Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  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 to South Beach around 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 clichés 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 the Fort Lauderdale airport where Lucy hangars her jet. She gets out and meets the pilots inside as she thinks about Benton, 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 calls Benton.

  “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,” Benton says 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&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.”

  They put on their disposable clothing. Reba 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 work 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, 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.

  “He must have had a hell of a lot of blood on his shoes to leave this much after walking all the way across the house,” Reba says.

  “Except for one thing,” Lucy replies in the dark. “They’re heading in the wrong direction. They’re coming in instead of leaving.”

  46

  He looks grim but fantastic in a long, black suede coat, his silver hair peeking out of a Red Sox baseball cap. Whenever Scarpetta hasn’t seen Benton for a while, she is struck by his refined handsomeness, by his long, lean elegance. She doesn’t want to be angry with him. She can’t stand it. She feels sick.

  “As always, we enjoyed flying with you. Just call when you know exactly when you’re leaving,” Bruce the pilot says to her, warmly shaking her hand. “Get in touch if you need anything. You’ve got all my numbers, right?”

  “Thanks, Bruce,” Scarpetta says.

  “Sorry you had to wait,” he says to Benton. “A headwind that got more wicked.”

  Benton isn’t the least bit friendly. He doesn’t answer him. He watches him walk off.

  “Let me guess,” Benton says to Scarpetta. “Another triathlete who decided to play cops and robbers. The one thing I hate about flying on her jet. Her musclehead pilots.”

  “I feel very safe with them.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  She buttons her wool coat as they walk out of the FBO.

  “I hope he didn’t try to chat with you too much, bother you. He strikes me as the type,” he says.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Benton,” she says, walking one step ahead of him.

  “I happen to know you don’t think it’s nice at all.”

  He picks up his pace, holds the glass front door for her, and the wind rushing in is cold and carries small flakes of snow. The day is dark gray, so dusky that lights in the parking lot have come on.

  “She gets these guys, all of them good-looking and addicted to the gym, and they think they’re action heroes,” he says.

  “You made your point. Are you trying to pick a fight before I have a chance?”

  “It’s important you notice certain things, don’t assume someone’s just being friendly. I worry you don’t pick up important signals.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she replies, anger sounding in her voice. “If anything, I pick up too many signals. Although I obviously missed some pretty important ones this past year. You want a fight, now you’ve got it.”

  They are walking through the snowy parking lot, and the lamps along the tarmac are blurred by the snow and sound is muted. Usually, they hold hands. She wonders how he could have done what he did. Her eyes water. Maybe it is the wind.

  “I’m worried who’s out there,” he says oddly, unlocking his Porsche, this one a four-wheel-drive SUV.

  Benton likes his cars. He and Lucy are into power. The difference is, Benton knows he’s powerful. Lucy doesn’t feel she is.

  “Worried in general?” Scarpetta asks, assuming he’s still talking about all the signals she supposedly misses.

  “I’m talking about whoever just murdered this lady up here. NIBIN got a hit on a shotgun shell that appears to have been fired by the same shotgun used in a homicide in Hollywood two years ago. A convenience-store robbery. The guy was wearing a mask, killed a kid in the store and then the manager killed him. Sound familiar?”

  He looks over at her as they talk, as they drive away from the airport.

  “I’ve heard about it,” she replies. “Seventeen years old, armed with nothing but a mop. Anybody have a clue as to why that shotgun’s back in circulation?” she asks as her resentment grows.

  “Not yet.”

  “A lot of shotgun deaths recently,” she says, coolly professional.

  If he wants to be this way, she can, too.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” she adds in a detached sort of way. “The one used in the Johnny Swift case disappears—now one is used in the Daggie Simister case.”

  She has to explain to him the Daggie Simister case. He doesn’t know about it yet.

  “A shotgun that is supposed to be in custody or destroyed is just used again up here,” she goes on. “Then we have the Bible in the house of these missing people.”
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  “What Bible and what missing people?”

  She has to explain that to him, tell him about the anonymous call from someone who referred to himself as Hog. She has to tell him about the centuries-old Bible inside the house of the women and boys who have vanished, that it was open to the Wisdom of Solomon, that the verse is the same one this man called Hog recited to Marino over the phone.

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

  “Marked with X’s in pencil,” she says. “The Bible printed in 1756.”

  “Unusual they would have one that old.”

  “There were no other old books like that in the house. According to Detective Wagner. You don’t know her. People who worked with them at the church say they’ve never seen the Bible before.”

  “Checked it for prints, for DNA?”

  “No prints. No DNA.”

  “Any theories about what might have happened to them?” he asks, as if the sole reason for her racing here on a private jet was to discuss their work.

  “Nothing good,” and her resentment grows.

  He knows almost nothing about what her life has been like of late.

  “Evidence of foul play?”

  “We’ve got a lot to do at the labs. They’re in overdrive,” she says. “I found earprints outside a slider in the master bedroom. Someone had his ear pressed up against the glass.”

  “Maybe one of the boys.”

  “It’s not,” she says, getting angrier. “We got their DNA, or presumably it’s their DNA, from clothing, their toothbrushes, a prescription bottle.”

  “I don’t exactly consider earprints good forensic science. There have been a number of wrongful convictions because of earprints.”

  “Like a polygraph, it’s a tool,” she almost snaps.

  “I’m not arguing with you, Kay.”

  “DNA from an earprint the same way we get DNA from fingerprints,” she says. “We’ve already run that and it’s unknown, doesn’t appear to be anybody who lived in the house. Nothing in CODIS. I’ve asked our friends at DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota to test for gender and ancestral inference or racial affiliation. Unfortunately, that will take days. I don’t really give a damn about matching someone’s ear to an earprint.”