Trace

43

Out on the foggy street, the light from the nearest lamp reaches Scarpetta just enough to cast her shadow on the asphalt as she stares across the soggy, dark yard at the lighted windows on either side of the front door.

Whoever lives in this neighborhood or drives through it should have noticed lights on and a man with red hair coming and going. Maybe he has a car, but Browning told her a minute ago that if Pogue has a vehicle of any description, there is no record of it. Of course, that is peculiar. It means that if he has a car, the plates on it are not registered to him. Either the car isn't his or the plates are stolen. It is possible he has no car, she thinks.

Her cell phone feels awkward and heavy although it is small and doesn't weigh much, but she is burdened by thoughts of Lucy and halfway dreads calling her under the circumstances. Whatever Lucy's personal situation is, Scarpetta dreads knowing the details. Lucy's personal situations are rarely good, and the part of Scarpetta that seems to have nothing better to do than worry and doubt spends a considerable amount of time blaming herself for Lucy's failure at relationships. Benton is in Aspen, and Lucy must know it. She must know that Scarpetta and Benton are not in a good place and haven't been since they got back together again.

Scarpetta dials Lucy's number as the front door opens and Marino steps out onto the deeply shadowed porch. Scarpetta is struck by the oddity of seeing him emerge empty-handed from a crime scene. When he was a detective in Richmond, he never left a crime scene without hauling off as many bags of evidence as he could fit in his trunk, but now he carries nothing because Richmond is no longer his jurisdiction. So it is wise to let the cops collect evidence and label it and receipt to the labs. Perhaps these cops will do an adequate job and not leave out anything important or include too much that isn't, but as Scarpetta watches Marino slowly follow the brick walk, she feels powerless, and she ends her call to Lucy before voice mail answers.

"What do you want to do?" she asks Marino when he gets to her.

"I wish I had a cigarette," he says, looking up and down the unevenly lit street. "Jimbo the fearless real-estate agent called me back. He got hold of Bernice Towle. She's the daughter."

"The daughter of whoever Mrs. Arnette was?"

"Right. So Mrs. Towle knows nothing about anybody living in the house. According to her, the house has been empty for several years. There's some weirdo shit about a will. I don't know. The family's not allowed to sell the house for less than a certain amount of money, and Jim says no way in hell he'll ever get that price. I don't know. I sure could use a cigarette. Maybe I did pick up on cigar smoke in there and it's got me craving a cigarette."

"What about guests? Did Mrs. Towle allow guests to stay in the house?"

"Nobody seems to remember the last time this dump had guests. I guess he could do like the hobos who lived in abandoned buildings. Have free run of the place and if you see someone coming, you scram. Then when the coast is clear, you come back. Who the hell knows. So what do you want to do?"

"I guess we should go back to the hotel." She unlocks the SUV and looks again at the lighted house. "I don't think there's much else we can do tonight."

"I wonder how late the hotel bar stays open," he says, opening the passenger door and hiking up his pants leg as he steps on the running board and carefully climbs up into the SUV. "Now I'm wide awake. That's what happens, dammit. I don't guess it would hurt me if I had a cigarette, just one, and a few beers. Then maybe I'll sleep."

She shuts her door and starts the engine. "Hopefully the bar is closed," she replies. ''If I drink anything, it will only make matters worse because I can't think. What has happened, Marino?" She pulls away from the curb, the lights from Edgar Allan Pogue's house moving behind her. "He's been living in this house. Didn't anybody know? He's got a woodshed full of human remains and nobody ever saw him in the backyard going into the shed, nobody ever did? You telling me Mrs. Paulsson never saw him moving around back there? Maybe Gilly did."

"Why don't we just swing around to her house and ask her?" Marino says, looking out his window, his huge hands in his lap, as if he is protecting his injury.

"It's almost midnight."

Marino laughs sarcastically. "Right. Let's be polite."

"Okay." She turns left on Grace Street. "Just be prepared. No telling what she'll say when she sees you."

"She ought to be worried about what I say, not the other way around."

Scarpetta does a U-turn and parks on the same side of the street as the small brick house, behind the dark blue minivan. Only the living room light is on, glowing through the filmy curtains. She tries to think of a foolproof way to get Mrs. Paulsson to come to the door and decides it would be wise to call her first. She scrolls through a list of recently made calls on her cell phone, hoping the Paulsson number is still there, but it isn't. She digs inside her bag until she finds the scrap of paper she's had since her first encounter with Suzanna Paulsson, and she enters the number in her phone and sends it along the airways or wherever calls go, and imagines the phone ringing beside Mrs. Paulsson's bed.

"Hello?" Mrs. Paulsson's voice sounds uneasy and groggy.

"This is Kay Scarpetta. I'm outside your house and something has happened. I need to talk to you. Please come to the door."

"What time is it?" she asks, confused and frightened.

