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Patricia Cornwell is the Gold Dagger and Edgar Award winning author whose international bestsellers include Black Notice, Point of Origin, Unnatural Exposure, Cause of Death, From Potter's Field, The Body Farm, Cruel And Unusual, All That Remains, Body Of Evidence, Postmortem and the non-Scarpetta novels Hornet's Nest and Southern Cross.  Cornwell is the author also of the biography of Ruth, A Portrait, The Story Of Ruth Bell Graham; a childeren's book, Life's Little Fable; and a cookbook, Scarpetta's Winter Table.  She divides her time between Richmond, Virginia, and New York.

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The Last Precinct

Random House Large Print Publishing

Chapter One

I KNOW FROM LUCY'S VOICE THAT SHE IS SCARED.Rarely is my brilliant, forceful, helicopter-piloting, fitness-obsessed,federal-law-enforcement-agent niece scared.

    "I feel really bad," she continues to repeat herself over the phone asMarino maintains his position on my bed and I pace.

    "You shouldn't," I tell her. "The police don't want anybody here, andbelieve me, you don't want to be here. I guess you're staying with Jo andthat's good," I say this to her as if it makes no difference to me, as if itdoesn't bother me that she is not here and I haven't seen her all day. Itdoes make a difference. It does bother me. But it is my old habit to givepeople an out. I don't like to be rejected, especially by Lucy Farinelli,whom I have raised like a daughter.

    She hesitates before answering. "Actually, I'm downtown at theJefferson."

    I try to make sense of this. The Jefferson is the grandest hotel in thecity, and I don't know why she would go to a hotel at all, much less anelegant, expensive one. Tears sting my eyes and I force them back, clearingmy throat, shoving down hurt. "Oh," is all I say. "Well, that's good. Iguess Jo's with you at the hotel, then."

    "No, with her family. Look, I just checked in. I've got a room for you.Why don't I come get you?"

    "A hotel's probably not a good idea right now." She thought of me andwants me with her. I feel a little better. "Anna's asked me to stay withher. In light of everything, I think it's best for me to go on to her house.She's invited you, too. But I guess you're settled."

    "How did Anna know?" Lucy inquires. "She hear about it on thenews?"

    Since the attempt on my life happened at a very late hour, it won'tbe in the newspapers until tomorrow morning. But I expect there hasbeen a storm of news breaks over the radio and on television. I don't knowhow Anna knew, now that I think about it. Lucy says she needs to stayput but will try to drop by later tonight. We hang up.

    "The media finds out you're in a hotel, that's all you need. They'll bebehind every bush," Marino says with a hard frown, looking like hell."Where's Lucy staying?"

    I repeat what she told me and almost wish I hadn't talked to her. Allit did was make me feel worse. Trapped, I feel trapped, as if I am insidea diving bell a thousand feet under the sea, detached, light-headed, theworld beyond me suddenly unrecognizable and surreal. I am numb yetevery nerve is on fire.

    "The Jefferson?" Marino is saying. "You gotta be kidding! She win thelottery or something? She not worried about the media finding her, too?What the shit's gotten into her?"

    I resume packing. I can't answer his questions. I am so tired of questions.

    "And she ain't at Jo's house. Huh," he goes on, "that's interesting.Huh. Never thought that would last." He yawns loudly and rubs histhick-featured, stubbly face as he watches me drape suits over a chair,continuing to pick out clothes for the office. To give Marino credit, hehas tried to be even-tempered, even considerate, since I got home fromthe hospital. Decent behavior is difficult for him given the best of circumstances,which certainly are not the ones he finds himself in at present.He is strung out, sleep-deprived and fueled by caffeine and junkfood, and I won't allow him to smoke inside my house. It was simply amatter of time before his self-control began to erode and he stepped backinto his rude, big-mouthed character. I witness the metamorphosis andam strangely relieved by it. I am desperate for things familiar, no matterhow unpleasant. Marino starts talking about what Lucy did last nightwhen she pulled up in front of the house and discovered Jean-BaptisteChandonne and me in my snowy front yard.

    "Hey, it's not that I blame her for wanting to blow the squirrel's brainsout," Marino gives me his commentary. "But that's where your training'sgot to come in. Don't matter if it's your aunt or your kid involved, yougot to do what you're trained to do, and she didn't. She sure as hell didn't.What she did was go ape-shit."

    "I've seen you go ape-shit a few times in your life," I remind him.

