Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  Benton doesn’t say a word.

  “Do you have anything to eat in the house? And I need a drink. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the day. And I need us to talk about something besides work. I didn’t fly up here in a snowstorm to talk about work.”

  “It’s not a snowstorm yet,” Benton says somberly. “But it will be.”

  She stares out her window as he drives toward Cambridge.

  “I have plenty of food in the house. And whatever you want to drink,” he says quietly.

  He says something else. She’s not sure she heard it correctly. What she thinks she heard can’t be right.

  “I’m sorry. What did you just say?” she asks, startled.

  “If you want out, I’d rather you tell me now.”

  “If I want out?” She looks at him, incredulous. “Is that all it takes, Benton? We have a major disagreement and should discuss ending our relationship?”

  “I’m just giving you the option.”

  “I don’t need you to give me anything.”

  “I didn’t mean you need my permission. I just don’t see how it can work if you don’t trust me anymore.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” She fights back tears, turns her face away from him, looks out at the snow.

  “So you’re saying you don’t trust me anymore.”

  “What if I had done it to you?”

  “I would be very upset,” he replies. “But I’d try to understand why. Lucy has a right to her privacy, a legal right. The only reason I know about the tumor is because she told me she was having a problem and wondered if I could arrange for her to be scanned at McLean, if I could make sure nobody knew, could keep it absolutely quiet. She didn’t want to make an appointment at some hospital somewhere. You know how she is. Especially these days.”

  “I used to know how she is.”

  “Kay.” He glances over at her. “She didn’t want a record. Nothing’s private anymore, not since the Patriot Act.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with that.”

  “You have to assume your medical records, prescription drugs, bank accounts, shopping habits, everything private about your life might be looked at by the Feds, all in the name of stopping terrorists. Her controversial past career with the FBI and ATF is a realistic concern. She doesn’t trust that they won’t find out anything they can about her, and she ends up audited by the IRS, on a no-fly list, accused of insider trading, scandalized in the news, God knows what.”

  “What about you and your not-so-pleasant past with the FBI?”

  He shrugs, driving fast. A light snow swirls and seems to barely touch the glass.

  “There’s not much else they can do to me,” he says. “Truth is, I’d probably be a waste of their time. I’m much more worried about who’s running around with a shotgun that’s supposed to be in the custody of the Hollywood police or destroyed.”

  “What is Lucy doing about her prescription drugs? If she’s so anxious about leaving any sort of paper or electronic trail.”

  “She should be anxious. She’s not delusional. They can get hold of pretty much anything they want—and are. Even if it requires a court order, what do you suppose happens in reality if the FBI wants a court order from a judge who just so happens to have been appointed by the current administration? A judge who worries about the consequences if he doesn’t cooperate? Do I need to paint about fifty possible scenarios for you?”

  “America used to be a nice place to live.”

  “We’ve handled everything we can in-house for Lucy,” he says.

  He goes on and on about McLean, assures her that Lucy couldn’t have come to a better place, that if nothing else, McLean has access to the finest doctors and scientists in the country, in the world. Nothing he says makes her feel better.

  They are in Cambridge now, passing the splendid antique mansions of Brattle Street.

  “She hasn’t had to go through the normal channels for anything, including her meds. There’s no record unless somebody makes a mistake or is indiscreet,” Benton is saying.

  “Nothing’s infallible. Lucy can’t spend the rest of her life paranoid that people are going to find out she has a brain tumor and is on some type of dopamine agonist to keep it under control. Or that she’s had surgery, if it comes to that.”

  It is hard for her to say it. No matter the statistical fact that surgical extraction of pituitary tumors is almost always successful, there is a chance something can go wrong.

  “It’s not cancer,” Benton says. “If it were, I probably would have told you no matter what she said.”

  “She’s my niece. I raised her like a daughter. It’s not your right to decide what constitutes a serious threat to her health.”

  “You know better than anyone that pituitary tumors aren’t uncommon. Studies show that approximately twenty percent of the population has incidental pituitary tumors.”

  “Depending on who’s surveying. Ten percent. Twenty percent. I don’t give a damn about statistics.”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen them in autopsies. People never even knew they had them—a pituitary tumor isn’t why they ended up in your morgue.”

  “Lucy knows she has it. And the percentages are based on people who had micro—not macro—adenomas and were asymptomatic. Lucy’s tumor on her last scan was twelve millimeters, and she’s not asymptomatic. She has to take medication to lower her abnormally high levels of prolactin, and she may have to be on the medication the rest of her life unless she has the tumor removed. I know you’re well aware of the risks, the very least of which is the surgery won’t be successful and the tumor will still be there.”

  Benton turns into his driveway, points a remote and opens the door of the detached garage, a carriage house in an earlier century. Neither of them talks as he pulls the SUV in next to his other powerful Porsche and shuts the door. They walk to the side entrance of his antique house, a dark-red brick Victorian just off Harvard Square.

  “Who is Lucy’s doctor?” she asks, stepping inside the kitchen.

  “Nobody at the moment.”

  She stares at him as he takes off his coat and neatly drapes it over a chair.

