“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he says. “Hurts like hell when you’ve got coat hangers biting into your anklebones and someone kicks them. That’s what you get for disobeying me. For lying. Let’s see, where’s the snorkel.”
He kicks her again and she moans. Her legs shake beneath the wilted green robe, beneath the dead green dragon draped over her.
“I don’t hear the boys,” she says, and her voice is getting weaker, her fire going out.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I forgive you,” she says with wide, shiny eyes.
He raises the shotgun and points it at her head. She stares straight at the barrel, stares as if she doesn’t care anymore, and he seethes.
“You can say forgive all you want, but God is on my side,” he says. “You deserve His punishment. That’s why you’re here. Do you understand? It’s your fault. You have heaped these burning coals on top of your own head. Do what I say! Tell me you’re sorry!”
His big boots creak very little as he moves through the thick, hot air and stands in the doorway, staring back into the room. The slain green dragon stirs and warm air moves through the broken window. The room faces west, and in the late afternoon the low sun seeps in through the gaping broken window, and light touches the shiny green dragon and it shimmers and glows like emerald-green fire. But it doesn’t move. It is nothing now. It is broken and ugly and it is her fault.
He looks at her pale flesh, her doughy, sour flesh covered with insect bites and rashes. He can smell her stench halfway down the hallway. The dead green dragon stirs when she stirs, and it incenses him when he thinks of capturing the dragon and discovering what was under it. She was under it. He was tricked. It’s her fault. She wanted this to happen, tricked him. It’s her fault.
“Say you’re sorry!”
“I forgive you.” Her wide, shiny eyes stare at him.
“I guess you know what happens now,” he says.
She barely moves her mouth and no sound emerges.
“I guess you don’t know.”
He stares at her, ruined and disgusting in her foulness on the filthy mattress, and feels coldness in his chest, and the coldness feels quiet and indifferent like death, as if anything he has ever felt is as dead as the dragon.
“I guess you really don’t know.”
The shotgun’s pump slides back with a loud crack in the empty house.
“Run,” he says.
“I forgive you,” she mouths, her wide, watery eyes fixed on him.
He steps out in the hallway, surprised by the sound of the front door shutting.
“Are you here?” he calls out.
He lowers the gun and walks toward the front of the house, his pulse picking up. He wasn’t expecting her, not yet.
“I told you not to do that,” God’s voice greets him, but he can’t see her, not yet. “You do only what I say.”
She materializes in the darkness, her black, flowing self in the dark, flowing toward him. She is beautiful and so powerful and he loves her and could never be without her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she says to him.
“She still isn’t sorry. She won’t say it,” he tries to explain.
“It isn’t time. Did you think to bring the paint before you got so carried away in there?”
“It’s not here. It’s in the truck. Where I used it on the last one.”
“Bring it in. Prepare first. Always prepare. You lose control and then what. You know what to do. Don’t disappoint me.”
God flows closer to him. She has an IQ of a hundred and fifty.
“We’re almost out of time,” Hog says.
“You are nothing without me,” God says. “Don’t disappoint me.”
Chapter 42
Dr. Self sits at her desk, staring at the pool and getting anxious about the time. Every Wednesday morning, she is supposed to be at the studio by ten to get ready for her live radio show. “I absolutely can’t confirm that,” she says on the phone, and were she not in such a hurry, she would enjoy this conversation for all the wrong reasons.
“There’s no question you prescribed Ritalin hydrochloride to David Luck,” Dr. Kay Scarpetta replies.
Dr. Self can’t help but think of Marino and everything he has said about Scarpetta. Dr. Self isn’t intimidated. At the moment, she has the advantage over this woman she has met only once and hears about incessantly every single week.
“Ten milligrams three times daily,” Dr. Scarpetta’s strong voice comes over the line.
She sounds tired, maybe depressed. Dr. Self could help her. She told her so when they met last June at the Academy, at the dinner in honor of Dr. Self.
Highly motivated, successful professional women like us must be careful not to neglect our emotional landscapes, she said to Scarpetta when they happened to be in the ladies’ room at the same time.
