Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Come talk to me,” the voice calls out, demanding but weaker than it was not even a day ago.

  He isn’t sure if he is glad the voice is alive, but he probably is. He takes the lid off the tank and talks quietly, sweetly, to the spider. Its abdomen is balding and crusty with dried glue and pale yellow blood, and hatred wraps around him as he thinks about why it is bald and what caused it to almost bleed to death. The spider’s hair won’t grow back until he molts, and maybe he will heal and maybe he won’t.

  “You know whose fault it is, don’t you?” he says to the spider. “And I did something about it, didn’t I?”

  “Come here,” the voice calls out. “Do you hear me?”

  The spider doesn’t move. He might die. There’s a good chance he will.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much. I know you must be lonely,” he says to the spider. “I couldn’t take you with me because of your condition. It was a very long drive. Cold, too.”

  He reaches inside the glass tank and gently strokes the spider. It barely moves.

  “Is that you?” The voice is weaker and hoarse but demanding.

  He tries to imagine what it will be like when the voice is gone, and he thinks about the dead thing, stiff and fly-infested on the dirt.

  “Is that you?”

  He keeps his finger pressed against the pressure pad, and the light points where the shotgun points, illuminating wooden flooring filthy with dirt and the hulls of dried-out insect eggs. His boots move behind the moving light.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  16

  Inside the firearms and tool marks lab, Joe Amos zips a Harley-Davidson black leather jacket around an eighty-pound block of ordnance gelatin. On top is a smaller block weighing twenty pounds, and it wears a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and a black do-rag with a skull-and-bones pattern.

  Joe steps back to admire his work. He is pleased but a little tired. He stayed up late with his newest teacher’s pet. He drank too much wine.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” he says to Jenny.

  “Funny but disgusting. You’d better not let him know. I hear he’s not somebody to tangle with,” she says, sitting on a countertop.

  “The person not to tangle with is me. I’m thinking of putting red food coloring in a batch. To look more like blood.”

  “Cool.”

  “Add a little brown, and maybe it will look like it’s decomposing. Maybe find a way to make it stink.”

  “You and your hell scenes.”

  “My mind never stops. My back hurts,” he says, admiring his work. “I hurt my damn back and I’m suing her.”

  The gelatin, an elastic transparent material comprised of denatured animal bone and connective-tissue collagen, isn’t easy to handle, and the blocks he has dressed up were hard as hell to transfer from the ice chests to the back padded wall of the indoor firing range. The lab door is locked. The red light on the wall outside is on, warning that the range is hot.

  “All dressed up with no place to go,” he says to the un-appetizing mass.

  More properly known as gelatin hydrolysate, it is also used in shampoos and conditioners, lipsticks, protein drinks, arthritis relief formulas and many other products that Joe will never touch the rest of his life. He won’t even kiss his fiancée if she is wearing lipstick, not anymore. Last time he did, he closed his eyes as her lips pressed against his and suddenly he imagined cow, pig and fish shit boiling in a huge pot. He reads labels now. If hydrolyzed animal protein is listed in the ingredients, the item goes into the trash or back on the shelf.

  Properly prepared, ordnance gelatin simulates human flesh. It is almost as good a medium as swine tissue, which Joe would prefer. He’s heard of firearms labs that shoot up dead swine to test bullet penetration and expansion in a multitude of different situations. He would rather shoot up a hog. He would rather dress up a big hog carcass to look like a person and let the students riddle it with bullets from different distances and with different weapons and ammunition. That would be a good hell scene. A more hellish one would be to shoot a live hog, but Scarpetta would never allow it. She wouldn’t even hear of the students shooting a dead one.

  “It won’t do any good to try to sue her,” Jenny is saying. “She’s also a lawyer.”

  “Big shit.”

  “Well, from what you tell me, you tried that before and didn’t get anywhere. Anyway, Lucy’s the one with all the money. I hear she thinks she’s something. I’ve never met her. None of us have.”

