Blow Fly

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Heeerrrre, Basil! Come on, boy!”

  Whistling.

  “Yo! Basil! Where are you?”

  The front door opens and shuts again.

  “That’s it!” Dr. Lanier gets to his feet.

  He walks out of the bedroom, yanking off his bloody gloves. Scarpetta removes another animal hair, this one black, and places it inside an evidence bag. The hairs adhered to the body when the blood was wet. They are adhering to the belly, breasts and chest but not to the bottoms of the woman’s bare feet, which are also smeared with dried blood, not from injuries, but from where she stepped.

  Scarpetta’s breath is hot and loud behind her surgical mask, sweat stinging her eyes as she waves off flies and goes over the woman’s face with a lens, looking for more hairs, every crack in dried blood magnified and more horrible, every split and cut in the skin more ragged and gaping. Flecks of paint adhere to blood, possibly transferred from the living room wall. The variety of animal hairs recovered from the body supplies Scarpetta with an important piece of information.

  “We found the dog.” Nic is standing in the doorway.

  Scarpetta is startled back to a different dimension, one that isn’t a hideous, dry red landscape behind a magnifying glass.

  “Basil, her dog.”

  “That’s not where most of these hairs are from. I’m finding dozens, different kinds, different colors. Dog hairs, possibly. Much coarser than cat hairs. But I’m not positive.”

  Dr. Lanier walks back inside the room, brushing past Nic, snapping on fresh gloves.

  “What I’m seeing here makes me think the hairs were transferred from the perpetrator—perhaps from his clothing—directly to her upper body. Maybe if he got on top of her.”

  She pulls the pajama bottoms down an inch, just far enough to expose the indentations left by their elastic waistband. She sits back on her heels and stares, then takes off her mask.

  “Why would someone get on top of her and not take her pajama bottoms off?” Dr. Lanier puzzles. “Why would someone transfer all these dog or doglike hairs to her naked upper body and nowhere else? And why the hell would anybody have all these dog hairs all the hell over them to begin with?”

  “We found Basil,” Nic says again. “Hiding under a house across the street. Just cowering and shaking. He must have run off when the killer left, I guess. Who’s going to take care of him, of Basil?”

  “I expect the boyfriend will,” Dr. Lanier replies. “If not, Eric loves dogs.”

  He tears open two packets containing sterile, plasticized homicide sheets. While Scarpetta spreads one on the floor, Dr. Lanier and Eric grip the body under the arms and behind the knees, lifting it, centering it on the sheet. They spread the second sheet on top of her, rolling up the edges, wrapping her like a mummy so no trace evidence will be added or lost.

  JAY LIFTS A HAND OFF the steering wheel to strike Bev, then changes his mind.

  “You’re stupid. You know that?” he says coldly. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “It didn’t happen the way it was supposed to.”

  The radio inside his Cherokee continues with the six o’clock news as he drives toward Jack’s Boat Landing.

  “. . . Dr. Sam Lanier, coroner of East Baton Rouge Parish, has not completed the autopsy yet, but sources close to the investigation have confirmed that the victim is thirty-six-year-old Rebecca Milton of Zachary. The cause of death isn’t official, but sources say she was stabbed to death. Police do not believe the murder is related to the women reported missing from Baton Rouge over the past year . . .”

  “Fools.” Jay turns off the radio. “Just lucky for you if they aren’t assuming that.”

  Four small dogs, mixed breeds, sleep in sunlight shining through a back window of the SUV. Five cases of beer are stacked on the backseat. Bev worked hard today after dropping Jay off at the University Lake in the heart of LSU. He didn’t say why he was going there or what he’d be doing all day, only to pick him up in the same spot where she dropped him off at half past five. Maybe he was looking for his escaped-convict brother. Maybe he was wandering around, enjoying being away from Bev and the fishing shack. He was probably trolling for pretty coeds. Bev imagines him having sex with one of them. Jealousy wakes up inside her. It smolders.

  “You shouldn’t have left me all day,” she says to him.

  “What were you thinking? You were going to abduct her in the middle of the day and take her back to the boat in broad daylight?”

