Blow Fly

by Patricia Cornwell

  This also changes things.

  A folded piece of paper quietly slips beneath the right corner of Jean-Baptiste’s door. He rips off toilet paper and, again without bothering to pull up his pants, picks up the note and returns to the toilet.

  Beast’s cell is five down from Jean-Baptiste’s, on the left, and he can always tell when a note slid from cell to cell to him is from Beast. The folded paper takes on a certain texture of scraped gray, and the inside is smudged, the paper fiber of the creases weakened by repeated opening and folding, as each inmate along the way reads the note, a few of the men adding their own comments.

  Jean-Baptiste crouches on his stainless-steel toilet, the long hair on his back matted with sweat that has turned his white shirt translucent. He is always hot when he is magnetized, and he is in a chronic state of magnetism as his electricity circulates through the metal of his confinement and races to the iron in his blood, and flows out again to complete another circuit, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.

  “Today,” the semiliterate Beast wrote in pencil, “wont you be glad when they drive me away. You will miss me? May be not.”

  For once, Beast isn’t insulting, although the kite reads like a taunt to other inmates, of this Jean-Baptiste is certain.

  He writes back, “You don’t have to miss me, mon ami.”

  Beast will know Jean-Baptiste’s meaning, although he will know nothing more about what Jean-Baptiste will do to save Beast from his appointment with death. Footsteps ring on metal as officers walk by. He tears Beast’s note into small pieces and stuffs them into his mouth.

  SHE MUST HAVE PARKED AND been approached by the killer before she even took her keys out of the ignition.

  Nic assumes the purse and wallet may have been tossed in the parking lot, and after two days, certainly someone would have picked them up. Unfortunately, finders-keepers appears to have prevailed. As much news coverage as Katherine Bruce’s abduction is getting, whoever found her purse and wallet sure as hell knows that what he or she has is evidence. Some sniveling worm out there who lives according to situational ethics is not going to call the police now and basically admit that he or she intended to keep the purse or wallet or both until discovering they belonged to a murdered woman, assuming that Katherine has been murdered.

  If she hasn’t been yet, she will be soon.

  Then it occurs to Nic with a jolt that if the purse and wallet were turned in, whoever had them would have called the mighty Baton Rouge task force, which, of course, would find some lame-brain reason for not releasing the information to the press, and certainly not to other brothers and sisters of the badge. Nic can’t stop thinking about Wal-Mart and that she herself was at that very location within hours, perhaps, of when Katherine Bruce was abducted, driven away, probably to the same secret place the killer has taken all his victims.

  Nic is haunted by the possibility, not a strong one, that Katherine Bruce might have been inside the Wal-Mart while Nic was there trolling, as she has done at all hours since returning from Knoxville.

  Photographs of the pretty blonde victim constantly flash on the TV news and are in every newspaper Nic has picked up. She has no recollection of noticing anyone who looked even remotely similar to her while she was picking out a needlepoint pattern, when she doesn’t know how to do needlepoint, and showing interest in gaudy lingerie she would never wear.

  For some reason, the odd woman who fell down in the parking lot because of an injured knee drifts through Nic’s mind every now and then. Something about that woman bothers her.

  AT HIGH TIDE, SMALL BOATS can enter creeks and bayous that are usually not possible to enter and almost never ventured into by rational people.

  Darren Citron is known to rev up his old Bay Runner and skim the shallow water and just make it over the mudbar into the mouth of whatever waterway he intends to challenge on any given day. Right now, the tide’s a little lower than he’d like, but he speeds full-throttle in Blind River and almost gets caught in the silt, which can be up to six feet deep. The muck can suck one’s shoes off, and although Darren can usually manage to push his boat out, he doesn’t like wading in water that’s full of cottonmouths.