  “You’re not missing anything. One of these days, someone will put her in her place.”

  “Like you?”

  “Maybe I already am.” He smiles. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not leaving here without my share. I deserve something after all the shit she’s put me through.” And now he’s thinking about Scarpetta again. “She treats me like shit.”

  “Maybe I’ll meet Lucy before I graduate,” Jenny says thoughtfully, sitting on the counter, staring at him and the gelatin man he has dressed up like Marino.

  “They’re all crap,” he says. “The fucking trinity. Well, I’ve got a little surprise for them.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see. Maybe I’ll share it with you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Put it this way,” he says. “I’m getting something out of this. She underestimates me, and that’s a huge mistake. At the end of the day, it’s going to be a lot of laughs.”

  Part of his fellowship entails his assisting Scarpetta in the Broward County morgue, where she treats him like a common laborer, forcing him to suture up the bodies after autopsies and count the pills in bottles of prescription drugs that come in with the dead and catalogue personal effects as if he is a lowly morgue assistant and not a doctor. She has made it his responsibility to weigh, measure, photograph and undress the bodies, and to sift through any disgusting mess that might linger in the bottom of a body bag, especially if it is putrid, maggot-infested slop from a floater, or rancid flesh and bones from partially skeletonized remains. Most insulting is the chore of mixing up ten percent ordnance gelatin for the ballistic gelatin blocks used by the scientists and students.

  Why? Give me one good reason, he said to Scarpetta when she gave him the assignment last summer.

  It’s part of your training, Joe, she replied in her typically unflappable way.

  I’m training to be a forensic pathologist, not a lab tech or a cook, he complained.

  My method is to train forensic fellows from the ground up, she said. There isn’t anything you shouldn’t be able or willing to do.

  Oh. And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve made ordnance jelly blocks, that you used to do that when you were getting started, he said.

  I still do it and am happy to pass along my favorite recipe, she replied. I prefer Vyse but Kind & Knox Type two-fifty-A will do just fine. Always start with cold water, between seven and ten degrees centigrade, and add the gelatin to the water and not the other way around. Keep stirring, but not vigorously, because you don’t want to introduce air. Add two-point-five milliliters of Foam Eater per twenty-pound block and make sure the mold pan is whistle-clean. For the pièce de résistance, add point-five milliliters of cinnamon oil.

  That’s cute.

  Cinnamon oil prevents fungus growth, she said.

  She wrote out her personal recipe and then an equipment list that included a triple-beam balance, graduated pitcher, paint stirrer, 12cc hypodermic syringe, propionic acid, aquarium hose, aluminum foil, large spoon and so on, and next gave him a Martha Stewart demonstration in the lab kitchen, as if that makes it all fine and dandy when he’s scooping animal-pieces-and-parts powder out of twenty-five-pound drums and weighing and curing and lifting or dragging huge, heavy pans and placing them inside ice chests or the walk-in refrigerator and then making sure the students gather at the indoor range or outdoor rifle deck before the damn things start deteriorating, because they do. They melt like Jell-O and are best when served no
longer than twenty minutes after removal from refrigeration, depending on the ambient temperature of the test environment.

  He retrieves a window screen from a storage closet and props it flush against the Harley-outfitted blocks of ordnance gelatin, then puts on hearing protectors and protective glasses. He nods for Jenny to do the same. He picks up a stainless-steel Beretta 92, a top-of-the-line double-action pistol with a tritium front post sight. He loads a magazine with 147-grain Speer Gold Dot ammunition, which has six serrations around the rim of the hollowpoint so the projectile will expand or blossom even after passing through clothing as heavy as four layers of denim or a thick leather motorcycle jacket.

  What will be different in this test-fire is the mesh pattern produced when the bullet passes through the window screen before ripping through the Harley jacket and buzz-sawing a swath through the chest of Mr. Jell-O, as he calls his ordnance-gelatin test dummies.

  He racks back the slide and fires fifteen rounds, imagining Mr. Jell-O is Marino.

