Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Are you some kind of psychic?”

  The feeling is awful now. It won’t go away.

  “Just guessing,” Stevie’s seductive voice says. “So, you haven’t told me. What’s so special about Cuervo?”

  “Cuervo Reserva de la Familia. It’s special enough.”

  “Well, that’s something. It looks like this is my night for first times,” Stevie says, touching Lucy’s arm, her hand resting on it for a minute. “First time in Ptown. First time for one hundred percent agave tequila that costs thirty dollars a shot.”

  Lucy wonders how Stevie can know it costs thirty dollars a shot. For someone unfamiliar with tequila, she seems to know a lot.

  “I believe I’ll have another,” Stevie calls out to Buddy, “and you really could pour a little more in the glass. Be sweet to me.”

  Buddy smiles as he pours her another, and two shots later, Stevie leans against Lucy and whispers in her ear, “You got anything?”

  “Like what?” Lucy asks, and she gives herself up to it.

  The feeling is fueled by tequila and plans to stay for the night.

  “You know what,” Stevie’s voice says quietly, her breath touching Lucy’s ear, her breast pressed against her arm. “Something to smoke. Something that’s worth it.”

  “What makes you think I’d have something?”

  “Just guessing.”

  “You’re remarkably good at it.”

  “You can get it anywhere here. I’ve seen you.”

  Lucy made a transaction last night, knows just where to do it, at the Vixen, where she doesn’t dance. She doesn’t remember seeing Stevie. There weren’t that many people, never are this time of year. She would have noticed Stevie. She would notice her in a huge crowd, on a busy street, anywhere.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s the bar police,” Lucy says.

  “You have no idea how funny that is,” Stevie’s seductive voice says. “Where you staying?”

  “Not far from here.”

  6

  The state Medical Examiner’s Office is located where most are, on the fringe of a nicer part of town, usually at the outer limits of a medical school. The red-brick-and-concrete complex backs up to the Massachusetts Turnpike, and on the other side of it is the Suffolk County House of Corrections. There is no view and the noise of traffic never stops.

  Benton parks at the back door and notes only two other cars in the lot. The dark-blue Crown Victoria belongs to Detective Thrush. The Honda SUV probably belongs to a forensic pathologist who doesn’t get paid enough and probably wasn’t happy when Thrush persuaded him to come in at this hour. Benton rings the bell and scans the empty back parking lot, never assuming he is safe or alone, and then the door opens and Thrush is motioning him inside.

  “Jeez, I hate this place at night,” Thrush says.

  “There’s not much to like about it any time of day,” Benton remarks.

  “I’m glad you came. Can’t believe you’re out in that,” he says, looking out at the black Porsche as he shuts the door behind them. “In this weather? You crazy?”

  “All-wheel drive. It wasn’t snowing when I went to work this morning.”

  “These other psychologists I’ve worked with, they never come out, snow, rain or shine,” Thrush says. “Not the profilers, either. Most FBI I’ve met have never seen a dead body.”

  “Except for the ones at headquarters.”

  “No shit. We got plenty of them at state police headquarters, too. Here.”

  He hands Benton an envelope as they follow a corridor.

  “Got everything on a disk for you. All the scene and autopsy pictures, whatever’s written up so far. It’s all there. It’s supposed to snow like a bitch.”

  Benton thinks of Scarpetta again. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and they’re supposed to spend the evening together, have a romantic dinner on the harbor. She’s supposed to stay through Presidents’ Day weekend. They haven’t seen each other in almost a month. She may not be able to get here.

  “I heard light snow showers are predicted,” Benton says.

  “A storm’s moving in from the Cape. Hope you got something to drive other than that million-dollar sports car.”

  Thrush is a big man who has spent his life in Massachusetts and talks like it. There isn’t a single R in his vocabulary. In his fifties, he has military-short gray hair and is dressed in a rumpled brown suit, has probably worked nonstop all day. He and Benton follow the well-lit corridor. It is spotless and scented with air deodorizer and lined with storage and evidence rooms, all of them requiring electronic passes. There is even a crash cart—Benton can’t imagine why—and a scanning electron microscope, the facility the most spacious and best equipped of any morgue he has ever seen. Staffing is another story.

