Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Mrs. Simister? Anybody here?”

  The television is inside a back room, probably a bedroom, and the door is shut. He hesitates, calls out again. He knocks, then bangs on the door, then goes inside and sees blood, a small body on the bed and what is left of the head.

  29

  Inside a desk drawer are pencils, ballpoint pens and Magic Markers. Two of the pencils and one pen are chewed, and Scarpetta looks at the indentations made by teeth in wood and plastic, wondering which of the boys nervously chews things.

  She places the pencils, pens and markers in separate evidence bags. Shutting the drawer, she looks around, thinking about the lives of these orphaned South African boys. There are no toys in the room, no posters on the walls, no hint that the brothers like girls, cars, movies, music or sports, or have heroes or simply have fun.

  Their bathroom is one door down, and it is an old bathroom with unattractive green tile and a white toilet and tub. Her face appears in the mirrored medicine cabinet as she opens the door. She scans narrow metal shelves lined with dental floss, aspirin and small bars of wrapped soap, the type found in motel bathrooms. She picks up an orange plastic prescription bottle by its white cap, looks at the label and is surprised by the name Marilyn Self, M.D.

  The celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Self prescribed Ritalin hydrochloride to David Luck. He is supposed to take ten milligrams three times daily, and one hundred tablets were refilled last month, exactly three weeks ago to the day. Scarpetta removes the cap and pours the scored green tablets into her hand. She counts forty-nine of them. Three weeks at the prescribed dosage and there should be thirty-seven left, she calculates. He supposedly disappeared Thursday night. That’s five days ago, fifteen tablets ago. Fifteen plus thirty-seven is fifty-two. Close enough. If David’s disappearance was voluntary, why was his Ritalin left behind? Why was the stove left on?

  She returns the tablets to their bottle and seals it inside an evidence bag. She walks down the hallway and at the end is the only other bedroom, one the sisters obviously shared. There are two beds, both covered with emerald-green spreads. The wallpaper and carpet are green. The furniture is lacquered green. The lamps and ceiling fan are green, and green draperies are drawn, blocking the daylight completely. The bedside lamp is on, and its low light and the light from the hall are the only light in the room.

  There is no mirror, no artwork and only two photographs, framed and on the dresser, one of the sun setting over the ocean and two boys on the beach, in swim trunks and smiling, both of them towheads. They look like brothers, one older than the other. The other photograph is of two women with walking sticks, squinting in the sun, surrounded by a huge, blue sky. Behind them is an odd-shaped mountain that hulks over the horizon, the top of it obscured by an unusual layer of clouds that rise from the rocks like thick, white steam. One woman is short and full-figured with long, graying hair pulled back, while the other is taller and thinner with very long, wavy black hair she is pushing out of her face because of the wind.

  Scarpetta gets a lens out of her shoulder bag and studies the photographs more closely, looking carefully at the boys’ exposed skin, their faces. She studies the women’s faces and their exposed skin, looking for scars, tattoos, physical anomalies, jewelry. She moves the lens over the thinner woman with the long black hair, noting that her complexion is unhealthy. Maybe it is the lighting or an artificial tanning product that has given her skin a slight yellowish tint, but she looks almost jaundiced.

  She opens the closet. Inside it are inexpensive casual clothes and shoes, and dressier suits in sizes eight and twelve. Scarpetta pulls out everything white or off-white and checks the fabric for yellowish sweat stains, finding them under the arms of several blouses that are size eight. She returns her attention to the photograph of the woman with long dark hair and jaundiced-looking skin and thinks of the raw vegetables inside the refrigerator, the carrots, and she thinks of Dr. Marilyn Self.

  There are no books inside the bedroom except a brown leather Bible on a bedside table. It is old and open to the Apocrypha, and light from the lamp falls on fragile pages that are dry and browned by the passing of many years. She puts on her reading glasses and leans closer, writing in her notebook that the Bible is open to the Wisdom of Solomon, and verse twenty-five of chapter twelve is marked with three small X’s in pencil.