    "Well, it's my personal opinion they never should have thrown herinto that undercover work down there in Miami." Lucy is assigned tothe Miami field office and is here for the holidays, among other reasons."Sometimes people get too close to the bad guys and start identifyingwith them. Lucy's in a kill mode. She's gotten trigger-happy, Doc."

    "That's not fair." I realize I have packed too many pairs of shoes. "Tellme what you would have done if you'd gotten to my house first insteadof her." I stop what I am doing and look at him.

    "At least take a nanosecond to assess the situation before I went inthere and put a gun to the asshole's head. Shit. The guy was so fuckedup he couldn't even see what he was doing. He's screaming bloody murderbecause he's got this chemical shit you threw in his eyes. He wasn'tarmed by this point. He wasn't going to be hurting nobody. That was obviousright away. And it was obvious you was hurt, too. So if it had beenme, I'd called for an ambulance, and Lucy didn't think to even do that.She's a wild card, Doc. And no, I didn't want her in the house with allthis going on. That's why we interviewed her down at the station, got herstatements in a neutral place to get her calmed down."

    "I don't consider an interrogation room a neutral place," I reply.

    "Well, being inside the house where your Aunt Kay almost gotwhacked ain't exactly neutral, either."

    I don't disagree with him, but sarcasm is poisoning his tone. I beginto resent it.

    "All the same, I got to tell you I've got a really bad feeling about herbeing alone in a hotel right now," he adds, rubbing his face again, andno matter what he says to the contrary, he thinks the world of my nieceand would do anything for her. He has known her since she was ten, andhe introduced her to trucks and big engines and guns and all sorts of so-calledmanly interests that he now criticizes her for having in her life. "Imight just check on the little shit after I drop you off at Anna's. Not thatanybody seems to care about my bad feelings," he jumps back severalthoughts. "Like Jay Talley. Of course, it ain't my business. The self-centeredbastard."

    "He waited with me the entire time at the hospital," I defend Jay yetone more time, deflecting Marino's naked jealousy. Jay is ATF's Interpolliaison. I don't know him very well but slept with him in Paris four daysago. "And I was there thirteen or fourteen hours," I go on as Marino practicallyrolls his eyes. "I don't call that self-centered."

    "Jesus!" Marino exclaims. "Where'd you hear that fairy tale?" His eyesburn with resentment. He despises Jay and did the first time he ever laideyes on him in France. "I can't believe it. He lets you think he was atthe hospital all that time? He didn't wait for you! That's total bullshit.He took you there on his fucking white horse and came right back here.Then he called to see when you was going to be ready to check out andslithered back to the hospital and picked you up."

    "Which makes good sense." I don't show my dismay. "No point in sittingand doing nothing. And he never said he was there the entire time.I just assumed it."

    "Yeah, why? Because he let you assume it. He lets you think somethingthat isn't true, and you ain't bothered by that? In my book, that'sknown as a character flaw. It's called lying.... What?" He abruptlychanges his tone. Someone is in my doorway.

    A uniformed officer whose nameplate reads M. I. Calloway steps insidemy bedroom. "I'm sorry," she addresses Marino right off. "Captain,I didn't know you were back here."

    "Well, now you know." He gives her a black look.

    "Dr. Scarpetta?" Her wide eyes are like Ping-Pong balls, bouncingback and forth between Marino and me. "I need to ask you about thejar. Where the jar of the chemical, the formulin ..."

    "Formalin," I quietly correct her.

    "Right," she says. "Exactly, I mean, where exactly was the jar whenyou picked it up?"

    Marino remains on the bed, as if he makes himself at home on thefoot of my bed every day of his life. He starts feeling for his cigarettes.

    "The coffee table in the great room," I answer Callaway. "I've alreadytold everybody that."

    "Yes, ma'am, but where on the coffee table? It's a pretty big coffeetable. I'm really sorry to bother you with all this. It's just we're trying toreconstruct how it all happened, because later it's only going to getharder to remember."

    Marino slowly shakes a Lucky Strike loose from the pack. "Callaway?"He doesn't even look at her. "Since when are you a detective?Don't seem I remember you being in A Squad." He is the head of theRichmond Police Department's violent crime unit known as A Squad.

    "We just aren't sure where the jar was, Captain." Her cheeks burn.

    The cops probably assumed a woman coming back here to questionme would be less intrusive than a male. Perhaps her comrades sent herback here for that reason, or maybe it was simply that she got the assignmentbecause no one else wanted to tangle with me.

    "When you walk into the great room and face the coffee table, it'sthe right corner of the table closest to you," I say to her. I have beenthrough this many times. Nothing is clear. What happened is a blur, anunreal torquing of reality.