  The office has suffered crippling personnel problems for years because of low salaries that fail to attract competent forensic pathologists and other staff. Added to this are alleged mistakes and misdeeds resulting in scathing controversies and public-relations problems that make life and death difficult for everyone involved. The office isn’t open to the media or to outsiders, and hostility and distrust are pervasive. Benton would rather come here late at night. To visit during business hours is to feel unwelcome and resented.

  He and Thrush pause outside the closed door of an autopsy room that is used in high-profile cases or those that are considered a biohazard or bizarre. His cell phone vibrates. He looks at the display. No ID is usually her.

  “Hi,” Scarpetta says. “I hope your night’s been better than mine.”

  “I’m at the morgue.” Then, to Thrush, “One minute.”

  “That can’t be good,” Scarpetta says.

  “I’ll fill you in later. Got a question. You ever heard of something that happened at a Christmas shop in Las Olas maybe two and a half years ago?”

  “By something I assume you mean a homicide.”

  “Right.”

  “Not offhand. Maybe Lucy can try to track it down. I hear it’s snowing up there.”

  “I’ll get you here if I have to hire Santa’s reindeer.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me, too,” he says.

  He ends the call and asks Thrush, “Who are we dealing with?”

  “Well, Dr. Lonsdale was nice enough to help me out. You’ll like him. But he didn’t do the autopsy. She did.”

  She is the chief. She got where she is because she’s a she.

  “You ask me,” Thrush says, “women got no business doing this anyway. What kind of woman would want to do this?”

  “There are good ones,” Benton says. “Very good ones. Not all of them get where they are because of their gender. More likely, in spite of it.”

  Thrush is unfamiliar with Scarpetta. Benton never mentions her, not even to people he knows rather well.

  “Women shouldn’t see shit like this,” Thrush says.

  The night air is penetrating and milky-white up and down Commercial Street. Snow swarms in lamplight and lights the night until the world glows and seems surreal as the two of them walk in the middle of the deserted silent street east along the water to the cottage Lucy began renting several days ago after Marino got the strange phone call from the man named Hog.

  She builds a fire, and she and Stevie sit in front of it on quilts and roll a joint with very good stuff from British Columbia, and they share it. They smoke and talk and laugh, and then Stevie wants more.

  “Just one more,” she begs as Lucy undresses her.

  “That’s different,” Lucy says, staring at Stevie’s slender nude body, at the red handprints on it, maybe tattoos.

  There are four of them. Two on her breasts as if someone is grabbing them, two on her upper inner thighs as if someone is forcing her legs apart. There are none on her back, none where Stevie couldn’t reach and apply them herself, assuming they are fake. Lucy stares. She touches one of the handprints, places her hand over one of them, fondling Stevie’s breast.

  “Just check
ing to see if it’s the right fit,” Lucy says. “Fake?”

  “Why don’t you take off your clothes.”

  Lucy does what she wants, but she won’t take off her clothes. For hours, she does what she wants in the firelight, on the quilts, and Stevie lets her, is more alive than anyone Lucy has ever touched, smooth with soft contours, lean in a way Lucy isn’t anymore, and when Stevie tries to undress her, almost fights her, Lucy won’t allow it, then Stevie gets tired and gives up and Lucy helps her to bed. After she is asleep, Lucy lies awake listening to the eerie whining of the wind, trying to figure out exactly what it sounds like, deciding it doesn’t sound like silk stockings after all, but like something distressed and in pain.

  7

  The autopsy room is small with a tile floor and the usual surgical cart, digital scale, evidence cabinet, autopsy saws and various blades, dissecting boards and a transportable autopsy table latched to the front of a wall-mounted dissecting sink. The walk-in refrigerator is built into a wall, the door partially open.