  Therefore unto them, as to children without the use of reason, thou dids’t send a judgment to mock them.

  She tries Marino’s cell phone and it goes directly to voicemail. She opens the draperies to see if the sliders behind them are locked as she tries Marino again and leaves another urgent message. It has begun to rain, and raindrops pockmark the pool and the waterway, and thunderclouds are piled up like anvils. Palms flutter in fits, and low hedges of hibiscus on either side of the sliders are thick with pink and red blossoms that shake in the wind. She notices two smudges on the glass. They have a distinctive shape that she recognizes, and she finds Reba and Lex in the laundry room, checking to see what’s inside the washer and dryer.

  “There’s a Bible in the master bedroom,” Scarpetta says. “It’s open to the Apocrypha and a lamp is on, a lamp by the bed.”

  Reba seems confused.

  “My question is, was the bedroom exactly like that when the lady from the church came into the house? Was the bedroom exactly like that the first time you saw it?”

  “When I went into the bedroom, it looked undisturbed. I remember the curtains were shut. I didn’t see a Bible or anything like that, and I don’t remember a lamp on,” Reba says.

  “There’s a photograph of two women. Ev and Kristin?”

  “The lady from the church said so.”

  “The other one Tony and David?”

  “I think so.”

  “Does one of the women have some sort of eating disorder? Is she sick? Do we know if one or both of them is under the care of a physician? And do we know which woman is which in the photograph?”

  Reba is at a loss for answers. Before now, answers didn’t seem very important. No one thought there might be questions like the ones Scarpetta is asking now.

  “Did you or anyone open the sliding glass doors in their bedroom, the green one?”

  “No.”

  “They aren’t locked, and I noticed smudges on the outside of the glass. Earprints. I’m wondering if they were there when you looked around the property last Friday.”

  “Earprints?”

  “Two of them made by someone’s right ear,” Scarpetta says as her phone rings.

  30

  It is raining hard when she pulls up to Mrs. Simister’s house, and there are three police cruisers and an ambulance parked in front.

  Scarpetta gets out of her car and doesn’t bother with an umbrella as she concludes a conversation with the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office, which has jurisdiction over all sudden, unexpected and violent deaths that occur between Palm Beach and Miami. She will examine the body on site because she is already here, she is saying, and as soon as possible she needs a removal service to transport the body to the morgue. She recommends the autopsy be done right away.

  “You don’t think it can wait until morning? I understand it might be a suicide, that she has a history of depression,” the administrator points out cautiously because he doesn’t want to sound as if he is questioning Scarpetta’s judgment.

  He doesn’t want to come right out and say that he isn’t sure the case is urgent. He is careful how he words it, but she knows what he is thinking.

  “Marino says there’s no weapon at the scene,” she explains, hurrying up the steps to the front porch, getting soaked.

  “Okay. Didn’t know that.”

  “I’m not aware anyone is assuming it’s a suicide.”

  She thinks of the so-called backfire she and Reba heard earlier. She tries to remember when.

  “You coming in, then?”

  “Of course,” she says. “Tell Dr. Amos to come in and get everything ready.”

&
nbsp; Marino is waiting for her as she reaches the door and goes inside, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.

  “Where’s Wagner?” he asks. “I assume she’s coming. Unfortunately. Shit, we don’t need a moron like her handling this.”

  “She left a few minutes after I did. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Probably lost. Got the worse sense of direction I’ve ever seen.”

  Scarpetta tells him about the Bible inside Ev and Kristin’s bedroom, about the verse that was marked with X’s.

  “The same thing the caller said to me,” Marino exclaims. “Jesus Christ. What the hell’s going on? Damn moron,” he exclaims, and he’s talking about Reba again. “I’m going to have to do an end run around her and get a real detective so this doesn’t get screwed up.”

  Scarpetta has heard enough of his disparaging comments. “Do me a favor, help her as best you can and tuck your grudges out of sight. Tell me what you know.”