    "And that's approximately where you were standing when you threwthe chemical on him?" Callaway asks me.

    "No. I was on the other side of the couch. Near the sliding glass door.He was chasing me and that's where I ended up," I explain.

    "And after that you ran directly out of the house ...?" Callowayscratches through something she is writing on her small memo pad.

    "Through the dining room," I interrupt her. "Where my gun was,where I happened to have set it on the dining room table earlier in theevening. Not a good place to leave it, I admit." My mind meanders. Ifeel as if I have severe jet lag. "I hit the panic alarm and went out thefront door. With the gun, the Glock. But I slipped on ice and fracturedmy elbow. I couldn't pull the slide back, not with just one hand."

    She writes this down, too. My story is tired and the same. If I haveto tell it one more time, I might become irrational, and no cop on thisplanet has ever seen me irrational.

    "You never fired it?" She glances up at me and wets her lips.

    "I couldn't cock it."

    "You never tried to fire it?"

    "I don't know what you mean by try. I couldn't cock it."

    "But you tried to?"

    "You need a translator or something?" Marino erupts. The ominousway he stares at M. I. Calloway reminds me of the red dot a laser sightmarks on a person before a bullet follows. "The gun wasn't cocked andshe didn't fire it, you got that?" he repeats slowly and rudely. "How manycartridges you have in the magazine?" He directs this to me. "Eighteen?It's a Glock Seventeen, takes eighteen in the mag, one in the chamber,right?"

    "I don't know," I tell him. "Probably not eighteen, definitely not. It'shard to get that many rounds in it because the spring's stiff, the springin the magazine."

    "Right, right. You remember the last time you shot that gun?" he thenasks me.

    "Whenever I was at the range last. Months at least."

    "You always clean your guns after you go to the range, don't you, Doc."This is a statement, not an inquiry. Marino knows my habits and routines.

    "Yes." I am standing in the middle of my bedroom, blinking. I havea headache and the lights hurt my eyes.

    "You looked at the gun, Calloway? I mean, you've examined it, right?"He fixes her in his laser sight again. "So what's the deal?" He flaps a handat her as if she is a stupid nuisance. "Tell me what you found."

    She hesitates. I sense she doesn't want to give out information in frontof me. Marino's question hangs heavy like moisture about to precipitate.I decide on two skirts, one navy blue, one gray, and drape them over thechair.

    "There are fourteen rounds in the magazine," Calloway tells him ina robotic military tone. "There wasn't one in the chamber. It wasn'tcocked. And it looks clean."

    "Well, well. Then it wasn't cocked and she didn't shoot it. And it wasa dark and stormy nightand three Indians sat around a campfire. We wantto go round and round, or can we fuckingmove along?" He is sweatingand his body odor rises with his heat.

    "Look, there's nothing new to add," I say, suddenly on the verge oftears, cold and trembling and smelling Chandonne's awful stench again.

    "And why was it you had the jar in your home? And what exactly wasin it? That stuff you use in the morgue, right?" Calloway positions herselfto take Marino out of her sight line.

    "Formalin. A ten percent dilution of formaldehyde known as formalin,"I say. "It's used in the morgue to fix tissue, yes. Sections of organs.Skin, in this case."

    I dashed a caustic chemical into the eyes of another human being.I maimed him. Maybe I permanently blinded him. I imagine himstrapped to a bed on the ninth-floor prison ward of the Medical Collegeof Virginia. I saved my own life and feel no satisfaction in that fact. AllI feel is ruined.

    "So you had human tissue in your house. The skin. A tattoo. Fromthat unidentified body at the port? The one in the cargo container?" Thesound of Calloway's voice, of her pen, of pages flipping, reminds me ofreporters. "I don't mean to be dense, but why would you have somethinglike that at your house?"

    I go on to explain that we have had a very difficult time identifyingthe body from the port. We had nothing beyond a tattoo, really, and lastweek I drove to Petersburg and had an experienced tattoo artist look atthe tattoo from my case. I came directly home afterward, which is whythe tattoo in its jar of formalin happened to be in my house last night."Ordinarily, I wouldn't have something like that in my house," I add.

    "You kept it at your house for a week?" she asks with a dubiousexpression.

