Read Five Scarpetta Novels for Free Online Page B

in terms of how people behaved when two of them were alone, and then I tried to stop right there.
    I did not want to remember him alive as I made annotations and measurements on diagrams fastened to my clipboard. But a part of my mind tackled my will, and I returned to the last occasion I had seen him. It was the week before Christmas and I was in my Richmond office with my back to the door, sorting through slides in a carousel. I did not hear him behind me until he spoke, and when I turned around, I found him in my doorway, holding a potted Christmas pepper thick with bright red fruit.
    â€œYou mind if I come in?” he asked. “Or do you wantme to walk all the way back to my car with this.”
    I said good afternoon to him while I thought with frustration of the front office staff. They knew not to let reporters beyond the locked bulletproof partition in the lobby unless I was asked, but the female clerks, in particular, liked Eddings a little too much. He walked in and set the plant on the carpet by my desk, and when he smiled, his entire face did.
    â€œI just thought there ought to be something alive and happy in this place.” His blue eyes fixed on mine.
    â€œI hope that isn’t a comment about me.” I could not help but laugh.
    â€œAre you ready to turn him?”
    The body diagram on my clipboard came into focus, and I realized Danny was speaking to me.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I muttered.
    He was eyeing me with concern while Roche wandered around as if he had never been inside a morgue, peering through glass cabinets and glancing back in my direction.
    â€œEverything all right?” Danny asked me in his sensitive way.
    â€œWe can turn him now,” I said.
    My spirit shook inside like a small hot flame. Eddings had worn khaki range pants and a black commando sweater that day, and I tried to remember the look in his eyes. I wondered if there had been anything behind them that might have presaged this.
    Refrigerated by the river, his body was cold to my touch, and I began discovering other aspects of him that distorted the familiar, making me feel even more disturbed. The absence of first molars signaled orthodonture. He had extensive, very expensive porcelain crowns, and contact lenses tinted to enhance eyes already vivid. Remarkably, the right lens had not been washed away when his mask had flooded,and his dull gaze was weirdly asymmetrical, as if two dead people were staring out from sleepy lids.
    I was almost finished with the external examination, but what was left was the most invasive, for in any unnatural death, it was necessary to investigate a patient’s sexual practices. Rarely was I given a sign as obvious as a tattoo depicting one orientation or another, and as a rule, no one the individual was intimate with was going to step forth to volunteer information, either. But it really would not have mattered what I was told or by whom. I would still check for evidence of anal intercourse.
    â€œWhat are you looking for?” Roche returned to the table and stood close behind me.
    â€œProctitis, anal tunneling, small fissures, thickening of the epithelium from trauma,” I replied as I worked.
    â€œThen you’re assuming he’s queer.” He peered over my shoulder.
    The color mounted to Danny’s cheeks, and anger sparked in his eyes.
    â€œAnal ring, epithelium are unremarkable,” I said, scribbling notes. “In other words, he has no injury that would be consistent with an active homosexual lifestyle. And, Detective Roche, you’re going to have to give me a little more room.”
    I could feel his breath on my neck.
    â€œYou know, he’s been in this area a lot doing interviews.”
    â€œWhat sort of interviews?” I asked, and he was seriously getting on my nerves.
    â€œThat I don’t know.”
    â€œWho was he interviewing?”
    â€œLast fall he did a piece on the Inactive Ship Yard. Captain Green could probably