The Last Precinct

"I'm not staying with A

"Look, you're a victim and you got to deal with it, and you need help dealing with it. Don't matter you're a doctor-lawyer_Indian chief." Marino will not shut up, in part because he is looking for a fight. He wants a focus for his anger. I can see what is coming, and anger crawls up my neck and heats up the roots of my hair. "Being a victim's the great equalizer," Marino, the world's authority, goes on.

I draw out the words slowly. "I am not a victim." My voice wavers around its edges like fire. "There's a difference between being victimized and being a victim. I'm not a sideshow for character disorders." My tone sears. "I haven't become what he wanted to turn me into"_of course, I mean Chando

I feel Marino recoil in his dark, loud space on the other side of his huge, manly truck. He doesn't understand what I mean or feel and probably never will. He reacts as if I slapped him across the face or kneed him in the groin.

"I'm talking reality." He strikes back. "One of us has to."

"Reality is, I'm alive."

"Yeah. A fuckin' goddamn miracle."

"I should have known you would do this." I get quiet and cold. "So predictable. People blame the prey not the predator, criticize the injured not the asshole who did it." I tremble in the dark. "Goddamn you. Goddamn you, Marino."

"I still can't believe you opened your door!" he shouts. What happened to me makes him feel powerless.

"And where were you guys?" I again remind him of an unpleasant fact. "It might have been nice if at least one or two of you could have kept an eye on my property. Since you were so concerned that he might come after me."

"I talked to you on the phone, remember?" He attacks from another angle. "You said you was fine. I told you to sit tight, that we'd found where the son of a bitch was hiding, that we knew he was out somewhere, probably looking for another woman to beat and bite the shit out of. And what do you do, Doc-tor Law Enforcement? You open your fucking door when someone knocks! At fucking midnight!"

I thought the person was the police. He said he was the police.

"Why?" Marino is yelling now, pounding the steering wheel like an out-of-control child. "Huh? Why? Goddamn it, tell me!"

We knew for days who the killer is, that he is the spiritual and physical freak Chando

Police.

I didn 't call the police, I said through the shut door.

Ma 'am, we 've gotten a call about a suspicious person on your property. Are you all right!

He had no accent. I never expected him to speak without an accent. It never occurred to me, not once. Were I to relive last night, it still would not occur to me. The police had just been at my house when the alarm went off. It didn't seem the least bit suspicious that they would be back. I incorrectly assumed they were keeping a close eye on my property. It was so quick. I opened the door and the porch light was off and I smelled that dirty, wet animal smell in the deep, frigid night.

"Yo! Anybody home?" Marino yells, poking my shoulder hard.

"Don't touch me!" I come to with a start, and gasp and jerk away from him and the truck swerves. The ensuing silence turns the air heavy like water a hundred feet deep, and awful images swim back into my blackest thoughts. A forgotten ash is so long I can't steer it to the ashtray in time. I brush it off my lap. "You can turn at Stonypoint Shopping Center, if you want," I say to Marino. "It's quicker."

Chapter 2

DR. ANNA ZENNER'S IMPOSING GREEK REVIVAL house soars up-lit into the night on the southern bank of the James River. Her mansion, as the neighbors call it, has large Corinthian columns and is a local example of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington's belief that the new nation's architecture should express the grandeur and dignity of the ancient world. A

White holiday lights wink from trees, and candles in A

It is an unusual name of a lineage I really don't know much about. The Scarpettas have lived in this country for two generations, or so my mother claims, but I don't know who these other Scarpettas are. I have never met them. I have been told we are traced back to Verona, that my ancestors were farmers and railway workers. I do know for a fact that I have only one sibling, a younger sister named Dorothy. She was briefly married to a Brazilian twice her age who supposedly fathered Lucy. I say supposedly, because when it comes to Dorothy, only DNA would convince me of who she happened to be in bed with on the occasion my niece was conceived. My sister's fourth marriage was to a Farinelli, and after that Lucy stopped changing her name. Except for my mother, I am the only Scar-petta left, as far as I know.

Marino brakes at formidable black iron gates and his big arm stretches out to stab an intercom button. An electronic buzz and a loud click, and the gates slowly open like a raven's wings. I don't know why A

It suddenly bothers me considerably that I know so little about A

"How'ya doin', Dr. Ze

"Not tonight, Captain." A