  17

  Palm trees thrash in the wind beyond the conference-room windows. It will rain, Scarpetta thinks. It looks like a bad thunderstorm is headed her way, and Marino is late again and still hasn’t returned her phone calls.

  “Good morning and let’s get going,” she says to her staff. “We’ve got a lot to go over, and it’s already quarter of nine.”

  She hates being late. She hates it when someone else causes her to be late, and in this instance, it’s Marino. Again, it’s Marino. He is ruining her routines. He is ruining everything.

  “This evening, hopefully, I’ll be on a plane, heading to Boston,” she says. “Providing my reservation isn’t magically cancelled again.”

  “The airlines are so screwed up,” Joe says. “No wonder they’re all going bankrupt.”

  “We’ve been asked to take a look at a Hollywood case, a possible suicide that has some disturbing circumstances associated with it,” she begins.

  “There’s one thing I’d like to bring up first,” says Vince, the firearms examiner.

  “Go ahead.” Scarpetta slides eight-by-ten photographs out of an envelope and begins passing them around the table.

  “Someone was test-firing in the indoor range about an hour ago.” He looks pointedly at Joe. “It wasn’t on the schedule.”

  “I meant to reserve the indoor range last night but forgot,” Joe says. “No one was waiting for it.”

  “You’ve got to reserve it. It’s the only way we can keep track of…”

  “I was trying out a new batch of ballistic gelatin, where I used hot water instead of cold to see if it made any difference in the calibration test. A difference of one centimeter. Good news. It passed.”

  “There’s probably a difference of plus or minus one centimeter every time you mix up the damn stuff,” Vince says irritably.

  “We aren’t supposed to use any block that isn’t valid. So I’m constantly checking the calibration and trying to perfect it. That requires me to spend a lot of time in the firearms lab. It’s not my choice.”

  Joe looks at Scarpetta.

  “Ordnance gelatin is one of my assignments.”

  He looks at her again.

  “I hope you remembered to use stopper blocks before you started pounding the back wall with a lot of fire-power,” Vince says. “I’ve asked you before.”

  “You know the rules, Dr. Amos,” Scarpetta says.

  In front of his colleagues, she always calls him Dr. Amos instead of Joe. She shows him more respect than he deserves.

  “We have to enter everything in the log,” she adds. “Every firearm removed from the reference collection, every round, every test-fire. Our protocols must be followed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “There are legal implications. Most of our cases end up in court,” she adds.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right.” She tells them about Johnny Swift.

  She tells them that in early November he had surgery on his wrists, and soon after came to Hollywood to stay with his brother. They were identical twins. The day before Thanksgiving, the brother, Laurel, went out shopping and returned to the house at approximately four thirty p.m. After carrying in the groceries, he discovered Dr. Swift on the couch, dead from a shotgun wound to the chest.

  “I sort of remember this case,” Vince says. “It was in the news.”

  “Well, I happen to remember Dr. Swift very well,” Joe says. “He used to call Dr. Self. Once when I was on her show, he called in, gave her hell about Tourette’s syndrome, and I happen to agree with her, usually nothing more than an excuse for bad behavior. He rambled on about neurochemical dysfunction, about abnormalities of the brain. Quite the expert,” he says sarcastically.

  Nobody is interested in Joe’s appearances on Dr. Self’s show. Nobody is interested in his appearances on any show.

  “What about an ejected shell and the weapon?” Vince asks Scarpetta.

  “According to the police report, Laurel Swift noted a shotgun on the floor some three feet behind the back of the couch. No shell casing.”

  “Well, that’s a bit unusual. He shoots himself in the chest and then somehow manages to toss the shotgun over the back of the couch?” It is Joe talking again. “I’m not seeing a scene photograph with the shotgun.”

  “The brother claims he saw the shotgun on the floor behind the couch. I say claims. We’ll get to that part in a minute,” Scarpetta says.

  “What about gunshot residue on him?”