  Thrush hands Benton a pair of blue nitrile gloves, asks him, “You want booties or a mask or anything?”

  “No thanks,” Benton says as Dr. Lonsdale emerges from the refrigerator, pushing a stainless-steel cadaver carrier bearing the pouched body.

  “We need to make this quick,” he says as he parks near the sink and locks two of the swivel casters. “I’m already in deep shit with my wife. It’s her birthday.”

  He unzips the pouch and spreads it open. The victim has raggedly cut short, black hair that is damp and still gory with bits of brain and other tissue. There is almost nothing left of her face. It looks as if a small bomb blew up inside her head, which is rather much what happened.

  “Shot in the mouth,” Dr. Lonsdale says, and he is young with an intensity that borders on impatience. “Massive skull fractures, brain pulpifaction, which of course we usually associate with suicides, but nothing else about this case is consistent with suicide. It appears to me that her head was tilted pretty far back when the trigger was pulled, explaining why her face is basically shot off, some of her teeth blown out. Again, not uncommon in suicides.”

  He switches on a magnifying lamp and positions it close to the head.

  “No need to pry open her mouth,” he comments. “Since she has no face left. Thank God for small favors.”

  Benton leans close and smells the sweet, putrid stench of decomposing blood.

  “Soot on the palate, the tongue,” Dr. Lonsdale continues. “Superficial lacerations of the tongue, the perioral skin and nasolabial fold due to the bulging-out effect when gases from the shotgun blast expand. Not a pretty way to die.”

  He unzips the pouch the rest of the way.

  “Saved the best for last,” Thrush says. “What do you make of it? Reminds me of Crazy Horse.”

  “You mean the Indian?” Dr. Lonsdale gives him a quizzical look as he unscrews the lid from a small glass jar filled with a clear liquid.

  “Yeah. I think he put red handprints on his horse’s ass.”

  There are red handprints on the woman, on her breasts, abdomen and upper inner thighs, and Benton positions the magnifying lamp closer.

  Dr. Lonsdale swabs the edge of a handprint and says, “Isopropyl alcohol, a solvent like that will get it off. Obviously, it’s not water-soluble and brings to mind the sort of stuff people use for temporary tattooing. Some type of paint or dye. Could also have been done in permanent Magic Marker, I suppose.”

  “I’m assuming you haven’t seen this in any other cases around here,” Benton says.

  “Not at all.”

  The magnified handprints are well defined with clean margins, as if made with a stencil, and Benton looks for feathering strokes of a brush, for anything that might indicate how the paint, ink or dye was applied. He can’t tell, but based on the density of color, he suspects the body art is recent.

  “I suppose she could have gotten this at some point earlier. In other words, it’s unrelated to her death,” Dr. Lonsdale adds.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Thrush agrees. “There’s a lot of witchcraft around here with Salem and all.”

  “What I’m wondering is how quickly something like this begins to fade,” Benton says. “Have you measured them to see if they’re the same size as her hand?” He indicates the body.

  “They look bigger to me,” Thrush says, holding out his own hand.

  “What about her back?” Benton asks.

  “One on each buttock, one between her shoulder blades,” Dr. Lonsdale replies. “Look like a man’s size, the hands do.”

  “Yeah,” Thrush says.

  Dr. Lonsdale pulls the body partially on its side, and Benton studies the handprints on the back.

  “Looks like she has some sort of abrasion here,” he says, noting a scraped area on the handprint between the shoulder blades. “Some inflammation.”

  “I’m not clear on all the details,” Dr. Lonsdale replies. “It’s not my case.”

  “Looks as if it was painted after she got the scrape,” Benton says. “Am I seeing welts, too?”

  “Maybe some localized swelling. Histology should answer that. It’s not my case,” he reminds them. “I didn’t participate in her autopsy,” he is sure to remind them. “I glanced at her. That was it before I just now rolled her out. I did look over the autopsy report.”

  Should the chief’s work be negligent or incompetent, he’s not about to take the blame.