  She looks past him through the partially opened front door. Two emergency medical technicians are carrying cases of their equipment, finished with an effort that was a waste of time.

  “Shotgun wound to the mouth, blew the top of her head off,” Marino says, moving out of the way as the EMTs walk out the door, heading to the ambulance. “She’s on the bed in back, fully clothed, TV on. Nothing to imply forced entry, robbery or sexual assault. We found a pair of latex gloves in the bathroom sink. One of them is bloody.”

  “Which bathroom?”

  “The one in her bedroom.”

  “Any other sign the killer might have cleaned up afterwards?”

  “No. Just the gloves in the sink. No bloody towels, no bloody water.”

  “I’ll need to look. We sure who she is?”

  “We know whose residence it is. Daggie Simister’s. I can’t say for a fact who’s back there on the bed.”

  Scarpetta digs inside her bag for a pair of gloves and steps into the foyer. She stops to look around as she thinks of the unlocked sliders in the master bedroom in the house across the waterway. She scans the terrazzo floor, the pale blue walls, then the small living room. It is crowded with furniture, photographs and porcelain birds and other figurines from an earlier era. Nothing seems disturbed. Marino leads her through the living room, past the kitchen and to the other side of the house, where the body is inside a bedroom that faces the water.

  She is clothed in a pink warm-up suit and pink slippers and is lying on her back on top of the bed. Her mouth gapes open, her dull eyes staring below a massive wound that has opened the top of her head like an egg cup. Her brain is eviscerated, chunks of it and fragments of bone on a pillow soaked with blood that is a deep red, just beginning to coagulate. Bits of brain and skin adhere to the blood-spattered and streaked headboard and wall.

  Scarpetta slides her hand inside the bloody warm-up jacket and feels the chest and belly, then touches the hands. The body is warm, and rigor mortis isn’t apparent yet. She unzips the jacket and tucks a chemical thermometer under the right arm. While she waits for a reading on the body temperature, she looks for any injury besides the obvious one to the head.

  “How long you think she’s been dead?” Marino asks.

  “She’s still very warm. Rigor’s not even present yet.”

  She thinks about what she and Reba assumed was a backfire, decides it was about an hour ago. She walks over to a thermostat on the wall. The air-conditioning is on, the bedroom a chilly sixty-eight degrees. She writes it down and looks around, taking her time, scanning. The small bedroom has a terrazzo floor, and a dark-blue throw rug covers almost half of it from the foot of the blue duvet–covered bed to the window that overlooks the waterway. The blinds are shut. On a bedside table is a glass of what looks like water, a large-print edition of a Dan Brown novel and a pair of glasses. At first glance, there is no sign of a struggle.

  “So maybe she got killed right before I got here,” Marino is saying, and he is agitated, trying not to show it. “So it could have happened minutes before I got here on my bike. I was running late. Someone punctured my front tire.”

  “Deliberately?” she says, wondering about the coincidence of that happening when it did.

  If he had gotten here earlier, this lady might not be dead, and she tells him about what she now assumes was a gunshot while a uniformed officer emerges from the bathroom, his hands full of prescription bottles that he sets on a dresser.

  “Yeah, it was deliberate all right,” Marino says.

  “Obviously, she hasn’t been dead long. What time did you find her?”

  “I’d been here maybe fifteen minutes when I called you. I wanted to make sure the house was clear before I did anything. Make sure whoever killed her wasn’t hiding in a closet or something.”

  “The neighbors didn’t hear anything?”

  He says there is nobody home in the houses on either side of this one. One of the uniformed officers already checked. He is sweating profusely, his face deep red, his eyes wide, half crazy.

  “I just don’t know what’s going on,” he says again as the rain drums the roof. “I feel like we’ve been set up somehow. You and Wagner were right across the water. I was late because of a flat tire.”

  “There was an inspector,” she says. “Someone inspecting citrus trees over here.” She tells him about the fruit picker he disassembled and tucked inside a big black bag. “I’d check into that right away.”