  “She doesn’t have a doctor? You can’t be serious. What the hell have you people been doing with her up here?” she says, fighting her way out of her coat and angrily throwing it on a chair.

  He opens an oak cabinet and lifts out a bottle of single-malt Scotch and two tumblers. He fills them with ice.

  “The explanation’s not going to make you feel any better,” he says. “Her doctor’s dead.”

  The Academy’s forensic evidence bay is a hangar with three garage doors that open onto an access road that leads to a second hangar where Lucy keeps helicopters, motorcycles, armored Humvees, speedboats and a hot-air balloon.

  Reba knows Lucy has helicopters and motorcycles. Everybody knows that. But Reba isn’t so sure she believes what Marino said about the rest of what’s supposed to be in that hangar. She’s suspicious he was setting her up as a joke, a joke that wouldn’t have been funny because it would have made her look stupid if she believed him and went around repeating what he said. He has lied to her plenty. He said he liked her. He said sex with her was the best ever. He said no matter what, they would always be friends. None of it was true.

  She met him several months back when she was still in the motorcycle unit and he showed up one day on the Softail he rode before he got his tricked-out Deuce. She had just parked her Road King by the back entrance of the police department when she heard his loud pipes, and there he was.

  Trade ya, he said, swinging his leg over the seat like a cowboy getting off his horse.

  He hitched up his jeans and walked over to inspect her bike as she was locking it and getting a few items out of the saddlebags.

  I bet you would, she replied.

  How many times you dropped that thing?

  None.

  Huh. Well there’s only two types of riders. Those who’ve dropped their bikes and t
hose who will.

  There’s a third kind, she said, feeling rather good about herself in her uniform and tall, black leather boots. The one who’s dropped it and lies about it.

  Well, that ain’t me.

  That’s not what I hear, she said, and she was teasing him, flirting a little. The story I hear is you forgot to put down the kickstand at the gas pumps.

  Bullshit.

  I also hear you were doing a poker run and forgot to unlock your front fork before you headed off to the next bar.

  That’s the biggest crock I ever heard.

  How about the time you hit the kill switch instead of your right turn signal?

  He started laughing and asked her to ride to Miami and have lunch at Monty Trainer’s on the water. They rode quite a few times after that, once to Key West, flying like birds along U.S.1 and crossing the water as if they could walk on it, the old Flagler railway bridges to the west, a storm-battered monument to a romantic past when South Florida was a tropical paradise of Art Deco hotels, Jackie Gleason and Hemingway—not all at the same time, of course.

  All was fine until not even a month ago, right after she got promoted to the detective division. He started avoiding sex. He got weird about it. She worried it had to do with her promotion, worried maybe he didn’t find her attractive anymore. Men had gotten tired of her in the past, why wouldn’t it happen again? Their relationship fractured for good when they were having dinner at Hooters—not her favorite restaurant, by the way—and somehow got on the topic of Kay Scarpetta.

  Half the guys in the police department got the hots for her, Reba said.

  Huh, he said, his face changing.

  Just like that, he became somebody else.

  I wouldn’t know anything about it, he said, and he didn’t sound like the Marino she had come to like so much.

  You know Bobby? she asked, and she now wishes she had kept her mouth shut.

  Marino stirred sugar in his coffee. It was the first time she’d seen him do that. He told her he didn’t touch sugar anymore.

  The first homicide we worked together, she kept talking, Dr. Scarpetta was there, and when she was getting ready to transport the body to the morgue, Bobby whispered to me, I might just die if I could have her hands all over me. And I said, Good, you die I’ll make sure she saws open your skull to see if you really got a brain in there.

  Marino drank his sweetened coffee, looking at some waitress with big tits bending over to take away his salad bowl.

  Bobby was talking about Scarpetta, Reba added, not sure he got it, wishing he would laugh or something, anything other than the hard, distant look on his face, watching tits and asses go by. It was the first time I met her, Reba talked on nervously, and I remember thinking maybe you and her were an item. I sure was glad later on to find out it wasn’t true.

  You should work all your cases with Bobby. Marino then made a comment that had nothing to do with what she just said. Until you know what the hell you’re doing, you shouldn’t handle any case solo. In fact, you probably should transfer out of the detective division. I don’t think you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. It’s not like what you see on TV.

  Reba looks around the bay and feels self-conscious and useless. It is late afternoon. Forensic scientists have been at work for hours, the gray station wagon up on a hydraulic lift, the windows cloudy from superglue fumes, the carpets already processed and vacuumed. Something lit up on the mat beneath the driver’s seat. Maybe blood.

  The forensic scientists are collecting trace evidence from the tires, using paintbrushes to sweep dust and dirt from the tread, brushing it off onto sections of white paper they fold and seal with bright-yellow evidence tape. A minute ago, one of the scientists, a pretty young woman, told Reba they don’t use metal evidence cans because when they run the trace through the SEM…

  The what? Reba asked.

  A scanning electron microscope with an energy dispersive x-ray system.

  Oh, Reba said, and the pretty scientist went on to explain that if you put trace evidence in metal cans and the scan is positive for iron or aluminum, how do you know it’s not microscopic particles from the can?

