton Head.”

“What can I say, Benton? You know the answer. The tub in the photograph is the very tub in my apartment at Piazza Navona, but then you didn’t know I live at Piazza Navona. If you had, you might have asked me questions about my apartment so near the construction site where Drew’s body was found. You might have wondered about the coincidence of my driving a black Lancia over here. He probably killed her in my apartment and transported her in my car, not too far. Perhaps a block. In fact, I’m sure he must have. So maybe I would have been better off if he had struck me in the head with that ancient sculpted foot. What he’s done is unthinkably reprehensible. But then, he’s Marilyn’s son.”

“He’s your son.”

“He’s an American citizen who didn’t want to go to a university and continued his foolishness by joining the American Air Force to be a photographer in your fascist war, where he was wounded. His foot. I believe he did it to himself after he put his friend out of his misery by shooting him in the head. But regardless, if he were unbalanced before he went, he was cognitively and psychologically unrecognizable when he came back. I admit I wasn’t the father I should have been. I sent him supplies. Tools, batteries, medical necessities. But I didn’t go to see him after it was over. I didn’t care. I admit it.”

“Where is he?”

“After he joined the Air Force, I washed my hands of him. I admit it. He amounted to nothing. After all that — after my sacrificing so much to keep him on this earth when Marilyn would have had it otherwise — he amounted to nothing. Imagine the irony. I spared his life because the church says abortion is murder, and look what he does. He kills people. He killed them over there because it was his job, and now he kills them because it’s madness.”

“And his child?”

“Marilyn and her patterns. Once she has a pattern, try to break it — told the mother to keep him just as I told Marilyn to keep our son. It probably was a mistake. Our son isn’t fit to be a father, even if he loves his son very much.”

“His little boy is dead,” Benton says. “Starved and beaten to death and left in a marsh to be eaten by maggots, crabs.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. I never met the child.”

“Such compassion you have, Paulo. Where’s your son?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must realize how serious this is. Do you want to go to prison?”

“The last time he was here, I walked him out, and on the street, where it was safe for me to say it, I told him I never wanted to see him again. There were tourists at the construction site where Drew’s body was found. There were piles of flowers and stuffed animals. I saw all this as I told him to go away and never come back, and if he didn’t honor my wishes, I would go to the police. Then I had my apartment very thoroughly cleaned. And I got rid of my car. And I called Otto to offer my assistance in the case, because it was important for me to know what the police knew.”

“I don’t believe you don’t know where he is,” Benton says. “I don’t believe you don’t know where he stays or lives or — more likely right now — hides. I don’t want to go to your wife. I’m assuming she hasn’t a clue.”

“Please leave my wife out of this. She knows nothing.”

“Maybe you know this,” Benton says. “Your dead grandson’s mother. Is she still with your son?”

“It is like what I had with Marilyn. We sometimes pay a lifelong price for enjoying sex with someone. These women? They get pregnant on purpose, you know. To keep you on a tether. It’s a strange thing. They do it and then don’t want the child because what they really wanted was you.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’ve never met her. Marilyn tells me her name is Shandy or Sandy and she’s a whore. And stupid.”

“Is your son still with her? That’s what I asked.”

“They had the child in common. But that’s it. The same story again. The sins of the father. Events repeating themselves. Now I truly say, I wish my son had never been born.”

“Marilyn knows Shandy, obviously,” Benton says. “That brings me to Marino.”

“I wouldn’t know him or what he has to do with this.”

Benton tells him. He informs Dr. Maroni of everything except what Marino did to Scarpetta.

“So you’d like me to analyze it for you,” Dr. Maroni says. “Based on my knowing Marilyn, based on what you’ve just said. I would venture a guess that Marino made a very big mistake by sending an e-mail to Marilyn. It woke her up to possibilities, you see, that had nothing to do with why she was at McLean. Now she can get back at the one person she truly hates. Kay, of course. What better way than to torment the people she loves.”

“She’s the reason Marino met Shandy?”

“My guess. But not the entire reason for why Shandy got so interested in him. There is the boy. Marilyn doesn’t know. Or she didn’t. She would have told me. For someone to do such a thing would not appeal to Marilyn.”

“She has about as much compassion as you do,” Benton says. “She’s here, by the way.”

“You mean New York.”

“I mean Charleston. I got an anonymous e-mail with information I won’t discuss, and I traced the IP to the Charleston Place Hotel, recognized the Machine Access Code. Guess who’s staying there.”

“I warn you to be careful what you say to her. She doesn’t know about Will.”

“Will?”

“Will Rambo. When Marilyn started becoming famous, he changed his name from Willard Self to Will Rambo. He picked Rambo, a nice enough Swedish name. He’s anything but a Rambo, and that’s at least some of his problem. Will is quite small. He’s a good-looking boy but small.”

“When she got e-mails from the Sandman, she had no idea it was her son?” Benton says, and it is jarring to hear the Sandman referred to as a boy.

“She didn’t. Not consciously. As far as I know, she still doesn’t. Not consciously, but what can I say about what she knows in the deep caves of her mind? When she was admitted at McLean and told me about the e-mail, the image of Drew Martin…”

“She told you?”

“Of course.”

Benton would like to leap through the phone and grab him around the throat. He should go to prison. He should go to hell.

“As I look back, it’s tragically clear. Of course, I had a suspicion all along but never mentioned it to her. I mean, from the beginning when she called me with the referral, and Will knew she would do exactly that. He set her up for it. Of course, he had her e-mail address. Marilyn is very generous about an occasional e-mail to people she doesn’t have time to see. He started sending these rather bizarre e-mails that he knew would captivate her, because he’s just sick enough to understand her perfectly well. I’m sure he was amused when she referred him to me, and then when he called my office in Rome to make an appointment, that, of course, resulted in our having dinner, not a clinical interview. I was concerned about his mental health, but it never occurred to me he might kill someone. When I heard about the murdered tourist in Bari, I was in denial.”

“He raped a woman in Venice, too. Another tourist.”

“I’m not surprised. Let me guess. After the war began. Each time he was deployed, he got worse.”

“Then the case notes weren’t really from appointments you had with him. Obviously, he’s your son and was never a patient.”

“I fabricated the notes. I expected you to guess it.”

“Why?”

“So you would do this. Find him yourself, because I could never turn him in. I needed you to ask the questions so I could answer them, and now I have.”

“If we don’t find him quickly, Paulo, he’ll kill again. There must be something else you know. You must have a picture of him?”

“Not a recent one.”

“E-mail what you’ve got.”

“The Air Force should have what you need. Perhaps his fingerprints and his DNA. Certainly a photograph. It’s better you get such things from them.”

“And by the time I go through all those hoops,” Benton says, “it will be too goddamn late.”

“I won’t be back, by the way,” Dr. Maroni says. “I’m certain you won’t try to bring me back but will leave me alone because I have shown you respect, so you will show me some. It would be futile, anyway, Benton,” he says. “I have many friends over here.”