Page 48 of Identity Unknown

“It is.” I can feel Marino’s eyes on me.

I sense him thinking that I haven’t been honest with him,and to some extent he’s right. It’s true that Sal asked me to stay with him in Italy. He wanted us to get married, and I told him I couldn’t. I needed to finish what I’d started in my life and career. I knew it would be disastrous if I lost myself in him or anyone else. I’ve shared none of this with Marino or Lucy. Only Benton knows.

“And you told him you wouldn’t marry him,” Gus is saying to me as Marino impatiently lumbers about opening cabinets and drawers. His PPE makes slippery sounds.

“He thought I could teach forensic medicine while he wrote books and did research,” I reply. “I knew that wasn’t the life for me.”

I won’t mention that anyone partnered with Sal would be an afterthought, a sweet one. He was unfailingly gentle and kind. He was abundantly generous. But deep in his soul there was no room for anything but what drove him.

“He knew what he was getting. Ornotgetting, better put perhaps. And it actually suited him, don’t you think? Even as he claimed otherwise, Doctor Scarpetta?” Gus replies to my surprise. “I’m wondering if it ever occurred to you that he knew you wouldn’t marry him. And that was the answer he was counting on.”

“I’m not aware that he…”

“I suspect he knew from the start that you wouldn’t give up practicing forensic medicine.”

“That wasn’t the only reason…”

“The chase was exciting for him. And it was safe.” Gus pauses, shuffling through notes on small pieces of paper.“Excuse the psychologizing. I can’t help it. You know, when I see dots that need connecting.” He’s trained as a psychiatrist.

“Most of all, Sal Giordano couldn’t really get close to you or anyone because of his work,” Gus is saying. “And long before that the problem was his mother. Both of his parents, actually.”

“Byworkwe’re not just talking about looking through a telescope,” Bella adds. “But work he was sworn not to share with scarcely anyone else on earth. Work that could lead him into temptation. Work that could get him murdered and perhaps has.”

“He was as close to you emotionally as he would allow himself to be with anyone,” Gus then says.

Deve bastare, amore.It has to be enough, I’d tell Sal when we’d talk about the future. To want more than is possible is a useless and selfish ambition.

I wonder what he would have said had I agreed to stay in Italy and marry him. I drove myself to distraction about hurting him, and a commitment wasn’t what he really wanted after all. What an irony. He was counting on my saying no, and I suppose it’s understandable. He wasn’t good at give-and-take even if he loved the person as profoundly as he said.

“You left Italy at the end of that summer, returning to Virginia,” Gus is saying. “Then what?”

“The intimate part of our relationship ended,” I reply. “We had limited contact, keeping up by phone now and then.”

“And you got involved with Benton Wesley. Whom you’d already met professionally on numerous earlier occasions.”

“It didn’t happen right away…”

“There was nothing between you prior to your summer of teaching abroad?” Gus can ask anything without sounding provocative.

“No,” I reply.

But I desperately wanted there to be, and that was part of my problem. The attraction between us was dangerous, and I wouldn’t have much insight about Sal’s role in the narrative until later. I sought him out as a cure. But when I returned to Richmond, my feelings for Benton were back with a vengeance. We ended up out of town together on a case, and the inevitable happened.

I look up at him seated overhead with other high-ranking officials. He meets my eyes, and I understand the importance of being transparent. But when we were on the phone this morning and texting later, he didn’t mention briefing his colleagues about my private life. And I know he has. There can be no other source of the information.

“Doctor Scarpetta, again, I’m sorry to pry, but it’s necessary as we proceed with this investigation,” Gus goes on, not sorry at all even as he sounds it.

“Investigation into what exactly?” Marino interrupts.

“Everything that might have led to this unfortunate moment,” the NSA replies.

“Well, as I’m listening, it’s sounding like what you’re investigating is the doc.” Marino stares up defiantly.

“We’re not,” Gus says in his blasé way as I give Marino a look that tells him to cool it. “Will your personal relationship with Sal Giordano prevent you from doing your job?” Gus asks me.

“It won’t.” I snap a new blade into a scalpel.

“A year after your summer in Italy, he returned to his post at Georgetown University. The two of you were but a couple hours’ drive from each other. And you didn’t try to get together stateside?”