Red Mist

5

I nklings,as in Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, the name of their group,” Kathleen explains. “They’d meet at a pub in Oxford and talk about art and ideas, not that I get to talk about art and ideas very often, like most of these women give a shit. All they care about is flaunting themselves, getting their names out, getting attention and recognition. Anything to break the boredom and give a little hope that maybe you can still make something of yourself.”

“Is Inklings the only publication here?” I ask.

“The only show in town.” Her pride is obvious, but it’s not about any literary achievement she might enjoy. It’s about power. “There isn’t much to look forward to. Special treats to eat, and I’m a regular test kitchen for treats, not that any of it is something I’d touch in the free world. And the publication of Inklings.I lived and breathed for that magazine .Warden Grimm is generous as long as you play by the rules. She’s been really good to me, but I don’t want to be in PC and don’t need to be. She needs to move me back to the other side,” she says, as if Tara Grimm is listening.

Kathleen has real power at the GPFW. Or she did. She got to decide who was recognized and who was rejected, who became famous among the inmates and who remained in obscurity. I wonder if this might have something to do with why certain inmates are after her, assuming what I’ve been told is true. I wonder what the real reason is for her being moved as I think of what Tara Grimm said about the family murdered in Savannah on January 6, 2002, and Jaime Berger’s recent visits to Bravo Pod.

“I was an English major in college, wanted to be a professional poet but instead went into social work, got my masters in that,” Kathleen tells me. “ Inklingswas my idea, and Warden Grimm let me do it.”

January 2002 was when Dawn Kincaid came to Savannah and met Kathleen for the first time, or so Kathleen claims. Possibly Dawn was here in Savannah when the doctor and his family were murdered. Hacked and stabbed to death, a category of violence Benton describes as personal, hands-on, often accompanied by a sexual component. The perpetrator is aroused and stimulated by the physical act of penetrating a victim’s body with a blade or, in the recent case of the boy in Salem, penetrating the skull with iron nails.

“We have our editorial meetings in the library to review submissions and go over the layout with the design team.” Kathleen is talking about her magazine .“While I have the final say about what gets published, Warden Grimm approves everything, then each person whose original piece is selected gets her picture on the cover. It’s a really big deal and can cause hard feelings.”

“What’s happening to your magazine now?” I ask, as I wonder if Lola Daggette might have known Dawn Kincaid and is aware that Kathleen is Dawn’s mother.

“Of course they’re not letting me do it,” Kathleen says resentfully. “Someone else obviously is. I was working in the library, like I said, but I can’t do that, either. That’s how I funded my commissary account. Twenty-four dollars a month, and buying a treat now and then, paper, stamps, and it doesn’t take long. Who’s going to send me money from the outside when what I’ve got runs out? Who do I have to help? How am I supposed to buy a damn bottle of shampoo so I can wash my hair?”

I don’t answer. She’ll get nothing from me.

“The rules are the same for everyone in Bravo Pod, whether you’re PC or a mass murderer. I guess that’s the price you pay for being kept safe,” she says, and I’m struck by how harsh she looks, as if something hideous inside her is working its way out. “Except I’m not safe. I’ve been stuck right here with danger right over my damn head.”

“What danger is over your head?” I ask.

“I don’t know why they’d do that to me. They need to move me back.”

“What danger is over your head?” I ask again.

“It’s Lola who’s behind all this,” she says, and the circle is complete.

Jaime Berger has been coming to the GPFW to talk to Lola Daggette, who’s connected to Kathleen Lawler, who’s connected to me. I don’t let on that I know who Lola Daggette is as I continue to entertain the possibility that she is somehow connected to Dawn. I don’t know how or why, but all of us are in the circle.

“She wanted to get me moved over here so I’d be near her,” Kathleen says angrily. “We don’t have a separate pod for death row. Lola’s the only one on it right now. The last woman was Barrie Lou Rivers, the one who killed all those people in Atlanta by mixing arsenic in their tuna-fish sandwiches.”

The Deli Devil. I’m familiar with the case, but I don’t show it.

“Same people every day getting the same tuna special and she smiled at them, just as nice as she could be, as they got sicker and sicker,” Kathleen goes on. “Right before she was supposed to die by lethal injection, she choked to death on a tuna sandwich in her cell. What I call one of life’s black ironies.”

