“Long range on base,” her voice fills his headset.
“Downwind?”
“Roger.”
His footsteps are loud and excited as he walks quickly down the hallways. He can hear what he feels in the way his booted feet move over the scarred old wood, and he carries the shotgun. He carries the shoebox that holds the airbrush, the red paint and the stencil.
He is prepared.
“Now you’ll say you’re sorry,” he says to the open doorway at the end of the hall. “Now you get what you deserve,” he says as he walks quickly and loudly.
He walks into the stench. It is like a wall when he walks through the doorway, worse than out by the pit. Inside the room, the air doesn’t stir and the dead stench has nowhere to go and he stares, shocked.
This can’t have happened.
How could God let this happen!
He hears God in the hallway and she flows into the doorway, shaking her head at him.
“I prepared!” he yells.
God looks at her, the one hanged who went unpunished and shakes her head. It is Hog’s fault, he is stupid, he didn’t foresee it, should have made sure it couldn’t happen.
She didn’t say she was sorry, they all do in the end when the barrel is in their mouth, talk around it, try to,I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry.
God disappears from the doorway, leaves him with his error and the girl’s pink sneaker on the stained mattress and he begins to shake inside, shake with a rage so powerful he doesn’t know what to do with it.
He screams as he strides across the floor, the filthy floor, sticky and foul with her piss and shit, and he kicks her lifeless, disgusting, naked body as hard as he can. She jerks with each kick. She sways from the rope around her neck, angled up to her left ear, and her tongue protrudes as if she is mocking him, her face bluish deep red as if she is yelling at him. Her weight rests on her knees on the mattress, and her head is bent, as if she is praying to her God, her bound arms straight up, her hands together, as if she is celebrating victory.
Yes! Yes! She sways from her rope, victorious, the little pink shoe next to her.
“Shut up!” he screams.
He kicks and kicks with his big boots until his legs are too tired to kick anymore.
He slams and slams her with the stock of the shotgun until his arms are too tired to slam anymore.
44
Marino waits to activate a series of human-shaped targets that will flip up from behind bushes, a fence and a tree on the base curve, or Dead Man’s Curve, as Lucy calls it.
He checks the blaze-orange wind sock center field, verifying that the wind is still out of the east and gusting at maybe five knots. He watches Lucy’s right arm holster the Glock and reach back to an oversized leather saddlebag as she glides at a steady speed of sixty miles an hour around the crosswind curve, entering the downwind straightaway.
She smoothly pulls out a nine-millimeter Baretta Cx4 Storm carbine.
“Going hot on five,” he says.
Sculpted of a nonreflective black polymer, with the same telescoping bolt used in an Uzi submachine gun, the Storm is a passion of Lucy’s. It weighs less than six pounds, has a pistol-grip stock that makes it easy to handle, and ejection can be altered from left to right. So it is nimble and no-nonsense, and when Marino goes active on Zone Three, Lucy rolls in and brass cartridge cases flash in the sun, flying behind her. She kills everything on Dead Man’s Curve, kills everything more than once. Marino counts fifteen rounds fired. All targets are down, and she has one round left.
He thinks about the woman named Stevie. He thinks about Lucy meeting her tonight at Deuce. The 617 phone number Stevie gave Lucy belongs to a guy inConcord,Massachusetts, a guy named Doug. He says several days ago he was in a bar in Ptown and lost his cell phone. He says he hasn’t cancelled the number yet because some lady apparently found his phone, called one of the numbers in it, ended up talking to one of Doug’s friends, who then gave her Doug’s home number. She called, said she’d found his cell phone, promised to mail it to him.
So far she hasn’t.
It’s a slick trick, Marino thinks. If you find or steal a cell phone and promise to send it to the owner, maybe he doesn’t get his electronic security identification number deactivated right away and you can use his phone for a while, until the person gets wise. What Marino doesn’t quite understand is why Stevie, whoever she is, would go to all the trouble. If her reasoning was to avoid having an account with a cellular company such as Verizon or Sprint, why not just get a pay-as-you-go phone?
Whoever Stevie is, she’s trouble. Lucy is living far too close to the edge these days, has been for the better part of a year. She’s changed. She’s gotten inattentive and indifferent, and at times Marino wonders if she’s trying to hurt herself, hurt herself badly.
“Another car has just sped up from behind,” he radios her. “You’re history.”
“I’m reloaded.”
“No way.” He can’t believe it.
Somehow, she has managed to drop out the empty magazine and slide in a new one without him noticing.
She slows the bike to a stop below the control tower. He sets his headphones on the console, and by the time he gets down the wooden stairs, she has her helmet and gloves off and is unzipping her jacket.
“How’d you do that?” he asks.
“I cheated.”
“I knew it.”
He squints in the sun and wonders where he left his sunglasses. He seems to be misplacing things a lot these days.
“I had an extra magazine here.” She pats a pocket.
“Huh. You probably wouldn’t in real life. So yeah, you cheated.”
“He who survives writes the rules.”
“What’s your thinking about the Z-Rod, about turning all of them into Z-Rods?” he asks, and he knows what she thinks about it, but he asks anyway, hoping she’s changed her mind.