    "A lot was happening. Kim Luong was murdered. My niece was almostkilled in a shoot-out in Miami. I was called out of the country, toLyon, France. Interpol wanted to see me, wanted to talk about sevenwomen he"—I mean Chandonne—"probably murdered in Paris and thesuspicion that the dead man in the cargo container might be ThomasChandonne, the brother, the killer's brother, both of them sons of thisChandonne criminal cartel that half of law enforcement in the universehas been trying to bring down forever. Then Deputy Police Chief DianeBray was murdered. Should I have returned the tattoo to the morgue?"My head pounds. "Yes, I certainly should have. But I was distracted. Ijust forgot." I almost snap at her.

    "You just forgot," Officer Calloway repeats while Marino listens withgathering fury, trying to let her do her job and despising her at the sametime. "Dr. Scarpetta, do you have other body parts in your house?" Callowaythen asks.

    A stabbing pain penetrates my right eye. I am getting a migraine.

    "What kind of fucking question is that?" Marino raises his voice anotherdecibel.

    "I just didn't want us walking in on anything else like body fluids orother chemicals or ..."

    "No, no." I shake my head and turn my attention to a stack of neatlyfolded slacks and polo shirts. "Just slides."

    "Slides?"

    "For histology," I vaguely explain.

    "For what?"

    "Calloway, you're done." Marino's words crack like a gavel as he risesfrom the bed.

    "I just want to make sure we don't need to worry about any other hazards,"she says to him, and her hot cheeks and the flash in her eyes belieher subordination. She hates Marino. A lot of people do.

    "The only hazard you gotta worry about is the one you're looking at,"Marino snaps at her. "How `bout giving the Doc a little privacy, a littlereprieve from dumb-ass questions?"

    Calloway is an unattractive chinless woman with thick hips and narrowshoulders, her body tense with anger and embarrassment. She spinsaround and walks out of my bedroom, her footsteps absorbed by the Persianrunner in the hallway.

    "What's she think? You collect trophies or something?" Marino saysto me. "You bring home souvenirs like fucking Jeffrey Dahmer? JesusChrist."

    "I can't take any more of this." I tuck perfectly folded polo shirts intothe tote bag.

    "You're gonna have to take it, Doc. But you don't have to take anymore of it today." He wearily sits back down on the foot of my bed.

    "Keep your detectives off me," I warn him. "I don't want to see anothercop in my face. I'm not the one who did something wrong."

    "If they got anything else, they'll run it through me. This is my investigation,even if people like Calloway ain't figured that out yet. But Ialso ain't the one you got to worry about. It's like take anumber in thedeli line, there's so many people who insist they got to talk to you."

    I stack slacks on top of the polo shirts, and then reverse the order,placing the shirts on top so they don't wrinkle.

    "Course, nowhere near as many people as the ones who want to talkto him." He means Chandonne. "All these profilers and forensic psychiatristsand the media and shit," Marino goes through the Who's Wholist.

    I stop packing. I have no intention of picking through lingerie whileMarino watches. I refuse to sort through toiletries with him witness toit all. "I need a few minutes alone," I tell him.

    He stares at me, his eyes red, his face flushed the deep color of wine.Even his balding head is red, and he is disheveled in his jeans and asweatshirt, his belly nine months pregnant, his Red Wing boots huge anddirty. I can see his mind working. He doesn't want to leave me alone andseems to be weighing concerns that he will not share with me. A paranoidthought rises like dark smoke in my mind. He doesn't trust me.Maybe he thinks I am suicidal.

    "Marino, please. Can you just stand outside and keep people awaywhile I finish up in here? Go to my car and get my crime scene case outof the trunk. If I get called out on something ... well, I need to have it.The key's in the kitchen desk drawer, the top right—where I keep all mykeys. Please. And I need my car, by the way. I guess I'll just take my carand you can leave the scene case in it." Confusion eddies.

    He hesitates. "You can't take your car."

    "Damn it!" I blurt out. "Don't tell me they've got to go through mycar, too. This is insane."

    "Look. The first time your alarm went off last night, it was becausesomeone tried to break into your garage."

    "What do you mean, someone?" I retort as migraine pain sears mytemples and blurs myvision. "We know exactly who. He forced my garagedoor open because he wanted the alarm togo off. He wanted the policeto show up. So it wouldn't seem odd if the police came back a littlelaterbecause a neighbor reported a prowler on my property, supposedly."

    It was Jean-Baptiste Chandonne who came back. He impersonatedthe police. I still can't believe I fell for it.

    "We ain't got all the answers yet," Marino replies.

    "Why is it I keep getting this feeling you don't believe me?"

    "You need to get to Anna's and sleep."