“Death row is upstairs?”

“Just a maximum-security cell like any other, no different from the cell I’m in now.” Kathleen is getting louder and more upset. “Lola’s upstairs and I’m down here, one floor below her. So she’s not yelling at me directly or passing kites directly. But her words get around.”

“What words have you been hearing?”

“Threats. I know she’s making them.”

I don’t point out the obvious, that Lola Daggette is locked up twenty-three hours a day just as Kathleen is, and it’s not possible for the two of them to have physical contact. I don’t see how Lola can hurt anyone.

“She knew if she got people riled up and placed me in danger, they sure as hell would move me to the same damn pod she’s in. Which is exactly what they did,” she says in a scathing tone. “Lola wants me nearby,” Kathleen adds, and I don’t believe Lola Daggette somehow willed Kathleen to Bravo Pod.

Tara Grimm did.

“Have you had similar problems with other inmates in the past?” I ask. “Problems that necessitated moving you?”

“You mean moving me to Bravo Pod?” Kathleen raises her voice. “Hell, no. I’ve never been in segregation before because why would I be? They need to let me out. I need to go back to my life.”

Officer Macon walks past the windows of the visitation room. I’m aware of him looking in at us, and I avoid looking back as I think of the poem Kathleen sent and the prison’s literary magazine that she edited until several weeks ago. I wonder how often she published herself and passed over others. I glance at my watch. Our hour is almost up.

“Well, it’s nice of you to bring me this picture of Jack.” Kathleen holds the photograph at arm’s length and narrows her eyes. “I hope your trial goes all right.”

The way she says it catches my attention, but I don’t react.

“Trials aren’t a picnic. Course, I usually just plead guilty in exchange for the lightest sentence I can get. Save the taxpayers money. Have had a few suspended sentences because I was honest enough to just say yup, I did it, sorry about that. If you don’t have a reputation to protect, just plead guilty. Better than getting a jury of your peers,” she snarls, “who want to make an example out of you.”

She isn’t thinking about Dawn Kincaid, who will never plead guilty to anything. A sensation begins in the pit of my stomach.

“Now, you do have a reputation, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. You have a reputation as big as the great outdoors, don’t you? So it’s not all that simple for you, is it?” She smiles coldly, and her eyes are flat. “I sure am glad we finally met so I could see what all the fuss was about.”

“I don’t know what fuss you’re referring to.”

“I got sick as hell of hearing about you. I guess you haven’t read the letters.”

I don’t answer her about the letters she and Jack supposedly wrote to each other. Letters I’ve never seen.

“I can tell you haven’t read them.” Kathleen is nodding and grinning, and I can see the gaping spaces where she’s missing teeth. “You really don’t know, do you? It makes sense you didn’t. I have to wonder if you would have had any contact with me if you knew. Well, maybe you would but maybe you wouldn’t be so smug. Maybe you wouldn’t think you’re so high and mighty.”

I sit quietly. Perfectly composed. Nothing shows. Not curiosity. Not the anger I feel.

“Before e-mail, we wrote real letters on paper,” she says. “He always wrote to me on lined notebook paper like he was still a schoolboy. This would have been in the early nineties, and Jack was working for you in Richmond and miserable as hell all the time. He used to write that what you needed was to be fucked but good. That you were a frustrated crazy bitch and if someone just went ahead and fucked you good maybe it would improve your disposition. Apparently he and that homicide detective you worked with all the time back then used to joke about it in the morgue and at crime scenes. They’d joke you’d been in the cooler too long and with too many dead bodies and somebody needed to warm you up. Someone needed to show you what it was like to be with a man whose dick could still get stiff.”

Pete Marino was a homicide detective in Richmond when I was chief, and I realize why I’ve not seen any such letters. The FBI would have them. Benton’s the criminal intelligence analyst, the forensic psychologist assisting the Boston field office, and I know for a fact he’s read the e-mails that Kathleen and Jack exchanged. Benton has given me an overview of what is in them, and I have no doubt he would have read any letters written on paper, too. He wouldn’t want me to see what Kathleen Lawler has just described. He wouldn’t want me to know about cruel comments Marino made, about him mocking me behind my back. Benton would shield me from anything that hurtful, arguing that there is nothing to be gained from it. I am steady and calm. I won’t react. I won’t give Kathleen Lawler the satisfaction.