It doesn’t make sense to increase the engine some thirteen percent, from an already enhanced 1150cc’s to 1318cc’s, and an already beefed-up breaking horsepower of 120 to 170, so the bike can rocket from 0 to 140 miles per hour in 9.4 seconds. The more weight the bike loses, the better it will perform, but it would mean replacing the leather seat and rear fender with molded fiberglass and losing the saddlebags, and they can’t lose those. He hopes Lucy isn’t interested in butchering their new fleet of Special Op bikes. He hopes that for once, what she has is enough.
“Impractical and unnecessary,” she surprises him by saying. “A Z-Rod engine only lasts ten thousand miles, so imagine the maintenance headaches, and we strip these things down, it’s going to call attention to them. Not to mention how much louder they’ll be because of the increased air intake.”
“Now what,” he says with a huff as his cell phone rings. “Yeah,” he answers it gruffly.
He listens for a moment, then ends the call and says “shit” before he tells Lucy, “They’re going to start processing the station wagon. Can you get started without me at the Simister house?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have Lex meet me.”
Lucy unclips a two-way radio from her waistband and gets on the air, “Zero-zero-one to the stable.”
“What can I do for you, zero-zero-one?”
“Gas up my horse. I’m taking her on the street.”
“She need a bigger burr under her saddle?”
“She’ll do just fine the way she is.”
“Good to hear. Be right there.”
“We’ll head out toSouthBeacharound nine,” Lucy says to Marino. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Maybe it’s better we go together,” he says, looking at her, trying to figure out what’s in her mind.
He never can, not that mind. If she were any more complicated, he’d need an interpreter.
“We can’t run the risk she might see us in the same car,” Lucy says, pulling off her ballistic jacket, complaining that the sleeves are like Chinese handcuffs.
“Maybe it’
s some kind of cult thing,” Marino says. “Some cult like a bunch of witches that paint red hands all over themselves.Salem’s up there in the same part of the world. All kinds of witches up there.”
“Witches are by the coven, not the bunch.” Lucy pokes him in the shoulder.
“Maybe she’s one of them,” he says. “Maybe your new friend is a witch who steals cell phones.”
“Maybe I’ll just come right out and ask her,” Lucy says.
“You should be careful about people. That’s the only thing with you, your judgment about who you hook up with. I wish you’d be more careful.”
“I guess we share the same dysfunction. Your judgment in that department seems to be almost as good as mine. Aunt Kay says Reba’s really nice and you were a dick to her at the Simister scene, by the way.”
“The Doc better not have said that. She better not have said nothing.”
“She didn’t say just that. She also said Reba’s smart, new on the job, but smart. Not as dumb as a bag of hammers and all those other cliches you like so much.”
“Bullshit.”
“She must be the one you were dating for a while,” Lucy says.
“Who told you?” Marino blurts out.
“You just did.”
45
Lucy has a macroadenoma. Her pituitary gland, which hangs by a threadlike stalk from the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, has a tumor.
The normal pituitary is about the size of a pea. It is referred to as the Master Gland because it transmits signals to the thyroid, the adrenals and ovaries or testes, controlling their production of hormones that dramatically affect metabolism, blood pressure, reproduction and other vital functions. Lucy’s tumor measures approximately twelve millimeters, or approximately half an inch, in diameter. It’s benign but won’t go away on its own. Her symptoms are headaches and an overproduction of prolactin, resulting in unpleasant symptoms that mimic pregnancy. For now, she controls her condition with drug therapy that is supposed to lower prolactin levels and shrink the tumor in size. Her response hasn’t been ideal. She hates taking her medication and isn’t consistent with it. Eventually, she might have to have surgery.
Scarpetta parks at Signature, the FBO at theFort Lauderdaleairport where Lucy hangars her jet. She gets out and meets the pilots inside as she thinks aboutBenton, not sure she’ll ever forgive him, so sick with hurt and anger that her heart is racing and her hands are shaking.
“There are still a few snow showers up there,” Bruce, the pilot in command, says. “We should be in the air about two hours twenty. We have a decent headwind.”
“I know you didn’t want catering, but we’ve got a cheese tray,” his copilot says. “Do you have baggage?”
“No,” she says.
Lucy’s pilots don’t wear uniforms. They are specially trained agents of her own design, don’t drink or smoke or do any kind of drugs, are very fit and trained in personal protection. They escort Scarpetta out to the tarmac where the Citation X waits like a big, white bird with a belly. It reminds her of Lucy’s belly, of what’s happened to her.
Inside the jet, she settles into the large leather seat, and when the pilots are busy in the cockpit, she callsBenton.
“I’ll be there by one,one fifteen,” she says to him.
“Please try to understand, Kay. I know what you must feel.”
“We’ll talk about it when I get there.”
“We never leave things like this,” he says.
It’s the rule, the old adage. Never let the sun go down on your wrath, never get into a car or a plane or walk out of the house when you’re angry. If anybody knows how quickly and randomly tragedy can strike, he and Scarpetta do.
“Fly safe,”Bentonsays to her. “I love you.”