    "He didn't touch my car," I assert. "He never got inside my garage. Idon't want anyone touching my car. I want to take it tonight. Just leavethe scene case inside the trunk."

    "Not tonight."

    Marino walks out and shuts the door behind him. I am desperate fora drink to override the electrical spikes in my central nervous system,but what do I do? Walk out to the bar and tell the cops to get the hellout of my way while I find the Scotch? Knowing that liquor probablywon't help my headache doesn't have an impact. I am so miserable inmy own skin, I don't care what is good or not good for me right now. Inthe bathroom I dig through more drawers and spill several lipsticks onthe floor. They roll between the toilet and the tub. I am unsteady as Ibend over to retrieve them, groping awkwardly with my right arm, all ofthis made more difficult because I am left-handed. I stop to ponder theperfumes neatly arranged on the vanity and gently pick up the small goldmetal bottle of Hermes 24 Faubourg. It is cool in my hand. I lift the spraynozzle to my nose and the spicy, erotic scent that Benton Wesley lovedfills my eyes with tears and my heart feels as if it will fatally fly out ofrhythm. I have not used the perfume in more than a year, not once sinceBenton was murdered. Now I have been murdered, I tell him in mythrobbing mind. And I am still here, Benton, I am still here. You were apsychological profiler for the FBI, an expert in dissecting the psyches ofmonsters and interpreting and predicting their behavior. You would haveseen this coming, wouldn't you? You would have predicted it, preventedit. Why weren't you here, Benton? I would be all right if you had beenhere.

    I realize someone is knocking on my bedroom door. "Just a minute,"I call out, clearing my throat and wiping my eyes. I splash cold water onmy face and tuck the Hermes perfume into the tote bag. I go to the door,expecting Marino. Instead, Jay Talley walks in wearing ATF battle dressand a day's growth of beard that turns his dark beauty sinister. He is oneof the handsomest men I have ever known, his body exquisitely sculpted,sensuality exuding from his pores like musk.

    "Just checking on you before you head out." His eyes burn into mine.They seem to feel and explore me the way his hands and mouth did fourdays ago in France.

    "What can I tell you?" I let him into my bedroom and am suddenlyself-conscious about the way I look. I don't want him to see me like this."I have to leave my own house. It's almost Christmas. My arm hurts. Myhead hurts. Other than that, I'm fine."

    "I'll drive you to Dr. Zenner's. I would like to, Kay."

    It vaguely penetrates that he knows where I am staying tonight.Marino promised my whereabouts would be secret. Jay shuts the doorand takes my hand, and all I can think about is that he didn't wait at thehospital for me and now he wants to drive me someplace else.

    "Let me help you through this. I care about you," he says to me.

    "No one seemed to care very much last night," I reply as I recall thatwhen he drove me home from the hospital and I thanked him for waiting,for being there for me, he never once even intimated that he hadn'tbeen there. "You and all your IRTs out there and the bastard just walksright up to my front door," I go on. "You fly all the way here from Paristo lead a goddamn International Response Team in your big-game huntfor this guy, and what a joke. What a bad movie—all these big cops withall their gear and assault rifles and the monster just strolls right up tomy house."

    Jay's eyes have begun wandering over areas of my anatomy as if theyare rest stops he is entitled to revisit. It shocks and repulses me that hecan think about my body at a time like this. In Paris I thought I was fallingin love with him. As I stand here with him in my bedroom and he isopenly interested in what is under my old lab coat, I realize I don't lovehim in the least.

    "You're just upset. God, why wouldn't you be? I'm concerned aboutyou. I'm here for you." He tries to touch me and I move away.

    "We had an afternoon." I have told him this before, but now I meanit. "A few hours. An encounter, Jay."

    "A mistake?" Hurt sharpens his voice. Dark anger flashes in his eyes.

    "Don't try to turn an afternoon into a life, into something of permanentmeaning. It isn't there. I'm sorry. For God's sake." My indignationrises. "Don't want anything from me right now." I walk away from him,gesturing with my one good arm. "What are you doing? What the hell areyou doing?"

    He raises a hand and hangs his head, warding off my blows, acknowledginghis mistake. I am not sure if he is sincere. "I don't knowwhat I'm doing. Being stupid, that's what," he says. "I don't mean to wantanything. Stupid, I'm stupid because of how I feel about you. Don't holdit against me. Please." He casts me an intense look and opens the door."I'm here for you, Kay. Jet'aime." I realize Jay has a way of saying goodbyethat makes me feel I might never see him again. An atavistic panicthrills my deepest psyche and I resist the temptation to call after him,to apologize, to promise we will have dinner or drinks soon. I shut myeyes and rub my temples, briefly leaning against the bedpost. I tell myselfI don't know what I am doing right now and should not do anything.