"Please come to the door," Scarpetta says, getting out of the SUV. "I'm outside your door."

"All right. All right." She hangs up.

"Sit in the car," Scarpetta says into the SUV. "Wait until she opens the door, then come out. If she sees you through the window, she's not going to let us in."

She shuts her door and Marino sits quietly in the dark as she walks to the porch. Lights go on as Mrs. Paulsson passes through the house, heading to the door. Scarpetta waits, and a shadow floats across the living-room curtain. It moves as Mrs. Paulsson peeks out, then the curtain flutters shut and sways as the door opens. She is dressed in a zip-up red flannel robe, her hair flat where it was pressed against the pillow, her eyes puffy.

"Lord, what is it?" she asks, letting Scarpetta in the house. "Why are you here? What's happened?"

"The man living in the house behind your fence," Scarpetta says. "Did you know him?"

"What man?" She looks baffled and scared. "What fence?"

"The house back there." Scarpetta points, waiting for Marino to show up at the door any second. "A man has been living there. Come on. You must know someone's been living back there, Mrs. Paulsson."

Marino knocks on the door and Mrs. Paulsson jumps and grabs at her heart. "Lord! What now?"

Scarpetta opens the door and Marino walks in. His face is red and he won't look at Mrs. Paulsson, but shuts the door behind him and steps inside the living room.

"Oh shit," Mrs. Paulsson says, suddenly angry. "I don't want him here," she says to Scarpetta. "Make him leave!"

"Tell us about the man behind your fence," Scarpetta says. "You must have seen lights on back there."

"He call himself Edgar Allan or Al or go by some other name?" Marino says to her, his face red and hard. "Don't be giving us a bunch of crap, Suz. We ain't in the mood. What did he call himself? I bet the two of you were chummy."

"I'm telling you, I don't know about any man back there," she says. "Why? Did he…? You think…? Oh God." Her eyes shine with fear and tears, and she seems to be telling the truth as much as any good liar seems to, but Scarpetta doesn't believe her.

"He ever come to this house?" Marino demands to know.

"No!" She shakes her head side to side, clasping her hands at her waist.

"Oh really?" Marino says. "How do you know if you don't even know who we're talking about, huh? Maybe he's the milkman. Maybe he dropped in to play one of your games. You don't know who we're talking about, then how can you say he's never once been to your house?"

"I'm not going to be talked to like this," she says to Scarpetta.

"Answer the question," Scarpetta replies, looking at her.

"I'm telling you…"

"And I'm telling you that his damn fingerprints were in Gilly's bedroom," Marino replies aggressively, stepping closer to her. "You let that little redheaded bastard in here for one of your games? Is that it, Suz?"

"No!" Tears spill down her face. "No! Nobody lives back there! Just the old woman, and she's been gone for years! And maybe somebody's in there now and then, but nobody lives there, I swear! His fingerprints? Oh God! My little baby. My little baby." She sobs, hugging herself, crying so hard her bottom teeth are bared, and she presses her hands against her cheeks, and her hands are trembling. "What did he do to my little baby?"

"He killed her, that's what," Marino says. "Tell us about him, Suz."

"Oh no," she wails. "Oh Gilly."

"Sit down, Suz."

She stands there and cries into her hands.

"Sit down!" Marino orders her angrily, and Scarpetta knows his act.

She lets him do what he does so well, even if it is hard to watch.

"Sit down!" He points at the couch. "For once in your goddamn life tell the goddamn truth. Do it for Gilly."

Mrs. Paulsson collapses on the plaid couch beneath the windows, her face in her hands, tears running down her neck and spotting the front of her robe. Scarpetta moves in front of the cold fireplace, across from Mrs. Paulsson. "Tell me about Edgar Allan Pogue," Marino says, loudly and slowly. "You listening, Suz? Hell-o? You listening, Suz? He killed your little girl. Or maybe you don't care about that. She was such a pain in the ass, Gilly was. I heard about what a slob she was. All you did was pick up after her spoiled little ass…"

"Stop it!" she shrieks, her eyes wide and red and glaring as she stares hate at him. "Stop it! Stop it! You fucking… You…" She sobs and wipes her nose with a trembling hand. "My Gilly."

Marino sits in the wing chair, and neither of them seems aware that Scarpetta is in the room, but he knows. He knows the act. "You want us to get him, Suz?" he asks, suddenly quieter and calmer. He leans forward and rests his thick forearms on his big knees. "What do you want? Tell me.

"Yes." She nods, crying. "Yes."

"Help us."

She shakes her head and cries.

"You aren't gonna help us?" He leans back in the chair and looks over at Scarpetta in front of the fireplace. "She isn't gonna help us, Doc. She don't want to catch him."

"No," Mrs. Paulsson sobs. "I… I don't know. I only saw him, I guess it was… One night I went out, you know. I… I went over to the fence. I went over to the fence to get Sweetie, and a man was in the yard back there."

