Scarpetta 11 by Last Precinct

Author:Last Precinct [Precinct, Last]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-18T12:01:10+00:00

"Extremely distracted." "So she hurries to finish what she's doing, vomiting," Berger reconstructs. "She rushes out of here and shuts the door and goes to the front door. She's assuming it's Anderson who's out there knocking three times. Very possibly, Bray's rattled and annoyed and might even start saying something angry as she opens the door and..." Berger steps back out in the hallway, her mouth grimly set. "She's dead."

She lets this scenario hang pregnantly as we seek out the laundry room. She knows I can relate to the distraction and mind-searing horror of opening the front door and having Chandonne suddenly rush in from the darkness like a creature out of hell. Berger opens hall closet doors, then finds a door that leads to the basement. The laundry area is down here, and I feel strangely unsettled and unnerved as we walk about in the harsh glare of naked overhead lightbulbs that are turned on by tugging strings. I have never been in this part of the house, either. I have never seen the bright red Jaguar I have heard so much about. It is absurdly out of place in this dark, cluttered, dismal space. The car is gorgeously bold and an on-the-nose symbol of the power Bray craved and flaunted. I am reminded of what Anderson angrily said about her being Bray's "gofer." I seriously doubt Bray ever drove to the carwash herself. The basement garage looks the way I imagine it did when Bray bought the house: a dusty, dark, concrete space frozen in time. There is no sign of improvements. Tools hanging on a pegboard and a push lawn mower are old and rusting. Spare tires lean against a wall. The washer and dryer are not new and although I feel certain the police checked them, I see no sign of it. Both machines are full. Whenever Bray did laundry last, she didn't bother to empty either the washer or dryer, and lingerie, jeans and towels are hopelessly wrinkled and smell sour. Socks, more towels and work-out clothes in the washer were never put through the cycle. I pull out a Speedo running shirt. "Did she belong to a gym?" I ask.

"Good question. Vain and obsessive as she was, I suspect she did something to keep in shape." Berger digs through clothes in the washer and pulls out a pair of panties that are spotted with blood in the crotch. "Talk about airing someone's dirty laundry," she ruefully comments. "Even I feel like a voyeur sometimes. So maybe she had her period recently. Not that it necessarily has anything to do with the price of tea in China."

"It might have," I reply. "Depends on how it affected her moods. PMS could certainly make her eating disorder worse, and mood swings couldn't have helped her volatile relation-ship with Anderson." "Pretty amazing to think about the common, mundane things that can lead to catastrophe." Berger drops the panties back into the machine. "I had a case one time. This man has to pee and decides to pull off Bleecker Street and relieve himself in an alleyway.

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