  She withdraws the thermometer from under the dead woman’s arm and writes down ninety-seven-point-two degrees. She walks into the tiled bathroom and looks inside the shower. She looks in the toilet and the waste paper basket. The sink is dry, with no blood, not the slightest residue, which makes no sense. She looks at Marino.

  “The gloves were in this sink?” she asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “If he—or she, I suppose—took them off after killing her and dropped them into the sink, they should have left a bloody residue. The bloody one should have.”

  “Unless the blood was already dry on the glove.”

  “It shouldn’t have been,” Scarpetta says, opening the medicine cabinet and finding the usual alchemies for aches and pains and troublesome bowels. “Not unless the killer had them on long enough for the blood to dry.”

  “Wouldn’t take all that long.”

  “It might not. You got them handy?”

  They walk out of the bathroom, and Marino retrieves a large brown-paper evidence envelope from a crime-scene case. He opens the envelope so she can look inside without touching the gloves. One is clean, the other partially inside out and stained with dark-brown dried blood. The gloves aren’t talc-lined, and the clean glove looks as if it has never been worn.

  “We’ll want to do DNA on the inside, too. And prints,” she says.

  “He must not know you can leave prints on the inside of latex gloves,” Marino says.

  “Then he must not watch TV,” an officer says.

  “Don’t talk to me about the crap on TV. It’s ruining my life,” another officer comments from halfway under the bed. Then, “Well, well.”

  He gets up holding a flashlight and a small, stainless-steel revolver with rosewood grips. He opens the cylinder, touching as little of the metal as possible.

  “Unloaded. So that did her a lot of good. Doesn’t look like it’s been fired since it was cleaned last, if it was ever fired at all,” he says.

  “We’ll check it for prints anyway,” Marino tells him. “A weird place to hide a gun. How far under the bed?”

  “Too far to reach without getting down on the floor and crawling under it like I just did. Twenty-two caliber. What the hell’s a Black Widow?”

  “You’re kidding,” Marino says, taking a look. “North American Arms, single-action. Sort of a stupid gun for a little old lady with gnarly, arthritic hands.”

  “Someone must have given it to her for home protection and she never bothered.”

  “See a box of ammo anywhere?”

  “Not so fa
r.”

  The officer drops the gun into an evidence bag, which he places on a dresser where another officer begins taking an inventory of prescription bottles.

  “Accuretic, Diurese and Enduron,” he reads labels. “Got no idea.”

  “An ace inhibitor and diuretics. For hypertension,” Scarpetta says.

  “Verapamil, an old one. Dates back to July.”

  “Hypertension, angina, arrhythmia.”

  “Apresoline and Loniten. Try to pronounce this stuff. Over a year old.”

  “Vasodilators. Again, for hypertension.”

  “So maybe she died of a stroke. Vicodin. I know what that is. And Ultram. These are more recent prescriptions.”

  “Pain medications. Possibly for arthritis.”

  “And Zithromax. That’s an antibiotic, right? Date on it’s December.”

  “Nothing else?” Scarpetta asks.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Who told the Medical Examiner’s Office she has a history of depression?” she asks, looking at Marino.

  No one answers at first.

  Then Marino says, “I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Who called the Medical Examiner’s Office?” she asks.

  The two officers and Marino look at each other.

  “Shit,” Marino says.

  “Hold on,” Scarpetta says, and she calls the Medical Examiner’s Office and gets the administrator on the phone. “Who notified you about the shotgun death?”

  “Hollywood police.”

  “But which officer?”

  “Detective Wagner.”

  “Detective Wagner?” Scarpetta puzzles. “What time’s on the call sheet?”

  “Uh, let me see. Two eleven.”

  Scarpetta looks at Marino again and asks him, “Do you know exactly what time you called me?”

  He checks his cell phone and replies, “Two twenty-one.”

  She glances at her watch. It is almost three thirty. She won’t be on her six-thirty flight.

  “Is everything all right?” the administrator asks her over the phone.

  “Anything come up on caller ID when you got that call, the one supposedly from Detective Wagner?”