  That was a good point, one that would never have occurred to Reba. Most of what they are doing wouldn’t occur to her. She feels inexperienced and stupid. She stands off to one side, thinking about Marino telling her she shouldn’t work anything solo, about the way his face looked and the way he sounded when he said it. She looks around at the tow truck, at other hydraulic lifts and tables of photography equipment, Mini-Crime scopes, luminescent powders and brushes, trace-evidence vacuums, Tyvek protective clothing, superglue and crime-scene kits that look like big, black tackle boxes. On the far side of the hangar, there is even a sled and crash dummies, and she hears Marino’s voice. She hears it as plain as day in her head.

  It’s not like what you see on TV.

  He had no right to say that.

  You should probably transfer out of the detective division.

  Then she hears his voice and it’s real, and she is startled and turns around.

  Marino is walking over to the station wagon, walks right past her, a coffee in hand.

  “Anything new?” Marino says to the pretty scientist taping up a folded sheet of paper.

  He stares at the wagon on the lift, acting as if Reba is a shadow on the wall, a mirage on the highway, something that’s nothing.

  “Maybe blood inside,” the pretty scientist is saying. “Something that reacted to luminol.”

  “I go to get coffee and look what I miss. What about prints?”

  “We haven’t opened her up yet. I was getting ready to, don’t want to overcook her.”

  The pretty scientist has long hair, shiny and a deep brown that reminds Reba of a chestnut horse. She has beautiful skin, perfect skin. What Reba wouldn’t give to have skin like that, to undo all her years in the Florida sun. There’s no point caring anymore, and wrinkled skin looks even worse when it’s pale, so she bakes herself. She still does. She looks at the pretty scientist’s smooth skin and youthful body and feels like crying.

  The living room has fir floors and paneled mahogany doors, and a marble fireplace ready for a fire. Benton crouches before the hearth and lights a match, and wisps of smoke curl up from fatwood kindling.

  “Johnny Swift graduated from Harvard Medical School, did a residency at Mass General, a fellowship in the department of neurology at McLean,” he says, getting up and returning to the couch. “A couple years ago, he started a practice at Stanford, but he also opened an office in Miami. We referred Lucy to Johnny because he was well known at McLean, was excellent and was accessible to her. He was her neurologist and I think they became pretty good friends.”

  “She should have told me.” Scarpetta still can’t grasp it. “We’re investigating his case and she keeps something like that to herself?” She keeps repeating herself. “He may have been murdered and she says nothing?”

  “He was a candidate for suicide, Kay. I’m not saying he wasn’t murdered, but when he was at Harvard, he started having mood disturbances, became an outpatient at McLean, was diagnosed as bipolar, which was controlled with lithium. As I say, he was well known at McLean.”

  “You don’t have to keep justifying that he was qualified and compassionate and not just a random referral.”

  “He was more than qualified and certainly wasn’t a random referral.”

  “We’re investigating his case, a very suspicious case,” she says again. “And Lucy can’t be honest enough to tell me the truth. How the hell can she be objective?”

  Benton drinks Scotch and stares into the fire, and the shadows from the flames play on his face.

  “I’m not sure it’s relevant. His death has nothing to do with her, Kay.”

  “And I’m not sure we know that,” she says.

  47

  Reba watches Marino watching the pretty scientist set her paintbrush on a sheet of clean, white paper and open the wagon’s driver’
s door, his eyes wandering all over her.

  He stands very close to the pretty scientist as she removes foil packets of superglue from inside the wagon and drops them into an orange biohazard trash can. They are shoulder to shoulder, bent over, looking inside the front, then the back, one side of the wagon, then the other, saying things to each other that Reba can’t hear. The pretty scientist laughs at something he says and Reba feels awful.

  “I don’t see anything on the glass,” he says loudly, straightening up.

  “Me either.”

  He squats and looks again at the inside of the door, the one behind the driver’s seat. He takes his time as if noticing something.

  “Come here,” he says to the pretty scientist as if Reba isn’t here.

  They are standing so close they couldn’t fit a piece of that white paper between them.

  “Bingo,” Marino says. “The metal part here that inserts into the buckle.”

  “A partial.” The pretty scientist looks. “I see some ridge detail.”

  They don’t find any other prints, partial or otherwise, not even smudges, and Marino wonders out loud if the interior of the car has been wiped down.

  He doesn’t move out of Reba’s way as she tries to get close. It’s her case. She has a right to see what they’re talking about. It’s her case, not his. No matter what he thinks of her or says, she’s the detective and it’s her damn case.

  “Excuse me.” She says it with authority she doesn’t feel. “How about giving me some room.” Then, to the pretty scientist, “What did you find on the carpets?”

  “Relatively clean, just a little bit of dirt, kind of the way they look when you shake them out or use a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t have good suction. Maybe blood, but we’ll have to see.”

  “Then maybe this station wagon was used and returned to the house.” Reba talks boldly, and Marino gets that hard look on his face again, that same hard, distant look he had in Hooters. “And it didn’t go through any tollbooths after the people disappeared.”