“So here we are at last. Finally, I’m looking at you,” she says. “The big chief. The big boss. The legendary Dr. Scarpetta.”

“I suppose you’re somewhat of a legend to me, too,” I say with no affect.

“He loved me more than he ever loved you.”

“I have no reason to doubt he did.”

“I was the love of his life.”

“I have no reason to doubt you were.”

“He resented the fucking hell out of you,” she says, and the calmer I am the nastier she is. “He used to say you have no idea how hard you are on people and maybe if you ever looked in the mirror you’d understand why you don’t have any friends. He used to call you Dr. Rightand he was Dr. Wrong.And the cops were Detective Wrongor Officer Wrong.Everybody wrong except you. Wrong, Jack. You have to do it this way. Wrong, Jack!” she continues, unable to disguise her delight. “Always telling him what to do and how to do it right. Like the entire fucking world is a crime scene or a court case,he used to complain to me.”

“At times he resented me. It wasn’t a secret,” I reply reasonably.

“Well, he sure as hell did.”

“No one’s ever accused me of being easy to work for.”

“People like you don’t get where they are by being easy. They step on people and have to kick them out of the way or belittle them for the fun of it.”

“That’s one thing I don’t do. It’s a shame if he indicated otherwise.”

“He always blamed you when things didn’t go well.”

“He often did.”

“What he never did even once was blame me.”

“Do you blame him for what’s happened to you?” I ask.

“He might have been twelve, but he wasn’t a boy. He sure as hell wasn’t, take it from me. He started it. Following me around. Trumping up excuses to talk to me, to touch me, telling me how he felt, how smitten he was. Things happen.”

Yes, things happen,I think. Even when they absolutely shouldn’t.“It just broke his heart when they hauled me off in handcuffs, and then later, when he had to look at me in court, it just about killed him,” she says, and her hostility toward me has vanished as suddenly as it appeared. “They separated us, all right, busted us apart, but not our souls. We still had our souls. Jack did admire you. As tedious as it was hearing about it, he did have respect for you. I know he did. The thing about Jack, though, was he never felt just one thing about anybody. If he loved you, he hated you. If he respected you, he disrespected you. If he wanted to be with you, he’d run away. If he found you, he’d lose you. And now he’s gone.”

She looks down at her hands in her lap, and her shackles scrape and clank against the floor as she moves her feet and begins to shake. Her face is red, and she’s about to cry.

“I had to get that out. I know it wasn’t nice.” She doesn’t look at me.

“I understand.”

“I hope you won’t cut me off because of it. I’d like to keep hearing from you.”

“It’s all right to get things out.”

“I didn’t know how I would feel about it after some time has passed, about him being dead,” she says, staring down. “I almost can’t comprehend it. It’s not like he was part of the life I have now, but he was my past. He’s the reason I’m here. And now the reason is gone but I’m not.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It feels so vacant. That’s the word that keeps coming into my mind. Vacant. Like a big vacant lot windswept and barren.”

“I know it’s painful.”

“If people had just left us alone.” She lifts her eyes, and they are bloodshot and swimming with tears. “We didn’t hurt each other. If they’d just left us alone, none of this would have happened. Who were we hurting? It’s everyone else who was hurtful.”

I say nothing. There is nothing to say.

“Well, I hope the rest of your time in Savannah is productive.” It sounds very odd, the way she puts it.

Officer Macon walks past the glass windows on either side of the steel door again, making sure everything is okay, and while Kathleen doesn’t look at him, I can tell he is on her radar.

“I’m glad you came and we had a chance to talk. I’m glad your lawyer and all the lawyers opened that door for us, and I appreciate any pictures or anything else you’re kind enough to give me,” she adds, and it sounds strange, as if she means something other than what she’s saying, something other than what I know, and she waits for Officer Macon to vanish from our view again.

Reaching inside the collar of her white uniform shirt, she withdraws something from her bra. She scoots a tightly folded piece of paper across the table to me.