  “At first. Then I knew you wouldn’t be happy.”

  He says nothing, his face hard as he drives, careful not to speed or commit any other traffic infraction that could get him pulled over.

  “She didn’t look like her. She had black hair. I don’t know if she went to college.”

  Bev had been unable to resist the impulse. She had time on her hands, time enough to find that pretty lady she had fixed on at the Wal-Mart. Following her all night, she had learned that the lamb didn’t live in the house in the Garden District but had a small place in Zachary. Her neighborhood was dark, and Bev started getting nervous that her lamb might get suspicious. Bev had turned off on a side street before getting a good fix on the address.

  This morning, she cruised, looking for the green Ford Explorer, figuring just because it wasn’t parked in the driveway didn’t mean it wasn’t in the garage. Obviously, she picked the wrong house. Once she was inside, she was committed.

  What she never anticipated was that this particular lamb was going to fight like a wolf. The instant the black-haired woman answered the door, Bev reached inside her canvas bag and pulled out the gun and was shoved so hard it flew out of her hand. Bev rolled on the floor and slipped a buck tool out of the sheath on her belt. She managed to open what she thought was a blade, and the chase began. It seemed to go on and on for miles, with the woman running and yelling, and falling against a wall, which gave Bev the opportunity to grab her by her hair and slam her head against plaster, then kick her when she slid to the floor.

  Damn if she didn’t get back up and punch Bev in the shoulder, hard. It seems Bev was yelling, too, but she can’t remember. There was a roaring in her head, like a freight train, and she stabbed and chased, blood flying in her face, on and on forever. It couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or two. Bev pinned the woman to the bedroom floor and stabbed and stabbed, and now she isn’t sure if any of it really happened.

  Until she keeps hearing it on the radio. Until she remembers the buck knife’s bloody bottle opener. She stabbed the woman with a bottle opener.

  How could that have happened?

  She looks at Jay, passing by pawnshops and car dealers, and a Taco Bell that makes her want to stop.

  Nachos with sour cream, cheese, chili and jalapeños.

  Pizza places, auto shops and car dealers, and then the road narrows and is lined with mailboxes as they move along back to Jack’s, then the bayou.

  “Maybe we could stop and get us some peanut brittle,” Bev says.

  Jay won’t speak to her.

  “Well, have it your way. You and your fucking Baton Rouge. Going back there because of your mangy brother. Well, wait ’til dark when it’s easier.”

  “Shut up.”

  “What if he’s not there?”

  A stony silence.

  “Well, if he is, he’s probably in that damn creepy cellar, hiding, maybe getting the money stashed down there. We could use some more money, baby. All that beer I’ve been buying . . .”

  “I told you to shut up!”

  The colder he gets, the prouder she is of the red bruises and deep scratches on her arms, legs, chest and other parts of her body where she must have been injured during what she refers to as a tussle.

  “They’ll swab under her fingernails.” Jay finally speaks to her. “They’ll get your DNA.”

  “They don’t have my DNA in any of their fancy databases,” Bev replies. “No one ever took my DNA before you and me got the hell out of Dodge. I w
as just a nice lady running a campsite near Williamsburg, remember that?”

  “Nice my ass.”

  Bev smiles. Her injuries are badges of courage and power. She didn’t know she had it in her to fight like that. Why, one of these days, she might just go after Jay. Her bravado deflates. She could never overcome Jay. He could kill her with one punch to her temple. He’s told her that. One punch and he’d fracture her skull, because women don’t have very thick skulls. “Even stupid ones” like Bev, he says.

  “What did you do to her? You know what I mean,” he says. “You’re blood-soaked down the front of your clothes. You get on top of her like a man?”

  “No.” It’s none of his business.

  “Then how did your clothes get bloody from the neck to your crotch, huh? You climb on top of some girl who’s bleeding to death and jerk off?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They don’t think it’s related to the other ones,” Bev says.

  “What word did she say?”

  “What do you mean, what word?” Bev’s beginning to think he’s getting loony.

  “When she was begging. She must have begged for you to stop. What word did she say to describe it?”

  “Describe what?”

  “What it felt like to be so fucking afraid of pain and death! What word did she say!”

