The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 39

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I TURN ON THE TELEVISION AND HAND BERGER THE remote control.

"Dr. Scarpetta"_she completely ignores Marino_"before we get into this, let me give you a little background on how the district attorney's office works in Manhattan. As I've already mentioned, we do a number of things very differently from what you're accustomed to here in Virginia. I was hoping to explain all that to you before you were subjected to what you are about to see. Are you familiar with our system of homicide call?"

"No," I reply as my nerves tighten and begin to hum.

"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, an assistant D.A. is on call should a homicide go down or the cops locate a defendant. In Manhattan, the cops can't arrest a defendant without the D.A.'s office giving them the go-ahead, as I've already explained. This is to ensure that everything_search warrants, for example_are executed properly. It's common for the prosecutor, the assistant, to go to the crime scene, and in a situation where a defendant is arrested, if he's willing to be interviewed by the assistant, we jump all over it. Captain Marino," she says, giving him her cool attention, "you started out in NYPD, but that may have been before all this was implemented."

"Never heard of it before today," he mumbles, face still dangerously red.

"What about vertical prosecution?"

"Sounds like a sex act," Marino replies.

Berger pretends she didn't hear that. "Morgenthau's idea," she says to me.

Robert Morgenthau has been the district attorney in Manhattan for nearly twenty-five years. He is a legend. It is obvious Berger loves working for him. Something stirs deep inside me. Envy? No, maybe wistfulness. I am tired. I experience a growing feeling of powerlessness. I have no one but Marino, who is anything but innovative or enlightened. Marino is not a legend and right now I don't love working with him or even want him around.

"The prosecutor has the case from intake on," Berger begins to explain vertical prosecution. "Then we don't have to fool with three or four people who have already interviewed our witnesses or the victim. If a case is mine, for example, I might literally start out at the crime scene and end up in court. A purity you absolutely can't argue with. If I'm lucky, I interrogate the defendant before he retains counsel_obviously, no defense attorney's going to agree to his client talking to me." She hits the play button on the remote control. "Fortunately, I caught Chandonne before he got counsel. I interviewed him several times in the hospital beginning at the rather inhumane hour of three o'clock this morning."

To say I am shocked would be a gross trivialization of my reaction to what she has just revealed. It can't be possible that Jean-Baptiste Chandonne would talk to anyone.

"Clearly, you're a bit taken aback." Berger's comment to me seems rhetorical, as if she has some point to make.

"You might say that," I answer her.

"Maybe it hasn't really occurred to you that your assailant can walk, talk, chew gum, drink Pepsi? Maybe he doesn't

seem fully human to you?" she suggests. "Maybe you think

he really is a werewolf."

I never actually saw him when he spoke cogently on the other side of my front door. Police. Is everything all right inthere? After that, he was a monster. Yes, a monster. Yes, a monster coming after me with a black iron tool that looked like something from the Tower of London. Then he was grunting and screaming and sounded very much the way he looks, which is hideous, unearthly. A beast.

Berger smiles a bit wearily. "Now you're about to see our challenge, Dr. Scarpetta. Chandonne isn't crazy. He isn't supernatural. And we don't want jurors holding him to a different standard just because he has an unfortunate medical condition. But I also want them to see him now, before he's cleaned up and wearing a three-piece suit. I think the jurors need to fully appreciate the terror his victims felt, don't you?" Her eyes touch mine. "Might help them get the drift that no one in her right mind would have invited him into her home."

"Why? Is he saying he was invited in?" My mouth has gone dry.

"He's saying quite a lot of things," Berger replies.

"Biggest bunch of fucking bullshit you ever heard," Marino says in disgust. "But then I knew that right off the bat. I go to his room late last night, right? Tell him Ms. Berger wants to interview him and so he asks me what she looks like. I don't say a word, play the asshole along. I tell him, 'Well, let's just put it this way, John. A lotta guys have a real hard time_no pun intended_concentrating when she's around, know what I mean?' "

John, I numbly think. Marino calls him John.

"Testing, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five," a voice sounds on the tape, and a cinder-block wall fills the screen. The camera begins to focus on a bare table and a chair. In the background a telephone rings.

"He wants to know if she has a good body, and Ms. Berger, I hope you'll excuse me for making reference to it." Marino oozes sarcasm, still furious with her for reasons I don't yet fully understand. "But I'm just repeating what the piece of

shit said. And so I tell him, 'Geez, it wouldn't be right for me

to comment, but like I said, the guys can't think straight when she's around. At least straight guys can't think straight.' " I know damn well this is not what Marino said. In fact, I doubt Chandonne asked about Berger's appearance at all. More likely, the suggestion of her sexy good looks came from Marino, to bait Chandonne into talking to her, and as I recall the crude comment Marino made about Berger when we were walking out to Lucy's car last night, I feel a rush of resentment, of anger. I am fed up with him and his machismo. I am sick of his male chauvinism and crudity.

"What the hell is this?" I feel like hosing him off with cold water. "Do female body parts have to enter every goddamn conversation? Do you think it's possible, Marino, that you might focus on this case without obsessing over how big a woman's breasts are?"

'Testing, one, two, three, four, five," the cameraman's voice sounds again on tape. The telephone stops ringing. Feet shuffle. Voices murmur. "We're gonna sit you at this table and chair right here." I recognize Marino's voice on tape, and in the background someone knocks on a door.

"The point is, Chandonne talked." Berger is looking at me, palpating me with her eyes again, finding my weaknesses, my inflamed spots. "He talked to me quite a lot."

"For whatever that's worth." Marino angrily stares at the TV screen. So that's it. Marino might have helped induce Chandonne into talking to Berger, but the truth is, Marino wanted Chandonne to talk to him.

The camera is fixed and I see only what is directly in its view. Marino's big gut comes into the picture as he pulls out a wooden chair, and someone in a dark blue suit and deep red tie helps Marino steer Jean-Baptiste Chandonne into the chair. Chandonne wears short-sleeved blue hospital scrubs and long pale hair hangs from his arms in tangles of wavy, soft fur the color of pale honey. Hair splays over his v-necked collar and climbs up his neck in repulsive, long swirls. He sits and his head enters the frame, swathed in gauze from mid-forehead to the tip of his nose. Directly around the bandages, the flesh has been shaven and is as white as milk, as if it has never seen the sun.

"Can I have my Pepsi, please?" Chandonne asks. He wears no restraints, not even handcuffs.

"You want it topped off?" Marino says to him.

No answer. Berger moves past the camera and I note that she is wearing a chocolate brown suit with padded shoulders. She sits across from Chandonne. I see only the back of her head and shoulders.

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