  A local boy, he is eighteen years old, perpetually tanned the hue of a burnt peanut, and he lives to fish and find new spots for hunting gators. Because of his latter preoccupation, Darren is not particularly admired. If he goes after big ones that can bring a good price for their hides, meat and heads, it requires a strong rope, a huge steel hook and, of course, bait. The higher the bait dangles over the water, the longer the gator has to be to reach it. The best bait is dogs. Darren gets them from shelters all over the area, his sweet demeanor fooling people. He does what he has to, rationalizing to himself that the animals will be put to sleep anyway. When he’s gator hunting, he thinks about the gator, not the bait or how he got it. Gators bite at night, especially if Darren sits very still in his boat and plays a tape recording of dogs whining. He’s skilled at disassociating from the bait, only thinking about the huge gator that’s going to come out of the water, snap its jaws together and get caught on the hook. Then he moves in quickly and humanely shoots the reptile in the head with a .22 rifle.

  He cruises through a waterway lined with lily pads and saw grass, dappled with shadows from cypress dressed in Spanish moss, their roots ropy. Gators go in and out of the water, especially if the female has laid eggs. Their long tails leave trails, and when Darren sees a particular spot with a lot of trails, he marks it on his mental map and comes back there after dark, if the weather and tides are right.

  The water is carpeted in duck seed blooms, and a blue heron lifts off up ahead, unhappy about the intrusion of man and motor. Darren scans for trails. He is followed by iridescent dragonflies. Gator eyes remind him of tiny tunnels side by side, just above the surface of the water, before they catch him looking back. Around a bend, he spots a myriad of trails and a yellow nylon rope hanging from a tree. The bait on the huge steel hook is a human arm.

  TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME in more than five years, Benton speaks to Senator Frank Lord, both of them using pay phones.

  It strikes Benton as almost comical, as he envisions the ever-immaculately groomed and impeccably dressed Senator Lord driving from his Northern Virginia home, on his way to the Capitol, and pulling off at a gas station to use a pay phone. Benton orchestrated the conversation after receiving a very unexpected e-mail from the senator late last night.

  Trouble, it read. Tomorrow 7:15. Leave me a number.

  Benton e-mailed back the number of the pay phone he’s using right now, having picked it out in advance last night. Always go for the simplest, most obvious plan, if possible. Certainly, it is beginning to seem that his meticulous and complicated ones are going awry in all directions.

  He leans against a wall, watching his beat-up Cadillac, making sure no one goes near it or shows interest in him. Every alarm inside his head is hammering. Senator Lord is telling him about Scarpetta’s letter from Chandonne, the one with the calligraphy.

  “How did you find out about this?” Benton asks him.

  “Jaime Berger called me last night. At home. Very concerned that Chandonne has set up a trap and Scarpetta’s walking right into it. Berger wants my help, my intervention. People forget that I have my limitations. Well, my enemies don’t forget it.”

  The senator wants to send legions of federal agents to Baton Rouge, but not even he can bend the law. The Baton Rouge Task Force has to invite the FBI into the investigation, and for all practical purposes to take it over. In these serial abductions—or murders, because that’s what they are—there is an insurmountable jurisdictional problem with the feds storming in on their own. No federal laws have been broken.

  “Damn incompetence,” Senator Lord says. “Damn ignorant fools down there.”

  “It’s close,” Benton says into the phone. “The letter means the situation is very close to a possible conclusion. Not the way I wanted it. This is bad, very bad. I’m not worried
about me.”

  “It can be handled?”

  “I’m the only one who knows how. It will require exposure.”

  A long pause, then Senator Lord acquiesces. “Yes, I believe it will. But once that happens, there’s no going back. We can’t go through this again. Do you really . . . ?”

  “I have to. The letter changes things dramatically, and you know how she is. He is luring her there.”

  “She’s there now.”

  “Baton Rouge?” Benton is frightened.

  “Texas. I mean Texas.”

  “Christ. Not good, either. No, no, no. The letter. This one’s real. Texas is no longer safe for her.”

  For a moment he contemplates Scarpetta visiting Chandonne. Originally, he had tactical and personal reasons for wanting her to do this. But if he’s honest with himself, he never really thought she would. He really didn’t, despite his best efforts. Now she shouldn’t be there. Christ.