"The yard behind his house," Marino says. "On the other side of your back fence."

"He was behind the fence, and there's cracks between the boards, and he had his fingers through, petting Sweetie through the fence. I said, Good evening. That's what I said to him… Oh shit." She can hardly catch her breath. "Oh shit. He did it. He was petting Sweetie."

"What did he say to you?" Marino asks, his voice quiet. "He say something?"

"He said…" Her voice goes up and vanishes. "He"… he said, I like Sweetie."

"How'd he know your puppy's name?"

"'I like Sweetie,' he said."

"How'd he know your puppy's name was Sweetie?" Marino asks.

She breathes hard, not crying as much, staring down at the floor.

Marino says, "Well, I guess he might have taken your puppy too. Since he liked her. You haven't seen Sweetie, have you?"

"So he took Sweetie." She clenches her hands in her lap, and her knuckles blanch. "He took everything."

"That night when he was petting Sweetie through the fence, what did you think? What did you think about some man being back there?"

"He had a low voice, you know, not a loud voice, kind of a slow voice that wasn't friendly or unfriendly. I don't know."

"You didn't say nothing else to him?"

She stares at the floor, her hands clenched in fists in her lap. "I think I said to him, 'I'm Suz. You live in the neighborhood?" He said he was visiting. That was all. So I picked up Sweetie and headed into the house. And when I was walking in, in through the kitchen door, I saw Gilly. She was in her bedroom, looking out the window. Watching me get Sweetie. As soon as I was at the door, she ran from the window to meet me and to get Sweetie. She loved that dog." Her lips twitch as she stares at the floor. "She would be so upset."

"The curtains was open when Gilly was looking out the window?" Marino asks.

Mrs. Paulsson stares at the floor, unblinking, fists clenched so hard her nails are digging into her palms.

Marino glances at Scarpetta and she says from the fireplace, "It's all right, Mrs. Paulsson. Try to calm down. Try to relax a little bit. When he was petting Sweetie through the fence, how long was this before Gilly died?"

Mrs. Paulsson wipes her eyes and shuts them.

"Days? Weeks? Months?"

She raises her eyes and looks at her. "I don't know why you came back here. I told you not to."

"This is about Gilly," Scarpetta says, trying to get Mrs. Paulsson to focus on what she doesn't want to think about. "We need to know about the man you saw through the fence, the man you said was petting Sweetie."

"You can't just come back here when I told you not to."

"I'm sorry you don't want me here," Scarpetta replies, standing quietly in front of the fireplace. "You may not think so, but I'm trying to help. All of us want to find out what happened to your daughter. And what happened to Sweetie."

"No," she says with dry eyes that stare weirdly at Scarpetta. "I want you to leave." She doesn't indicate that Marino should leave. She doesn't even seem aware of him sitting in the chair to the left of the couch, not even two feet from where she sits. "If you don't get out, I'm calling someone. The police. I'll call them."

You want to be alone with him, Scarpetta thinks. You want more of the game because games are easier than what is real. "Remember when the police took things out of Gilly's bedroom?" she asks. "Remember they took the linens off her bed. There were a lot of things taken to the labs."

"I don't want you here," she says, motionless on the couch, her harshly pretty face staring coldly at her.

"Scientists look for evidence. Everything on Gilly's bed linens, everything on her pajamas, everything the police took from your house was looked at. And she was looked at. I looked at her," Scarpetta goes on, staring back at Mrs. Paulsson's cheap, pretty-face. "The scientists didn't find any dog hairs. Not one."

Mrs. Paulsson stares at her and a thought moves in her eyes like a minnow moving in shallow brown water.

"Not one dog hair. Not one hair from a basset hound," Scarpetta says in the same quiet, firm voice from the higher ground of the fireplace where she stands, looking down at Mrs. Paulsson on the couch. "Sweetie's gone, all right. Because she never existed. There is no puppy. There never was.

"Tell her to leave," Mrs. Paulsson says to Marino without looking at him. "Make her get out of my house," she says as if he is her ally or her man. "You doctors do what you want to people," she says to Scarpetta. "You doctors do exactly what you want to people."

"Why'd you lie about the puppy?" Marino asks.

"Sweetie's gone," she replies. "Gone."

"We would know if there'd been a dog in your house," he says.

"Gilly started looking out her window a lot. Because of Sweetie, looking out at Sweetie. Opening her window and calling out to Sweetie," Mrs. Paulsson says, staring down at her clenched hands.

"There never has been a puppy, now has there, Suz?" Marino asks.

"She put her window up and down because of Sweetie. When Sweetie was in the yard, Gilly would open her window and laugh and call out. The lock broke." Mrs. Paulsson slowly opens her palms and stares down at them, looking at the crescent wounds from her nails, looking at the crescents of blood. "I should have gotten it fixed," she says.