Lex and Reba are walking around the outside of the house as if looking for something. They stop looking when Lucy makes her conspicuous entrance into Daggie Simister’s driveway.
She kills the engine of the V-Rod, takes off her black, full-face helmet and unzips her black ballistic jacket.
“You look like Darth Vader,” Lex says cheerfully.
Lucy’s never known anybody so chronically happy. Lex is a find, and the Academy wasn’t about to let her go after she graduated. She’s bright, careful and knows when to get out of the way.
“What are we looking for out here?” Lucy asks, scanning the small yard.
“The fruit trees over there,” Lex replies. “Not that I’m a detective. But when we were at the other house where those people disappeared”-she indicates the pale orange house on the other side of the waterway-“Dr. Scarpetta said something about a citrus inspector over here. She said he was examining trees in the area, maybe in the yard next door. And you can’t see it from here, but some of the trees over there have these same red stripes.” She again points to the pale orange house on the other side of the water.
“Of course, the canker spreads like crazy. If trees are infected here, I suppose a lot of trees in the area might be, too. I’m Reba Wagner, by the way,” she says to Lucy. “You’ve probably heard about me from Pete Marino.”
Lucy looks her in the eye. “What might I have heard if he’s talked about you?”
“How mentally challenged I am.”
“Mentally challenged might stretch his vocabulary to the point of injury. He probably said retarded.”
“There you have it.”
“Let’s go in,” Lucy says, heading to the front porch. “Let’s see what you missed the first time,” she says to Reba, “since you’re so mentally challenged.”
“She’s kidding,” Lex says to Reba, picking up the black crime-scene case she parked by the front door. “Before we do anything else”-she directs this to Reba-“I want to verify the house has been sealed since you guys cleared the scene.”
“Absolutely. I saw to it personally. All the windows and doors.”
“An alarm system?”
“You’d be amazed how many people down here don’t have them.”
Lucy notices stickers on windows that say H amp;W Alarm Company and comments, “She was worried, anyway. Probably couldn’t afford the real thing but still wanted to scare away bad people.”
“Problem is, the bad guys know that trick,” Reba replies. “Stickers and signs in the flower beds. Your typical burglar would take one look at this house and figure it probably doesn’t have an alarm system. That the person inside probably can’t afford it or is too old to bother.”
“A lot of elderly people don’t bother, it’s true,” Lucy says. “For one thing, they forget their codes. I’m serious.”
Reba opens the door and musty air greets them as if the life inside fled long ago. She reaches in and flips on lights.
“What’s anybody done about it so far?” Lex says, looking at the terrazzo floor.
“Nothing except in the bedroom.”
“Okay, let’s just stand out here a minute and think about this,” Lucy says. “We know two things. Her killer somehow got inside the house without breaking down a door. And after he shot her, he somehow left. Also through a door?” she asks Reba.
“I’d say so. She’s got all these jalousie windows. No way to climb through them unless you’re Gumby.”
“Then what we should do is start spraying at this door and work our way back to the bedroom where she was killed,” Lucy says. “Then we’ll do the same thing at all the other doors. Triangulating.”
“That would be this door, the kitchen door and the sliders leading from the dining room to the sunporch and on the sunporch itself,” Reba tells them. “Both sets of the sliders were unlocked when Pete got here, so he says.”
She steps inside the foyer, and Lucy and Lex follow. They shut the door.
“We ever find out any other details about the citrus inspector you and Dr. Scarpetta happened to notice around the time this lady was shot?” Lucy asks, and on the job, she never refers to Scarpetta as her aunt.
“I found out a couple things. First, they wo
rk in pairs. The person we saw was alone.”
“How do you know his partner wasn’t out of sight? Maybe in the front yard?” Lucy asks.
“We don’t. But all we saw was this one person. And there’s no record any inspectors were even supposed to be in this neighborhood. Another thing, he was using one of those pickers, you know, the long pole with a claw or whatever so you can pull down fruit from high up in the tree? From what I’ve been told, inspectors don’t use anything like that.”
“What would be the point?” Lucy asks.
“He took it apart, put it in a big black bag.”
“I wonder what else was in the bag,” Lex says.
“Like a shotgun,” Reba says.
“We’ll keep an open mind,” Lucy says.
“I’d say it’s a big fuck-you,” Reba adds. “I’m in plain view on the other side of the water. A cop. I’m with Dr. Scarpetta and obviously we’re looking around, investigating, and he’s right there looking at us, pretending to examine trees.”
“Possibly, but we can’t be sure,” Lucy replies. “Let’s keep an open mind,” she reminds them again.
Lex crouches on the cool terrazzo floor and opens the crime-scene case. They close all the blinds in the house and put on their protective disposable clothing, then Lucy sets up the tripod, attaches the camera and the cable release, while Lex mixes up the luminol and transfers it to a black pump spray bottle. They photograph the area just inside the front door, then lights out, and they get lucky on their first try.
“Holy smoke,” Reba’s voice sounds in the dark.
The distinct shape of footprints glow bluish-green as Lex mists the floor and Lucy captures it on film.
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