    Marino is in the hallway, an unlit cigarette clamped in the corner ofhis mouth, and I can feel him trying to read me and what might havejust happened while Jay was inside my bedroom with the door shut. Mygaze lingers on the empty hallway, halfway hoping Jay will reappear anddreading it at the same time. Marino grabs my bags and cops fall silentas I approach. They avoid looking in my direction as they move aboutmy great room, duty belts creaking, equipment they manipulate clickingand clacking. An investigator takes photographs of the coffee table,the flash gun popping bright white. Someone else is videotaping whilea crime scene technician sets up an alternative light source called aLuma-Lite that can detect fingerprints, drugs and body fluids not visibleto the unaided eye. My downtown office has a Luma-Lite I routinelyuse on bodies at scenes and in the morgue. To see a Luma-Lite insidemy house gives me a feeling that is indescribable.

    Dark dusting power smudges furniture and walls, and the colorfulPersian rug is pulled back, exposing antique French oak underneath. Anendtable lamp is unplugged and on the floor. The sectional sofa hascraters where cushions used to be, the air oily and acrid with the residualodor of formalin. Off the great room and near the front door is thedining room and through the open doorway I am greeted with the sightof a brown paper bag sealed with yellow evidence tape, dated, initialedand labeled clothing Scarpetta. Inside it are the slacks, sweater, socks,shoes, braand panties I was wearing last night, clothes taken from mein the hospital. That bag and other evidence and flashlights and equipmentare on top of my favorite red Jarrah Wood dining room table, as ifit is a workbench. Cops have draped coats over chairs, and wet, dirtyfootprints are everywhere. My mouth is dry, my joints weak with shameand rage.

    "Yo Marino!" a cop barks. "Righter's looking for you."

    Buford Righter is the city commonwealth's attorney. I look aroundfor Jay. He is nowhere to be seen.

    "Tell him to take a number and wait in line." Marino sticks to his deli-lineallusion.

    He lights the cigarette as I open the front door, and cold air bites myface and makes my eyes water. "Did you get my crime scene case?" Iask him.

    "It's in the truck." He says this like a condescending husband whohas been asked to fetch his wife's pocketbook.

    "Why's Righter calling?" I want to know.

    "Bunch of fucking voyeurs," he mutters.

    Marino's truck is on the street out front and two massive tires havechewed tracks into my snowy churned-up lawn. Buford Righter and Ihave worked many cases together over the years and it stings that he didnot ask me directly if he could come to my house. He has not, for thatmatter, contacted me to see how I am and let me know he is glad I amalive.

    "You ask me, people just want to see your joint," Marino says. "Sothey give these excuses about needing to check this and that."

    Slush seeps into my shoes as I carefully make my way along the driveway.

    "You got no idea how many people ask me what your house is like.You'd think you was

    Lady Di or something. Plus, Righter's got his nose in everything, can'tstand to be left out of the loop. Biggest fucking case since Jack the Ripper.Righter's bugging the hell out of us."

    Flash guns suddenly explode in bright white stutters and I almost slip.I swear out loud. Photographers have gotten past the neighborhoodguard gate. Three of them hurry toward me in a blaze of flashes as I strugglewith one arm to climb into the truck's high front seat.

    "Hey!" Marino yells at the nearest offender, a woman. "Goddamnbitch!" He lunges, trying to block her camera, and her feet go out fromunder her. She sits down hard on the slick street, camera equipmentthudding and scattering.

    "Fuckhead!" she screams at him. "Fuckhead!"

    "Get in the truck! Get in the truck!" Marino yells at me.

    "Motherfucker!"

    My heart drills my ribs.

    "I'm going to sue you, motherfucker!"

    More flashes and I shut my coat in the door and have to open it againand shut it again while Marino shoves my bags in back and jumps intothe driver's seat, the engine turning over and rumbling like a yacht. Thephotographer is trying to get up, and it occurs to me I ought to makesure she isn't injured. "We should see if she's hurt," I say, staring out theside window.

    "Hell no. Fuck no." The truck lurches onto the street, fishtails andaccelerates.

    "Who are they?" Adrenalin pumps. Blue dots float before my eyes.

    "Assholes. That's who." He snatches up the hand mike. "Unit nine,"he announces over the air.