  “I don’t know.” Bev tries hard to remember. “It seems like she said, Why?”

  THE ROOM WAS COOL,and there were no odors.

  Nic has read that line at least five times. Her mother might have been murdered just minutes before her husband—Nic’s father—got home. Nic wonders if the killer heard her father’s car and fled, or if it was just fate that the son of a bitch left when he did.

  It is ten p.m. Nic, Rudy, Scarpetta, Marino and Lucy sit inside Dr. Lanier’s guest house, drinking Community Coffee, the local favorite.

  “Multiple abrasions and lacerations to the face,” Scarpetta reviews the autopsy report.

  She said right off that she did not intend to gloss over any detail in order to spare Nic’s feelings. She would not be helping Nic if she did that.

  “Abrasion and laceration of the forehead, periocular ecchymoses, fracture of the nasal bones, frontal teeth are loosened.”

  “So he beat her face up pretty good,” Marino says, sipping his coffee, which is just the way he likes it, white with Cremora and heavily laced with sugar. “Any possibility this was someone she knew?” he asks Nic.

  “She opened the door for him. She was found right near the door.”

  “Was she careful about keeping the doors locked?” Lucy looks at her intensely, leaning into the conversation.

  Nic stares back at her. “Yes and no. At night, we locked up. But she knew Papa and I would be coming home soon, so she may not have had the door locked.”

  “That doesn’t mean the person didn’t ring the bell or knock,” Rudy points out. “It doesn’t mean your mom was afraid of whoever it was.”

  “No, it doesn’t mean that,” Nic says.

  “Blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. Stellate laceration of vertex, three by four inches. Massive hematoma of vertex and back of the head. Fifty milliliters of liquid subscalpular blood . . .”

  Marino and Lucy trade scene photographs back and forth. So far, Nic has not looked at them.

  “Blood on the wall just left of the door,” Marino observes. “Hair swipes. How long was your mother’s hair?”

  Nic swallows hard. “Shoulder length. She had blond hair, pretty much like mine.”

  “Something happened the minute he walked in. Blitz attack,” Lucy says. “Not so different from what happened to Rebecca Milton. Not so different from what happens in any blitz attack, when a victim really enrages the perp.”

  “Would injuries like this be consistent with her head being slammed against the wall?” Rudy asks.

  Nic is stoical. She reminds herself she is a cop.

  Scarpetta meets Nic’s eyes. “I know this is hard, Nic. We’re trying to be honest. Maybe you won’t have so many questions if we’re honest.”

  “I’ll always have questions, because we’re never going to know who did this.”

  “Never say never,” Marino replies.

  “Right.” Lucy nods.

  “Comminuted non-depressed fracture of the biparietal and occipital bones, fractures of the orbital roofs, bilateral subdural hematomas, thirty mls free blood over each . . . okay, okay, okay . . .” Scarpetta turns a page. It is typed, not computer-printed. “She has stab wounds,” she adds.

  Nic shuts her eyes. “I hope she didn’t feel any of this.”

  No one comments.

  “I mean”—she looks at Scarpetta—“was she feeling all this?”

  “She was feeling terror. Physically? It’s hard to say what pain she felt. When injuries occur so quickly . . .”

  Marino interrupts. “You know when you stick your hand in a drawer and cut yourself with a knife and don’t feel it? I think it’s like that unless it’s slow. Slow like in torture.”

  Nic’s heart seems to flutter, as if something is wrong with it.

  “She wasn’t tortured,” Scarpetta says, looking at Nic. “Definitely not.”

  “What about the stabs?” Nic asks.

  “Lacerations of fingers and palms. Defense injuries.” She glances at Nic again. “Punctures of the right and left lung with two hundred mls of hemothorax on each side. I’m so sorry. I know this is hard.”

  “Would that have killed her? The lung injuries?”

  “Eventually. But in combination with the head injuries, absolutely. She also had fractured fingernails on the right and left. Nonidentifiable material recovered from under the nails.”

  “Do you think it was saved?” Lucy asks. “DNA wasn’t as advanced then as it is now.”