Thank you for your lectures. I know the students are enjoying them, Scarpetta replied, and Dr. Self saw right through her.
The Scarpettas of the world are masters at evading personal scrutiny or anything that might expose their secret vulnerability.
I’m sure the students are quite inspired, Scarpetta said, washing her hands in the sink, washing them as if she were scrubbing for surgery.
Everyone appreciates your finding time in your busy schedule to come here.
I can tell you really don’t mean that, Dr. Self replied quite candidly. The vast majority of my colleagues in the medical profession look down on anyone who takes their practice beyond closed doors, walks out in the wide open arena of radio and television. The truth, of course, is usually jealousy. I suspect half the people who criticize me would ransom their souls to be on the air.
You’re probably right, Scarpetta replied, drying her hands.
It was a comment that lent itself to several very different interpretations: Dr. Self is right, the vast majority of people in the medical profession do look down on her; or half the people who criticize her are jealous; or it is true that she suspects half the people who criticize her are jealous, meaning they may not be jealous at all. No matter how many times she has replayed their conversation in the ladies’ room and analyzed that particular remark, she can’t decide what it meant and whether she was subtly and cleverly insulted.
“You sound as if something is bothering you,” she says to Scarpetta over the phone.
“It is. I want to know what happened to your patient David.” She dodges the personal comment. “One hundred tablets were refilled a little over three weeks ago,” Scarpetta says.
“I can’t verify that.”
“I don’t need you to verify it. I collected the prescription bottle from his house. I know you prescribed the Ritalin hydrochloride, and I know exactly when it was filled and where. The pharmacy is in the same strip mall as Ev and Kristin’s church.”
Dr. Self doesn’t confirm this, but it’s true.
What she says is, “Certainly, of all people, you understand confidentiality.”
“I would hope you might understand that we’re greatly concerned about the welfare of David and his brother and the two women they live with.”
“Has anyone considered the possibility that the boys might have been homesick for South Africa? I’m not saying they were,” she adds. “I’m simply posing a hypothetical.”
“Their parents died last year in Capetown,” Scarpetta says. “I spoke to the medical examiner who…”
“Yes, yes,” she interrupts. “It’s terribly tragic.”
“Were both boys your patients?”
“Can you imagine how traumatizing that was? As I understand it from comments I heard outside of any sessions I might have had with either of them, their foster home was temporary. I believe it was always a given that at an appropriate time, they would return to Capetown and move in with relatives who had to move to a larger house or something like that before they could take the boys.”
She probably shouldn’t offer any further details but is enjoying the conversation too much to abort it.
“How were they referred to you?” Scarpetta asks.
“Ev Christian contacted me, was familiar with me, of course, because of my shows.”
“That must happen quite a lot. People listen to you and want to become your patient.”
“It certainly does.”
“Meaning you must turn down most.”
“I have no choice.”
“So what made you decide to take on David and perhaps his brother?”
Dr. Self notices two people out by her pool. Two men in white shirts, black baseball caps and dark glasses are looking at her fruit trees, at the red stripes around them.
“It looks like I have trespassers,” she says, annoyed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Those damn inspectors. I’m doing a show on the very subject tomorrow, my new TV show. Well, now I really will be armed and dangerous on the air. Look at them just helping themselves to my property. I really do have to go.”
“This is extremely important, Dr. Self. I wouldn’t be calling you were there not reason for…”
“I’m in a terrible rush and now this. Now these idiots are back, probably to kill off all my beautiful trees. Well, we’ll see. I’ll be damned if they’re coming in here with a crew of dunces and stump grinders and wood chippers. We’ll see,” she says in a threatening way. “If you want any further information from me, you’ll have to get a court order or permission from the patient.”
“Rather difficult to get permission from someone who’s vanished.”
Dr. Self hangs up and walks out into the bright, hot morning, heading with purpose toward the men in white shirts that on closer inspection have a logo on the front, the same logo that is on their caps. In bold black print on the back of the shirts is Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. One inspector holds a PDA, and is doing something with it while the other inspector talks on his cell phone.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Self says aggressively. “May I help you?”
“Good morning. We’re Department of Agriculture citrus inspectors,” the man with the PDA says.