    "Unit nine," the dispatcher comes back.

    "I don't need pictures of me, my house ...," I raise my voice. Everycell in my body lights up to protest the unfairness of it all.

    "Ten-five unit three-twenty, ask him to call me on my portable."Marino holds the mike against his mouth. Unit three-twenty gets backto him right away, the portable phone vibrating like a huge insect. Marinoflips it open and talks. "Somehow the media's gotten in the neighborhood.Photographers. I'm thinking they parked somewhere in WindsorFarms, came in on foot over the fence, through that open grassy area behindthe guard booth. Send units to look for any cars parked where theyshouldn't be and tow 'em. They step foot on the Doc's property, arrest'em." He ends the call, flipping the phone shut as if he is Captain Kirkand has just ordered the Enterprise to attack.

    We slow down at the guard booth and Joe steps out. He is an old manwho has always been proud to wear his brown Pinkerton's uniform, andhe is very nice, polite and protective, but I would not want to dependon him or his colleagues for more than nuisance control. It shouldn't surpriseme a bit that Chandonne got inside my neighborhood or that nowthe media has. Joe's slack, wrinkled face turns uneasy when he noticesme sitting inside the truck.

    "Hey, man," Marino gruffly says through the open window, "how'dthe photographers get in here?"

    "What?" Joe instantly goes into protect mode, eyes narrowing as hestares down the slick, empty street, sodium vapor lights casting yellowauras high up on poles.

    "In front of the Doc's house. At least three of 'em."

    "They didn't come through here," Joe declares. He ducks back insidethe booth and grabs the phone.

    We drive off. "We can do but so much, Doc," Marino says to me. "Youmay as well duck your head in the sand because there's gonna be picturesand shit all over the place."

    I stare out the window at lovely Georgian homes glowing with holidayfestivity.

    "Bad news is, your security risk just went up another mile." He ispreaching to me, telling me what I already know and have no interest indwelling on right now. "Because now half the world's gonna see your bigfancy house and know exactly where you live. Problem is, and what worriesthe hell out of me, is stuff like this brings out other squirrels. Gives'em ideas. They start imagining you as a victim and get off on it, like thoseassholes who go to the courthouse, cruising for rape cases to sit in on."

    He eases to a stop at the intersection of Canterbury Road and WestCary Street, and headlights sweep over us as a compact dark-coloredsedan turns in and slows. I recognize the narrow, insipid face of BufordRighter looking over at Marino's truck. Righter and Marino roll downtheir windows.

    "You leaving ...?" Righter starts to say when his eyes shoot pastMarino and land on me in surprise. I have the unnerving sense that Iam the last person he wants to see. "Sorry for your trouble," Righterweirdly says to me, as if what is happening in my life is nothing morethan trouble, an inconvenience, an unpleasantness.

    "Yeah, heading out." Marino sucks on the cigarette, not the least bithelpful. He has already expressed his opinion about Righter's showingup at my house. It is unnecessary, and even if he truly thinks it is so importantto eyeball the crime scene himself, why didn't he do it earlierwhen I was at the hospital?

    Righter pulls his overcoat more tightly around his neck, light fromstreet lamps glinting off his glasses. He nods and says to me, "Take care.Glad you're okay," deciding to acknowledge my so-called trouble. "Thisis real hard on all of us." A thought catches before it is out in words. Whateverhe was going to say next is gone, retracted, struck from the record."I'll be talking to you," he promises Marino.

    Windows go up. We drive off.

    "Give me a cigarette," I tell Marino. "I'm assuming he didn't cometo my house earlier today," I then say.

    "Yeah, actually he did. About ten o'clock this morning." He offers methe pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes and flame spits out of a lighter heholds my way.

    Anger coils through my entrails, and the back of my neck is hot, thepressure in my head almost unbearable. Fear stirs inside me like a wakingbeast. I turn mean, punching in the lighter on the dash, ungraciouslyleaving Marino's arm extended with the Bic lighter flaming. "Thanks fortelling me," I sharply reply. "You mind my asking who the hell else hasbeen in my house? And how many times? And how long they stayed andwhat they touched?"

    "Hey, don't take it out on me," he warns.

    I know the tone. He is about to lose his patience with me and mymess. We are like weather systems about to collide, and I don't want that.The last thing I need right now is a war with Marino. I touch the tip ofthe cigarette to bright orange coils and inhale deeply, the punch of puretobacco spinning me. We drive several minutes in flinty silence, andwhen I finally speak, I sound numb, my feverish brain glazing over likethe streets, depression a heavy pain spreading along my ribs. "I knowyou're just doing what has to be done. I appreciate it," I force the words."Even if I'm not showing it."

