Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 30

She is walking around, too. She squats before the garage door and examines sc.r.a.pes on the rubber strip where we believe Chandonne used some type of tool to pry the door up. "Could you open the door, please?" Berger is grim.

I press a b.u.t.ton on the wall and the door loudly rolls up. The temperature inside the garage instantly drops.

"No, your car wasn't here when I was." Berger straightens up. "I've never seen it. In light of circ.u.mstances, I suspect you do know where it is," she adds.

The night fills the large empty s.p.a.ce and I walk over to where Berger is standing. "Probably impounded," I say. "Jesus Christ."

She nods. "We'll get to the bottom of it." She turns to me and there is something in her eyes I've never before seen. Doubt. Berger is uneasy. Maybe it is wishful thinking on my part, but I sense she feels bad for me.

"So now what?" I mutter, looking around my garage as if I have never seen it before. "What am I supposed to drive?

"Your alarm went off around eleven o'clock Friday night," Berger is all business again. She is firm and no-nonsense again. She returns to our mission of retracing Chandonne's steps. "The cops arrive. You take them in here and find the door open about eight inches." Obviously, she has seen the incident report of the attempted breaking and entering. "It was snowing and you found footprints on the other side of the door." She steps outside and I follow. "The footprints were covered with a dusting of snow, but you could tell they led around the side of the house, up to the street."

We stand on my driveway in the raw air, both of us without coats. I stare up at the murky sky and a few flakes of snow coldly touch my face. It has started again. Winter has become a hemophiliac. It can't seem to stop precipitating. Lights from my neighbor's house shine through magnolias and bare trees, and I wonder how much peace of mind the people of Lockgreen have left. Chandonne has tainted life for them, too. I wouldn't be surprised if some people move.

"Can you remember where the footprints were?" Berger asks.

I show her. I follow my driveway around the side of the house and cut through the yard, straight out to the street.

"Which way did he go?" Berger looks up and down the dark, empty street.

"Don't know," I reply. "The snow was churned up and it was snowing again. We couldn't tell which way he went. But I didn't stay out here looking, either. I guess you'll have to ask the police." I think about Marino. I wish he would hurry up and get here, and 1 am reminded of why I called him. Fear and bewilderment crackle up my spine. I look around at my neighbors' houses. I have learned to read where I live and can tell, by windows lit up, by cars in the driveway and newspaper deliveries, when people are home, which really isn't often. So much of the population here is retired and wintering in Florida and spending hot summer months on the water somewhere. It occurs to me that I have never really had friends in my neighborhood, only people who wave when we pa.s.s each other in our cars.

Berger walks back toward the garage, hugging herself to keep warm, the moisture in her breath freezing and puffing out white. I remember Lucy as a child coming to visit from Miami. Her only exposure to the cold was Richmond, and she would roll up notebook paper and stand out on the patio, pretending to smoke, tapping imaginary ashes, not knowing I was watching through a window. "Let's back up," Berger is saying as she walks. "To Monday, December sixth. The day the body was found in the container at the Richmond Port. The body that we believe was Thomas Chandonne, allegedly murdered by his brother, Jean-Baptiste. Tell me exactly what happened that Monday."

"I was notified about the body," I begin.

"By whom?"

"Marino. Then minutes later, my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, called. I said I would respond to the scene," I begin.

"But you didn't have to," she interrupts. "You're the chief. We have a stinky, nasty decomposing body on an unseasonably warm morning. You could have let, uh, Fielding or whoever respond."

"I could have."

"Why didn't you?"

"It was clearly going to be a complicated case. The ship was out of Belgium and we had to entertain the possibility that the body originated in Belgium, thus adding international difficulties. I tend to take the hard cases, the ones that will get a lot of publicity."

"Because you like the publicity?"

"Because I don't like it."

We are inside my garage now and both of us are thoroughly chilled. I shut the door.

"And maybe you wanted to take this case because you'd had an upsetting morning?" Berger walks over to the large cedar locker. "You mind?" I tell her to help herself as I marvel again at the details she seems to know about me.

Black Monday. That morning, Senator Frank Lord, chairman of the judiciary committee and an old, dear friend, came to see me. In his possession was a letter Benton had written to me. I knew nothing about this letter. It would never occur to me thai while Benton was on vacation at Lake Michigan some years ago, he had written me a letter and instructed Senator Lord to give it to me should heBentondie. I remember recognizing the penmanship when Senator Lord delivered the letter to me. I will never forget the shock. I was devastated. Grief finally caught up with me and seized my soul, and this was precisely what Benton had intended. He was the brilliant profiler to the end. He knew exactly how I would react should something happen to him, and he was forcing me out of my workaholic denial.

"How do you know about the letter?" I numbly ask Berger.

She is looking inside the locker at jumpsuits, rubber boots, waders, heavy leather gloves, long underwear, socks, tennis shoes. "Please bear with me," she says almost gently. "Just answer my questions for now. I'll answer yours later."

Later isn't good enough. "Why does the letter matter?"

"I'm not sure. But let's start with state of mind."

