The Last Precinct

"What did you knock with?" Berger asks him.

"I recall there was a door knocker. I believe I used that." He drains the last of his Pepsi and Marino on tape asks him if he wants another one. Chando

"Why didn't you ring the bell?" Berger wants to know. This is important. My doorbell activates the camera system. Had Chando

"I don't know," he replies. "I saw the knocker and used it."

"Did you say anything?"

"Not at first. Then I heard a woman ask, 'Who is it?' "

"And what did you say?"

"I told her my name. I said I have information about the body she's trying to identify, and to please let me talk to her."

"You told her your name? You identified yourself as Jean-Bap tiste Chando

"Yes. I said I was here from Paris and had been trying to get her at her office." He yawns again. "The most amazing thing happens," he goes on. "The door suddenly opens and

she is there. She tells me to come in, and the minute I do, she slams the door shut behind me and I can't believe it. She suddenly has this hammer and is trying to hit me."

"Suddenly has a hammer? Where did she get it? Did it just appear out of thin air?"

"I believe she grabbed it off a table just inside the doorway. I don't know. It happened so fast. And I try to get away from her. I run into the living room, yelling for her to stop, and that's when the terrible thing happened. It was fast. I only remember I was on the other side of the sofa, and then something was flying in my face. It felt like liquid fire in my eyes. I have never felt anything so, so…" He sniffs again. "The pain. I was screaming and trying to get it out of my eyes. I was trying to get out of the house. I knew she was going to kill me and suddenly it went into my mind that she is one of them. Them. They have got me at last. I walked right into their trap! It was pla

"And they want what?" Berger asks him. "Tell me again, because I'm having a very hard time understanding, much less believing, this part."

"They want my father!" he says with the first emotion I have seen. "To get Papa! To find a reason to go after him and bring him down, destroy him. To make it look like my father has a son who is a killer so they can get to my family. All this for years! And I am Chando

He stretches out his arms in a pose of crucifixion, hair floating out from his body. I watch in shock as he rips off his dark glasses and light pierces his tender, burned eyes. I stare into those bright red, chemically burned eyes. They don't seem to focus and tears stream down his face.

"I am ruined!" he cries out. "I am ugly and blind and accused of crimes I didn't do! You Americans want to execute a

Frenchman! Isn't that it! To make an example!" Chairs scrape

loudly and Marino and Talley are all over him, holding him in his chair. "I killed no one! She tried to kill me! Look what she did to me!"

And Berger is calmly saying to him, "We've been at this an hour. We're going to stop now. That's enough. Calm down, calm down."

Frames flicker and bars fill the screen before it turns the bright blue of a perfect afternoon. Berger turns off the VCR. I sit in stu

"Hate to tell you." She breaks the appalling spell Chan-do

Chapter 16

JAY TALLEY," BERGER STARTLES ME BY SAYING. Now that Chando

"Do you want to volunteer, or should I start with telling you what I know?" Berger confronts me.

"I'm not sure what you want me to volunteer." I am taken aback, then offended, then furious all over again as I think of Talley's presence at Chando

"Dr. Scarpetta." She leans back in her chair. I feel as if I have been inside this room with her for half my life, and I am late. I am hopelessly late for meeting the governor. "As hard as it's going to be for you," Berger says, "I'm asking you to trust me. Can you do that?"

"I don't know who to trust anymore," I reply truthfully.

She smiles a little and sighs. "That's honest. Fair enough. You have no reason to trust me. Maybe you have no reason to trust anyone. But you really have no factual reason not to trust me as a professional whose singular intent is to make Chando

"If?" I ask her.

"We have to prove it. And absolutely anything I can learn from what has happened here in these Richmond cases is invaluable to me. I promise you, I'm not trying to be a voyeur or to violate your privacy. But I must have the full context. Frankly, I need to know what the hell I'm dealing with, and my difficulty lies in that I don't know who all the characters are or what they are or if any of them might in any way overlap my case in New York. For example, could Diane Bray's prescription drug habit in fact be a marker for other illegal activity possibly co

"By the way." I am stuck on another matter, namely, my credibility. "How does Chando

Berger hesitates and completely dodges my questions. "If I don't know the whole truth, then it makes it very difficult to sort out what's relevant to my case and what isn't."

"I understand that much."

"Can we start with the status of your relationship with Jay

now?"

"He drove me to the hospital." I give up. I am clearly not the one who is going to be asking the questions in this situa- tion. "When I broke my arm. He showed up with the police, with ATF, and I spoke briefly to him Saturday afternoon while the police were still at my home."

"Do you have any idea why he thought it necessary to fly here from France to assist in the manhunt for Chando

"I can only assume it's because he's so familiar with the case."

"Or an excuse to see you?"

"He'd have to answer that."

"Are you seeing him?"

"Not since Saturday afternoon, as I've said."

"Why not? Do you consider the relationship over?"

"I don't consider it ever began."

"But you slept with him." She raises an eyebrow.

"So I'm guilty of poor judgment."

"He's handsome, bright. And young. Some might be more likely to convict you of good taste. He's single. So are you. It's not as if you committed adultery." She drags out a pause. Is she alluding to Benton, to the fact that I have been guilty of adultery in the past? "Jay Talley has a lot of money, doesn't he?" She taps her felt-tip pen on the legal pad, a metronome measuring what a bad time I am having. "From his family, supposedly. I'll check into that. And by the way, you should know I've talked to him, to Jay. At length."