  “I wonder what the hell nonidentifiable is,” Marino says.

  “What kind of knife?” Nic asks.

  “Short-bladed. But just how short-bladed, I can’t tell.”

  “Maybe a pocketknife,” Marino offers.

  “Maybe,” Scarpetta says.

  “My mother didn’t have a pocketknife. She didn’t have any . . .” Nic starts to tear up, then regains control. “She wasn’t into weapons, is what I’m saying.”

  “He might have had one,” Lucy tells her kindly. “But my guess is, if the weapon was a pocketknife, he didn’t think he needed a weapon. Might have just been something he carried around with him like a lot of guys do.”

  “Are the stab wounds different than the ones we saw today?” Nic asks Scarpetta.

  “Absolutely,” she says.

  NIC BEGINS TO talk about her mother’s antiques store.

  She says her mother owned it but only worked there part-time to be available to her family. She says her mother was acquainted with Charlotte Dard.

  Nic stares at her mug of coffee. “If I fire this thing up one more time in the microwave, you think I’ll have caffeine D. T.’s tomorrow?”

  “Your mother and Charlotte Dard were friends?” Marino asks. “Shit. You don’t mind my asking, why the hell haven’t you mentioned this before?”

  “This is the God’s truth,” Nic replies. “I never remembered it until just now. I guess I blocked out so much. I almost never think about my mother, or at least I didn’t start to until these women began disappearing. Then today . . . that scene. What he did to Rebecca Milton. And now.”

  She gets up to reheat her coffee. The microwave runs loudly for a minute, the door opens, and she returns to the sofa, steam rising from coffee no longer fit to drink. It smells overcooked.

  “Nic,” Scarpetta says, “is your married name Robillard?”

  She nods.

  “What is your family name?”

  “Mayeux. My mother’s name is Annie Mayeux. That’s why hardly anybody realizes I’m her daughter. With time, people forget anyway. Cops who remember her death never associate me with her. I never say anything.” She sips her coffee, not seeming to mind the taste. “H
er antiques shop specialized in stained-glass windows, doors, shutters, old salvage stuff, some of it really nice if you knew what you were looking for.

  “And a lot of furniture was handmade out of cypress. Charlotte Dard was one of her customers, was remodeling her house and buying a lot of things from my mom’s shop, and that’s how the two of them got friendly. Not close.” She pauses, searching her memory. “My mom talked about this rich woman with a sports car and how beautiful her house was going to be when it was all done.

  “I guess Mrs. Dard’s business helped out a lot. Papa never made much as a schoolteacher.” Nic smiles sadly. “Mama did really well and was frugal. Most of what my father lives off now came from my mother, from how well she did with that shop.”

  “Mrs. Dard was a drug abuser,” Scarpetta says. “She died from a drug overdose, an accident or a homicide. I suspect the latter. She supposedly was suffering blackouts not long before her death. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Everybody around here does,” Nic replies. “It certainly was the talk of Baton Rouge. She dropped dead in a motel room, the Paradise Acres Motel, sounds like the name of a cemetery. Off Chocktaw, a terrible part of town. Rumor was, she was having an affair and met up with the person there. I don’t know anything more than what was in the news.”

  “What about her husband?” Lucy asks.

  “Good question. I’ve never heard of anyone who’s met him. How strange is that? Except he’s some sort of aristocrat and travels all the time.”

  “Have you ever seen a picture of him?” Rudy asks.

  Nic shakes her head.

  “So he’s not in the news.”

  “He’s really private,” Nic replies.

  “What else?” Marino asks.

  “Yeah, there’s some kind of weird connection going on here, right?” Rudy looks at Scarpetta. “Some pharmacist came up as a suspect, and Rocco Caggiano was his lawyer.”

  Marino gets up for more coffee.

  “Think,” Lucy encourages Nic.

  “Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s something. I think Charlotte Dard invited Mom to a cocktail party. I remember. Mom never went to cocktail parties. She didn’t drink and was shy, felt out of place among uppity people. So this was a big deal that she was going. It was on the plantation, the Dard plantation. Mom went to drum up business for her shop. And out of respect for her best customer, Mrs. Dard.”