She lets that sink in. My state of mind is the bull's-eye of Caggiano's target, should I end up in New York. More immediately, it is what everyone else seems to be questioning.

"Let's a.s.sume if I know something, the opposing counsel does, too," she adds.

I nod.

"You get this letter out of the blue. From Benton." She pauses and emotion flickers across her face. "Let me just say..." She looks away from me. "That would have undone me, too, totally. I'm sorry for what you've been through." She meets my eyes. Another ploy to make me trust her, bond with her? "Benton is reminding you a year after his death that you've probably not dealt with his loss. You've run like h.e.l.l from the pain."

"You can't have seen the letter." I am stunned and outraged. "It's locked in a safe. How do you know what it says?"

"You showed it to other people," she reasonably replies.

I realize with the little bit of objectivity I have left that if Berger hasn't talked to everyone around me, including Lucy and Marino, she will. It is her duty. She would be foolish and negligent if she didn't. "December the sixth," she resumes. "He wrote the letter on December the sixth, nineteen-ninety-six, and instructed Senator Lord to deliver it to you on the December the sixth following Benton's death. Why was that date special to Benton?"

I hesitate.

"Thick skin, Kay," she reminds me. "Thick skin."

"I don't know the significance of December the sixth, exactlyexcept Benton mentioned in the letter that he knew Christmas is hard for me," I reply. "He wanted me to get the letter close to Christmas."

"Christmas is hard for you?"

"Isn't it hard for everybody?"

Berger is silent. Then she asks, "When did your intimate relationship with him begin?"

"In the fall. Years ago."

"Okay. In the fall, years ago. That's when you began your s.e.xual relationship with him." She says this as if I am avoiding reality. "When he was still married. When your affair with him began."

"That's right."

"Okay. This past December the sixth, you get the letter and later that morning responded to the scene at the Richmond port. Then you came back here. Tell me exactly what your routine is when you come straight home from a crime scene."

"My scene clothes were double-bagged in the trunk of my car," I explain. "A jumpsuit and tennis shoes." I keep staring at the empty s.p.a.ce where my car should be. "The jumpsuit went into the washing machine, the shoes into a sink of scalding water with disinfectant." I show her the shoes. They are still parked on the shelf where I left them to dry more than two weeks ago.

"Then?" Berger walks over to the washing machine and dryer.

"Then I stripped," I tell her. "I took off everything and put it in the washing machine, started it up and went inside the house.

"Naked."

"Yes. I went back to my bedroom, to the shower, without stopping. That's how I disinfect if I come straight home from a scene," I conclude.

Berger is fascinated. She has a theory going, and whatever it is, I am feeling increasingly uncomfortable and exposed. "I just wonder," she muses. "Just wonder if he somehow knew."

"Somehow knew? And I really would like to go inside, if it's all right with you," I say. "I'm freezing."

"Somehow knew your routine," she persists. "If he was interested in your garage because of your routine. It was more than setting off the alarm. Maybe he really was trying to get in. The garage is where you take off your death clothesin this instance, clothes sullied by a death he caused. You were nude and vulnerable, even if ever so briefly." She follows me back kiside and I shut the mud room door behind us. "He might have a real s.e.xual fantasy about that."

"I can't see how he could know a d.a.m.n thing about my routine." I resist her hypothesis. "He didn't witness what I did that day."

She raises an eyebrow as she looks at me. "Can you say that as fact? Any possibility he followed you home? We know he was at the port at some point, because that's how he got to Richmondaboard the Sirius, where he'd covered himself with a white uniform, shaved visible areas of his body, and stayed in the galley most of the time, working as the cook and keeping to himself. Isn't that the theory? I certainly don't buy what he said when I interviewed himthat he stole a pa.s.sport and wallet and flew coach."

"It's a theory that he arrived at the same time his brother's body showed up," I reply.

"So Jean-Baptiste, caring guy that he is, probably hung around in the ship and watched all you people scurrying around when the body was found. Greatest show on earth. These a.s.sholes love to watch us work their crimes."

"How could he have followed me?" I get back to that outrageous thought. "How? He had a car?"

"Maybe he did," she says. "I'm getting around to entertaining the possibility that Chandonne wasn't the lone, wretched creature who just happened upon your city because it was convenient or even random. I'm no longer sure what his connections are, and I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps he might have been part of a grander scheme that has to do with the family business. Perhaps even with Bray herself, since she clearly was involved in an underworld of crime. And now we have other murders, one of the victims clearly involved in organized crime. An a.s.sa.s.sin. And an undercover FBI agent working a gun-smuggling case. And the hairs at the campground that might be Chandonne's. This is all adding up to something more than a man who killed his brother, took his place on a ship bound for Richmondall to get out of Paris because his nasty little habit of murdering and mutilating women was becoming increasingly inconvenient to his powerful criminal family. Then he starts killing here because he can't control himself? Well." Berger leans against the kitchen counter. "There are just too many coincidences. And how did he get to the campground if he didn't have a car? a.s.suming those hairs turn out to be his," she repeats.