  “She’s there even as we speak,” Senator Lord reminds him.

  “Frank, he’s going to make a run for it.”

  “I don’t see how. Not out of that place. No matter how clever he is. I’ll alert them immediately.”

  “He’s more than clever. The point is this: If he’s luring her to Baton Rouge, then he must plan to be there. I know him. I know her. She’ll head to Baton Rouge as soon as she leaves Texas. Unless he intercepts her first, in Texas, if he can work that fast. Hopefully he can’t. But either way, she is in severe danger. Not just because of him, but his allies. They must be in Baton Rouge. His brother must be there. The killings now make sense. He’s doing them. She’s probably helping him. Since she hasn’t been caught yet, my guess is he and Bev Kiffin are together, hiding.”

  “Isn’t abducting women taking a tremendous risk for fugitives of their notoriety?”

  “He’s bored,” Benton simply says.

  OFFICERS IN THE POLUNSKY UNIT wear gray uniforms and black baseball caps.

  Handcuffs dangle from the belts of the two officers walking Jean-Baptiste through a series of heavy doors slamming shut so loudly, they sound like large-caliber pistol fire inside a steel room. Every explosion is an empowerment for Jean-Baptiste as he walks freely, only his wrists shackled. All around him, tons of steel magnetize him into solar flares. With each step, the power grows stronger.

  “Can’t understand why anybody would want to visit you,” one of the officers says to him. “This is a first, huh?”

  His name is Phillip Wilson. He drives a red Mustang with the vanity tag KEYPR.

  KEEPER. Jean-Baptiste figured that out the first day he was here.

  He says nothing to the officers as he moves through another door in a wave of searing heat.

  “Not even one visitor?” replies the second officer, Ron Abrams, white, slender, with thinning brown hair. “Pretty pitiful, aren’t you, Monsieur Chandonne,” he mockingly says.

  The turnover rate among corrections officers is very high. Officer Abrams is new, and Jean-Baptiste senses that he wants to walk the infamous Wolfman out to the visitation area. New officers are always curious about Jean-Baptiste. Then they get used to him and then are disgusted. Moth says Officer Abrams drives a black Toyota SUV. Moth knows every car in the parking lot, just as he always knows the latest weather update.

  The back of the tiny visitation booth is a heavy wire mesh painted white. Officer Wilson unlocks it and takes off Jean-Baptiste’s cuffs and shuts him inside the booth, which has a chair, a shelf and a black phone attached to a metal cable.

  “I’d like a Pepsi and the chocolate cupcakes, please,” Jean-Baptiste says through the screen.

  “You got money?”

  “I have no money,” Jean-Baptiste quietly replies.

  “Okay. This time I do you a favor, since you’ve never had a visitor before and the lady coming in would be stupid to buy you anything, asshole.” It is Officer Abrams who speaks so crudely.

  Through the glass, Jean-Baptiste scans the sparkling-clean, spacious room, believing he doesn’t need eyes to see the vending machines and everything in them, and the three visitors talking on phones to three other death-row inmates.

  She is not here.

  Jean-Baptiste’s electrical current spikes with anger.

  AS OFTEN HAPPENS WHEN a situation is urgent, the best efforts are foiled by mundaneness.

  Senator Lord has never been the sort to hesitate in making phone calls himself. He has no egotistical insecurities and finds it is quicker to handle a matter than to explain it to someone else. The instant he hangs up at the pay phone, he returns to his car and drives north, talking on his hands-free to his chief counsel.

  “Jeff, I need the number of the warden at Polunsky. Now.”

  Writing notes while driving in rush hour on I-95 is a special feat the senator was forced to learn years ago.

  He enters a bad cell and can’t hear his chief counsel.

  Repeatedly calling him back, the senator gets no signal. When he does get through, he is greeted by voicemail, because Jeff is trying to call him back, too.

  “Get off the phone!” the senator exclaims to no one who can hear him.