  “I’m sorry Marino isn’t here, since he’s our investigator in this case and working closely with the Hollywood police,” she replies, keeping her feelings about him barricaded. “All I know is that Laurel’s clothing wasn’t tested for GSR.”

  “What about his hands?”

  “Positive for GSR. But he claims he touched him, shook him, got blood on him. So theoretically, that could explain it. A few more details. His wrists were in splints when he died, his blood alcohol point-one, and according to the police report, there were numerous empty wine bottles in the kitchen.”

  “We sure he was drinking alone?”

  “We’re not sure of anything.”

  “Sounds like holding a heavy shotgun might not have been easy for him if he’d just had surgery.”

  “Possibly,” Scarpetta says. “And if you can’t use your hands, then what?”

  “Your feet.”

  “It can be done. I tried it with my twelve-gauge Remington. Unloaded,” she adds a little humor.

  She tried it herself because Marino didn’t show up. He didn’t call. He didn’t care.

  “I don’t have photographs of the demonstration,” she says, diplomatic enough not to add that the reason she doesn’t have them is because Marino didn’t show up. “Suffice it to say the blast would have kicked the gun back, or maybe his foot jerked and kicked the gun back, and the shotgun would have fallen off the back of the couch. Saying he killed himself. No abrasions on either of his big toes, by the way.”

  “A contact wound?” Vince asks.

  “Density of soot on his shirt, the abraded margin and diameter and shape of the wound, the absence of petal marks from the wad, which was still in the body, are consistent with a contact wound. Problem is, we have a gross inconsistency, which, in my opinion, is due to the medical examiner relying on a radiologist for a distance determination.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s Dr. Bronson’s case,” she says, and several of the scientists groan.

  “Jesus, he’s as old as the damn Pope. When the hell’s he going to retire?”

  “The Pope died,” Joe jokes.

  “Thank you, CNN news flash.”

  “The radiologist decided the shotgun wound is a, quote, distant wound,” Scarpetta resumes. “A distance of at least three feet. Uh-oh. Now we have a homicide, because you couldn’t possibly hold the barrel of a shotgun three feet from your own chest, now could you?”

  Several clicks of the mouse, and a digital x-
ray of Johnny Swift’s fatal shotgun blast is sharply displayed on the smart board. Shotgun pellets look like a storm of tiny white bubbles floating through the ghostly shapes of ribs.

  “The pellets are spread out,” Scarpetta points out, “and to give the radiologist a little credit, the spread of the pellets inside the chest is consistent with a range of three or four feet, but what I think we’re dealing with here is a perfect example of the billiard-ball effect.”

  She clears the x-ray off the smart board and collects several styluses, different ones for different colors.

  “The leading pellets slowed when they entered the body and were then hit by the trailing pellets, causing colliding pellets to ricochet and spread out into a pattern that simulates distant-range fire,” she explains, drawing red ricocheting pellets hitting blue pellets like billiard balls. “Therefore simulating a distant gunshot wound, when in fact, it wasn’t a distant shot at all but a contact wound.”

  “None of the neighbors heard a shotgun blast?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Maybe a lot of people were out on the beach or out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What kind of shotgun, and whose was it?”

  “All we can tell is it’s a twelve-gauge, based on the pellets,” Scarpetta says. “Apparently, the shotgun disappeared before the police showed up.”

  18

  Ev Christian is awake and sitting on a mattress that is black with what she by now believes is old blood.

  Scattered about the filthy floor inside the small, filthy room with its caving ceiling and water-stained wallpaper are magazines. She sees poorly without her glasses and can barely make out the pornographic covers. She barely makes out soda-pop bottles and fast-food wrappers scattered about. Between the mattress and the splintery wall is a small pink Keds tennis shoe, a girl’s size. Ev has picked it up countless times and held it, wondering what it means and who it once belonged to, worried the girl is dead. Sometimes Ev tucks the shoe behind her when he comes in, fearful he will take it from her. It is all she has.