Trace - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 48

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"She called my cell phone last night," Marino replies. "They've torn down a lot since we got here. A lot's been torn down in more ways than one." He looks out at the demolition ahead.

The precast building is smaller and more pitiful than when they first saw it. Or maybe they are no longer surprised by the destruction, and it only seems smaller and more pitiful. Scarpetta slows as she approaches 14th Street and looks for a place to park the car.

"We're going to have to go up Gary," she decides. "There's a pay lot just a block or two up Gary, or at least there used to be."

"The hell with it. Drive right up to the building and off the road," Marino says. "I've got us covered." He reaches down and unzips his black cloth briefcase, and pulls out a red Chief Medical Examiner plate. He slides it between the windshield and dash.

"Now how did you manage that?" She can't believe it. "How the hell did you do that?"

"Things happen when you take time "to chat with the girls in the front office."

"You're very bad," she says, shaking her head. "I've missed having one of those." she adds, because once upon a time, parking was nor the problem or inconvenience that it has become. She could roll up on any crime scene and park anywhere she wanted. She could show up for court during rush hour and tuck her car in some illegal spot, easily, because she had a little red plate with chief medical examiner stamped on it in big white letters. "Why did Mrs. Paulsson call you last night?" She can't quite bring herself to call her Suz.

"She wanted to talk," he says, opening his door. "Come on, let's get this over with. You should have worn boots."

All the time since last night Marino has been thinking about Suz. He likes the way she wears her hair just long enough to brush her shoulders, and he likes it blond. Blond is his favorite, it always has been.

When he met her at her house for the first time, he liked the curve of her cheek and the fullness of her lips. He liked the way she looked at him. She made him feel big and important and strong, and in her eyes he saw that she believed he knew what to do about problems, even though her problems are beyond fixing, no matter who she might look at. She would have to look at God Himself to get her problems fixed, and that isn't going to happen because God probably isn't moved in the same way men like Marino are.

Her looking at Marino the way she did was probably what got to him most, and when she moved close to him as they were searching Gilly's bedroom, he felt her closeness. He knew trouble was on irs way. He knew if Scarpetta sensed the truth, he would hear an earful.

He and Scarpetta are walking through thick red mud, and it always amazes him that she can walk through anything in the damnedest shoes and she just keeps on going and doesn't complain. Wet red mud sucks at Marino's black boots, and his feet slip as he picks his steps carefully, and she doesn't even seem to notice that she doesn't have boots. She's wearing low-heeled black lace-up shoes that make sense and look good with her suit, or did. Now she may as well be walking on clods of red mud, and the red mud is spattering the hem of her pants and her long coat as she and Marino make their way toward their beat-up and half-ruined old building.

The demolition crew stops working as Marino and Scarpetta walk like fools through rubble and mud, heading straight into all the violence, and a big man in a hard hat stares at them. He is holding a clipboard, talking to another man in a hard hat. The man with the clipboard starts walking toward them and waving his hand, as if shooing them away like tourists. Marino starts motioning for the man to keep coming because they need to have a conversation. When the man with the clipboard gets to them and notices Marino's black LAPD baseball cap, he pays more attention. That cap is turning out to be a damn good thing, Marino thinks. He doesn't need to identify himself falsely or identify himself at all because the cap takes care of introductions. It takes care of other things, too.

"I'm Investigator Marino," he says to the man with the clipboard. "This is Dr. Scarpetta, the medical examiner."

"Oh," the man with the clipboard says. "You're here about Ted Whitby." He starts shaking his head. "I couldn't believe it. You probably heard about his family."

"Tell me," Marino says.

"Wife's pregnant with their first baby. Second marriage for Ted. Anyway, see that guy over there?" He turns back toward the busted-up building and points at a man in gray climbing out of the cab of a crane. "That's Sam Stiles, and he and Ted had their problems, let's just put it that way. She-that's Ted's wife-is saying that Sam swung the wrecking ball too close to Ted's tractor and that's why he fell off and got run over."

"What makes you think he fell off?" asks Scarpetta.

She's wondering about what she saw, Marino thinks. She still believes she saw Ted Whitby right before he got run over, that when she saw him he was standing on his own two feet doing something to the engine. Maybe what she saw is exactly right. Knowing her, it probably is.

"Don't think that necessarily, ma'am," the man with the clipboard replies, and he is about Marino's age but with plenty of hair and wrinkles. His skin is tanned and weathered like a cowboy's, and his eyes are bright blue. "All I'm telling you is what the wife, the widow I guess, is going around mouthing off to everybody. Of course she wants money. Isn't that always the way? Not that I don't 'eel sorry for her. But it ain't right to be blaming people for somebody getting killed."

"Were you here when it happened?" the Doc asks.

"Right there, not more than a couple hundred feet from where it happened." He points to the front right corner of the building, or what is left of it.

"You saw it?"

"No, ma'am. Nobody I know saw it, exactly. He was in the back parking lot working on the engine because it was stalling. So he jumped it, is my guess, and the rest's history. Next thing I saw or anybody else saw for that matter was the tractor rolling off with nobody on it, and it hit that yellow pole near the bay door and got hung. But Ted was on the ground, hurt bad. He was bleeding bad. I mean, it was bad."

"Was he conscious when you got to him?" the Doc asks, and as usual, she's writing notes in her black notebook, and slung over her shoulder is a black nylon scene case that has a long strap.

"I didn't hear him say nothing." The man with the clipboard makes a painful face and looks away from them. He swallows hard and clears his throat. "His eyes were open and he was trying to breathe. That's mainly what sticks in my mind and probably always will. Is him trying to breathe and his face turning blue. Then he was gone, just that quick. The police got here, of course, and an ambulance, but nobody could do a thing."

Marino is just standing here in the mud, listening, and he decides he better ask a thing or two, because it makes him uneasy when he stands too long with his mouth shut, like he's stupid. Scarpetta makes him feel stupid. She doesn't try to and would never try to, and that's worse.

"This Sam Stiles guy," Marino says, nodding his black LAPD cap toward the motionless crane and its wrecking ball that is swaying slightly from the cable attached to the boom. "Where was he when led got run over? Anywhere near him?"

"Naw. That's just ridiculous. The idea that Ted somehow got knocked off his tractor by the wrecking ball is so ridiculous it would be funny if any of this was funny. You got any idea what a wrecking ball would do to a man?"

"Wouldn't be pretty," Marino comments.

"Knock his brains right out of his head. "Wouldn't need no tractor to run him over after that."

Scarpetta is writing all this down. Now and then she looks around thoughtfully and writes something else. One time Marino happened across her notes in plain view on her desk while she was out of the office. Curious about what goes on in her head, he took the opportunity to have a good look. He couldn't make out more than one word, and that one word happened to be his name, Marino. Not only is her writing that bad, but when she makes notes she has her own secret language, her own weird shorthand that no one but her secretary Rose can decipher.

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