    "You don't got to explain nothing." He sucks on the cigarette, bothof us shooting streams of smoke toward our partially open windows. "Iknow exactly what you feel," he adds.

    "You couldn't possibly." Resentment seeps up my throat like bile. "Idon't even know."

    "I understand a lot more than you give me credit for," he says. "Somedayyou'll see that, Doc. No way you can see shit right now, and I'm tellingyou it ain't gonna get no better in days and weeks to come. That's theway it works. The real damage hasn't even hit. I can't tell you how manytimes I've seen it, seen what happens to people when they're victimized."

    I absolutely do not want to hear a single word of this.

    "Damn good thing you're going where you are," he says. "Exactly whatthe doctor ordered, in more ways than one."

    "I'm not staying with Anna because it's what the doctor ordered," Ireply testily. "I'm staying with her because she's my friend."

    "Look, you're a victim and you got to deal with it, and you need helpdealing with it. Don't matter you're a doctor-lawyer—Indian chief."Marino will not shut up, in part because he is looking for a fight. Hewants a focus for his anger. I can see what is coming, and anger crawlsup my neck and heats up the roots of my hair. "Being a victim's the greatequalizer," Marino, the world's authority, goes on.

    I draw out the words slowly. "I am not a victim." My voice waversaround its edges like fire. "There's a difference between being victimizedand being a victim. I'm not a sideshow forcharacter disorders." Mytone sears. "I haven't become what he wanted to turn me into"—ofcourse, I mean Chandonne—"even if he'd had his way, I wouldn't bewhat he tried to project onto me. I would just be dead. Not changed.Not something less than I am. Just dead."

    I feel Marino recoil in his dark, loud space on the other side of hishuge, manly truck. He doesn't understand what I mean or feel and probablynever will. He reacts as if I slapped him across the face or kneedhim in the groin.

    "I'm talking reality." He strikes back. "One of us has to."

    "Reality is, I'm alive."

    "Yeah. A fuckin' goddamn miracle."

    "I should have known you would do this." I get quiet and cold. "Sopredictable. People blame the prey not the predator, criticize the injurednot the asshole who did it." I tremble in the dark. "Goddamn you. Goddamnyou, Marino."

    "I still can't believe you opened your door!" he shouts. What happenedto me makes him feel powerless.

    "And where were you guys?" I again remind him of an unpleasantfact. "It might have been nice if at least one or two of you could havekept an eye on my property. Since you were so concerned that he mightcome after me."

    "I talked to you on the phone, remember?" He attacks from anotherangle. "You said you was fine. I told you to sit tight, that we'd found wherethe son of a bitch was hiding, that we knew he was out somewhere, probablylooking for another woman to beat and bite the shit out of. And whatdo you do, Doc-tor Law Enforcement? You open your fucking door whensomeone knocks! At fucking midnight!"

    I thought the person was the police. He said he was the police.

    "Why?" Marino is yelling now, pounding the steering wheel like anout-of-control child. "Huh? Why? Goddamn it, tell me!"

    We knew for days who the killer is, that he is the spiritual and physicalfreak Chandonne. We knew he is French and where his organizedcrime family lives in Paris. The person outside my door did not have evena hint of a French accent.

    Police.

    I didn't call the police, I said through the shut door.

    Ma'am, we've gotten a call about a suspicious person on your property.Are you all right?

    He had no accent. I never expected him to speak without an accent.It never occurred to me, not once. Were I to relive last night, it still wouldnot occur to me. The police had just been at my house when the alarmwent off. It didn't seem the least bit suspicious that they would be back.I incorrectly assumed they were keeping a close eye on my property. Itwas so quick. I opened the door and the porch light was off and I smelledthat dirty, wet animal smell in the deep, frigid night.

    "Yo! Anybody home?" Marino yells, poking my shoulder hard.

    "Don't touch me!" I come to with a start, and gasp and jerk away fromhim and the truck swerves. The ensuing silence turns the air heavy likewater a hundred feet deep, and awful images swim back into my blackestthoughts. A forgotten ash is so long I can't steer it to the ashtray intime. I brush off my lap. "You can turn at Stonypoint Shopping Center,if you want," I say to Marino. "It's quicker."

Continues...

Excerpted from The Last Precinctby Patricia Cornwell Copyright © 2000 by Patricia Cornwell. Excerpted by permission.
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