I sit down at the table. There are no windows inside my garage, but there are small windows in the garage door. I consider the possibility that Chandonne did follow me home and peeped through the garage door at me while I was cleaning up and undressing. Maybe he had help finding the abandoned house on the river, too. Maybe Berger is right. Maybe he isn't alone and never has been. It is almost midnight, almost Christmas, and Marino still isn't here and Berger's demeanor tells me she could keep going until dawn.

"Alarm goes off," she resumes. "Cops come and go. You return to the great room." She motions me to follow her there. "You're sitting where?"

"On the sofa."

"Right. TV on, going through bills, and around midnight what?"

"There's a knock on the front door," I reply.

"Describe the knock.

"A rapping with something hard." I try to remember every detail. "Like a flashlight or tactical baton. The way police knock. I get up and ask who's there. Or I think I ask. I'm not sure, but a male voice identifies himself as police. He says a prowler has been spotted on my property and asks if everything's okay."

"And that makes sense because we know a prowler was there about an hour earlier, when someone tried to force open your garage door."

"Exactly." I nod. "I turn off the alarm and open the door, and he is there," I add as if I am talking about nothing more threatening than trick-or-treaters.

"Show me," Berger says.

1 WALK THROUGH THE GREAT ROOM, PAST THE DINING.

room and to the entrance hall. I open the door, and just the act of recreating a scenario that almost cost me my life causes a visceral reaction. I feel sick. My hands begin to tremble. My front porch light is still out because the police removed the bulb and fixture and submitted them to the labs to be processed for fingerprints. No one has replaced them. Exposed wires dangle from the porch ceiling. Berger is waiting patiently for me to continue. "He rushes inside," I say. "And back-kicks the door shut behind him." I shut the door. "He has this black coat and he tries to put it over my head."

"Coat on or off when he came in?"

"On. He was grabbing it off as he came through the door." I am standing still. "And he tried to touch me."

"Tried to touch you?" Berger frowns. "With the chipping hammer?"

"With his hand. He reached out his hand and touched my cheek, or tried to touch it."

"You stood there while he did that? Just stood there?"

"It all happened so fast," I say. "So fast," I repeat. "I'm not sure. I just know he tried to do that and was s.n.a.t.c.hing off his coat and trying to throw it over my head. And I ran."

"What about the chipping hammer?

"He had it out. I'm not sure. Or he got it out. But I know he had it out when he was chasing me into the great room."

"Not out at first? He didn't have the chipping hammer out at first? You're sure?" She presses me on this point.

I try to remember, to envision it. "No, not at first," I decide. "He tried to touch me first with his hand. Then net me. Then he pulled out the chipping hammer."

"Can you show me what you did next?" she asks.

"Run?"

"Yes, run."

"Not like that," I say. "I'd have to have the same adrenaline rush, the same panic, to run like that."

"Kay, walk me through it, please."

I move out of the entrance hall, past the dining room and back into the great room. Straight ahead is the yellow Jarrah coffee table I discovered at that wonderful shop in Katonah, New York. What was the name? Antipodes? The rich blond wood glows like honey and I try not to notice the dusting powder all over it, or that somebody left a 7-Eleven coffee cup on it. "The jar of formalin was here, on this corner of the table," I tell Berger.

"And it was there because ... ?"

"Because of the tattoo in it. The tattoo I'd removed from the back of the body that we believe is Thomas Chandonne."

"The defense is going to want to know why you brought human skin to your house, Kay."

"Of course. Everyone's been asking me that." I feel a rush of annoyance. "The tattoo is important and created many, many questions because we just couldn't figure out what it was. Not only was the body badly decomposed, thus making it very difficult to even see the tattoo, but then it turned out that it was a cover-up tattoo. One tattoo covering up another, and it was crucial, especially, that we determine what the original tattoo was."

"Two gold dots that were covered up with an owl," Berger says. "Every member of the Chandonne cartel has two gold dots tattooed on him.

"That's what Interpol told me, yes," I say, and by now I have accepted that she and Jay Talley have spent a lot of quality time together.

"Brother Thomas was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his family, had his own side business, was diverting ships, falsifying bills of lading, running his own guns and drugs. And the theory is the family caught on. He changed his tattoo into an owl and began using aliases because he knew the family would kill him if they found him," I recite what I have been told, what Jay told me in Lyon.

"Interesting." She touches a finger to her lips, looking around. "And it appears the family did kill him. The other son did. The jar of formalin. Why did you bring it home? Tell me again."

"It wasn't really deliberate. I went to a tattoo parlor in Petersburg to have the tattoo from the body looked at by someone who's an expert, a tattoo artist. I came straight home from there and left the tattoo in my office here. It was just a chance situation that the night he came here ..."

"Jean-Baptiste Chandonne."

"Yes. The night he came here I had carried the jar in here, in the great room, and was looking at it while I was doing other things. I set it down. He pushes his way into my house and I run. By now he has the chipping hammer out and has it raised to strike me. It was just a panicked reflex that I see the jar and grab it. I jump over the back of the sofa and unscrew the lid and throw the formalin in his face."

"A reflex because you know very well how caustic formalin is."