  “Any idea how long she’s been dead?” Benton asks.

  “Well, the cold temperatures would have slowed rigor.”

  “Frozen when she was found?”

  “Not yet. Apparently, her body temperature when she got here was thirty-eight degrees. Fahrenheit. I didn’t go to the scene. I can’t give you those details.”

  “The temperature at ten o’clock this morning was twenty-one degrees,” Thrush tells Benton. “The weather conditions are on the disk I gave you.”

  “So the autopsy report has already been dictated,” Benton says.

  “It’s on the disk,” Thrush answers.

  “Trace evidence?”

  “Some soil, fibers, other debris adhering to blood,” Thrush replies. “I’ll get them run in the labs as quick as I can.”

  “Tell me about the shotgun shell you recovered,” Benton says to him.

  “Inside her rectum. You couldn’t see it from the outside, but it showed up on x-ray. Damnedest thing. When they first showed me the film, I thought maybe the shell was under her body on the x-ray tray. Had no idea the damn thing was inside her.”

  “What kind?”

  “Remington Express Magnum, twelve-gauge.”

  “Well, if she shot herself, she’s certainly not the one who shoved the shell up her rectum after the fact,” Benton says. “You running it through NIBIN?”

  “Already in the works,” Thrush says. “The firing pin left a nice drag mark. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  8

  Early the next morning, snow blows sideways over Cape Cod Bay and melts when it touches the water. The snow barely dusts the tawny sliver of beach beyond Lucy’s windows but is deep on nearby rooftops and the balcony beyond her bedroom. She pulls the comforter up to her chin and looks out at the water and the snow, unhappy that she has to get up and deal with the woman sleeping next to her, Stevie.

  Lucy shouldn’t have gone to Lorraine’s last night. She wishes she hadn’t and can’t stop wishing it. She is disgusted with herself and in a hurry to leave the tiny cottage with its wraparound porch and shingled roof, the furniture dingy from endless rounds of renters, the kitchen small and musty with outdated appliances. She watches the early morning play with the horizon, turning it various shades of gray, and the snow is falling almost as hard as it was last night. She thinks of Johnny. He came here to Provincetown a week before he died and met someone. Lucy should have found that out a long time ago, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t face it. She watches Stevie’s regular breathing.

  “A
re you awake?” Lucy asks. “You need to get up.”

  She stares at the snow, at sea ducks bobbing on the ruffled gray bay, and wonders why they aren’t frozen. Despite what she knows about the insulating qualities of down, she still can’t believe that any warm-blooded creature can comfortably float on frigid water in the middle of a blizzard. She feels cold beneath the comforter, chilled and repulsed and uncomfortable in her bra and panties and button-down shirt.

  “Stevie, wake up. I’ve got to get going,” she says loudly.

  Stevie doesn’t stir, her back gently rising and falling with each slow breath, and Lucy is sick with regret and is annoyed and disgusted because she can’t seem to stop herself from doing this thing, this thing she hates. For the better part of a year, she has told herself no more, and then nights like last night happen and it isn’t smart or logical and she is always sorry, always, because it is degrading and then she has to extricate herself and tell more lies. She has no choice. Her life is no longer a choice. She is too deeply into it to choose anything different, and some choices have been made for her. She still can’t believe it. She touches her tender breasts and distended belly to make sure it’s true and still can’t comprehend it. How could this happen to her?

  How could Johnny be dead?

  She never looked into what happened to him. She walked away and took her secrets with her.

  I’m sorry, she thinks, hoping wherever he is, he knows her mind the way he used to, only differently. Maybe he can know her thoughts now. Maybe he understands why she kept away, just accepted he did it to himself. Maybe he was depressed. Maybe he felt ruined. She never believed his brother killed him. She didn’t entertain the possibility that someone else did. Then Marino got the phone call, the ominous one from Hog.

  “You’ve got to get up,” she says to Stevie.

  Lucy reaches for the Colt Mustang .380 pistol on the table by the bed.