  Twenty minutes later, a secretary is still trying to track down the warden.

  Senator Lord senses—and this has happened before—that she isn’t sure she believes the person on the other line is really Senator Frank Lord, one of the most powerful and visible politicians in the country. Usually, important people let less important people schedule appointments and make telephone calls.

  Senator Lord concentrates on creeping traffic and angry drivers, and has been on hold for minutes. No one with intelligence or, better yet, a certainty of who she is talking to would dare to put him on hold. This is his reward for humility and taking care of himself efficiently, including picking up his own dry cleaning, stopping at the grocery store and even making his own restaurant reservations, despite recurring problems with maître d’s writing nothing down, certain the call is a prank or someone trying to trick him into giving him the best table.

  “I’m sorry.” The secretary finally returns. “I can’t seem to locate him. He’s very busy this morning because there’s an execution tonight. Can I take a message?”

  “What is your name?”

  “Jodi.”

  “No, Jodi, you can’t take a message. This is an emergency.”

  “Well,” she hesitates, “caller ID doesn’t show you’re calling from Washington. I can’t just yank him out of an important meeting or whatever and then find out it’s not really you.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Find him. Or, for God’s sake, does the man have an assistant?”

  Again, he enters a bad cell and it takes fifteen minutes before he can get through to the secretary again. She has left her desk. Another young woman answers the phone and he loses her, too.

  I’M SICK OF THIS,” Nic tells her father.

  She drove to the Baton Rouge Police Department’s old brick building and never got above the first-floor lobby. When she said she had possible evidence about the cases, a plainclothes detective eventually appeared and just stared at the quarters in the envelope. He looked at Polaroid photographs of them on the Wal-Mart parking lot and indifferently listened to Nic’s rendition and theory while he continued to glance at his watch. She receipted the coins to him, and was certain when he returned to the so-called War Room, she became the joke of the day.

  “We’re all working the same cases, and those assholes won’t talk to me. I’m sorry.” Sometimes Nic forgets how much her father abhors swearing. “Maybe they know something that could help us with our cases in Zachary. But oh, no. I am welcome to hand over anything I know, but it doesn’t work the same way.”

  “You look mighty tired, Nic,” he says as they eat eggs scrambled with cheese and spicy sausage patties.

  Buddy is off in make-believe land with his toys and the television.

  “How ’bout some more grits?” her father asks.

  “I can’t. But you do m
ake the best grits I’ve ever had.”

  “You always say that.”

  “It’s always true.”

  “Be careful. Those boys in Baton Rouge don’t like people like you. Especially women like you.”

  “They don’t even know me.”

  “They don’t need to know you to hate your guts. They want credit. Now, when I was coming along, credit meant you could buy your groceries at the nearby general store and pay later when you were able. No one went hungry. These days, credit means plain selfishness. Those good ol’ boys in Baton Rouge want credit, credit, credit.”

  “Tell me about it.” Nic butters another biscuit. “Every time you cook, I eat too much.”

  “People who want credit will lie, cheat and steal,” her father reminds her.

  “While women keep dying.” Nic loses her appetite and sets the biscuit back on her plate. “Who’s worse? The man doing it or these men who want credit and don’t care about the victims or anything else?”

  “Two wrongs never make a right, Nic,” he says. “I’m glad you don’t work down there. I’d be worried about your safety a lot more than I am now. And not because of this madman on the loose, but because of who your colleagues would be.”

  She looks around at the simple kitchen of her childhood. Nothing in the house has been upgraded or remodeled since her mother died. The stove is electric, white with four burners. The refrigerator is white; so are the countertops. Her mother had a French country theme in mind, was going to find old furniture and blue-and-white curtains, maybe some interesting tiles for the walls. But she never got a chance. So the kitchen is white, just plain white. If any of the appliances quit for good, she’s confident her father would refuse to get rid of them. He’d eat takeout food every night, if necessary. It tortures Nic that her father can’t disengage from the past. Silent grieving and anger hold him hostage.