Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“Next time send a letter.” Marino grabs him by the front of his dirty denim jacket. “It’s cheaper than a funeral.”

“You don’t let go of me, I’ll get you later in a way you won’t like. There’s a reason I’m here and you better listen.”

Marino takes his hands off him, aware that everyone in the saloon has moved out on the porch, watching. The dog remains flat on his belly, cowering.

“That bitch you work for ain’t welcome in these parts and would be smart to go back where she come from,” the man in the do-rag says. “Just passing along a word of advice from someone who can do something about it.”

“What’d you call her?”

“Say this much, that bitch’s got some set of tits.” He cups his hands and licks the air. “If she don’t leave town, I’ll find out just how nice.”

Marino kicks the chopper hard and it thuds to the dirt. He grabs his forty-caliber Glock out of the back of his jeans and points it between the man’s eyes.

“Don’t be stupid,” the man says, as bikers start yelling from the porch. “You shoot me, your worthless life’s over and you know it.”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!”

“Whoa, now!”

“Pete!”

Marino feels as if the top of his head is floating off as he stares at the spot between the man’s eyes. He racks back the slide, chambering a round.

“You kill me, you may as well be dead, too,” the man in the do-rag says, but he’s scared.

Bikers are on their feet, shouting. Marino is vaguely aware of people venturing into the parking lot.

“Pick up your piece-of-shit bike,” Marino says, lowering the gun. “Leave the dog.”

“I ain’t leaving my damn dog!”

“You’re leaving him. You treat him like shit. Now get out of here before I give you a third eye.”

As the chopper roars away, Marino clears the chamber, tucks the pistol back into his waistband, unsure what just came over him and terrified by it. He pets the dog and it stays flat on its belly and licks his hand.

“We’ll find someone nice to take care of you,” Marino says to him as fingers dig into his arm. He looks up at Jess.

“I think it’s time you deal with this,” she says.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what. That woman. I warned you. She’s beating you down, making you feel like a nothing, and look what’s happening. In one short week you’ve turned into a wild man.”

His hands are shaking badly. He looks at her so she can read his lips. “That was stupid, wasn’t it, Jess. Now what?” He pets the dog.

“He’ll be the saloon dog, and if that man comes back, it won’t be good for him. But you better be careful now. You’ve started something.”

“You ever seen him before?”

She shakes her head.

Marino notices Shandy on the porch, by the railing. He wonders why she hasn’t left the porch. He almost killed someone and she’s still on the porch.

Somewhere a dog barks in the near dark, and the barking becomes more insistent.

Scarpetta detects the distant carbureted potato-potato-potato rhythm of Marino’s Roadmaster. She can hear the damn thing blocks away on Meeting Street, heading south. Moments later it roars through the narrow alleyway behind her house. He’s been drinking. She could hear it in his voice when she talked to him on the phone. He’s being obnoxious.

She needs him sober if they’re going to have a productive conversation — perhaps the most important one they’ve ever had. She begins making a pot of coffee as he turns left on King Street, then another left into the narrow driveway she shares with her unpleasant neighbor, Mrs. Grimball. Marino rolls the throttle a few times to announce himself and kills the engine.

“You got something to drink in there?” he says as Scarpetta opens the front door. “A little bourbon would be nice. Wouldn’t it, Mrs. Grimball!” he shouts up at the yellow frame house, and a curtain moves. He locks the bike’s front fork, slips the key in his pocket.

“Inside, now,” Scarpetta says, realizing he’s far more intoxicated than she thought. “For God’s sake, why did you find it necessary to ride down the alley and yell at my neighbor?” she says as he follows her to the kitchen, his booted footsteps loud, his head almost touching the top of each door frame they pass through.

“Security check. I like to make sure nothing’s going on back there, no lost hearses, no homeless people hanging out.”

He pulls out a chair, sits, slumped back. The odor of booze is powerful, his face bright red, his eyes bloodshot. He says, “I can’t stay long. Got to get back to my woman. She thinks I’m at the morgue.”

Scarpetta hands him a coffee, black. “You’re going to stay long enough to sober up, otherwise you’re not going anywhere near your motorcycle. I can’t believe you got on it in your condition. That’s not like you. What’s wrong with you?”

“So I had a few. Big deal. I’m fine.”

“It is a big deal, and you’re not fine. I don’t care how well you supposedly handle alcohol. Every drunk driver thinks he’s fine right before he ends up dead or maimed or in jail.”

“I didn’t come here to be lectured to.”

“I didn’t invite you over to have you show up drunk.”

“Why did you invite me? To rag on me? To find something else wrong with me? Something else not up to your high-horse standards?”

“It’s not like you to talk this way.”

“Maybe you’ve just never listened,” he says.

“I asked you to come over in hopes we could have an open and honest conversation, but it doesn’t appear this is a good time. I have a guest room. Maybe you should go to sleep and we’ll talk in the morning.”

“Seems as good a time as any.” He yawns and stretches, doesn’t touch his coffee. “Talk away. Either that or I’m out of here.”

“Let’s go into the living room and sit in front of the fire.” She gets up from the kitchen table.

“It’s seventy-five friggin’ degrees outside.” He gets up, too.

“Then I’ll make it nice and chilly in here.” She goes to a thermostat and turns on the air-conditioning. “I’ve always found it easier to talk in front of a fire.”

He follows her into her favorite room, a small sitting area with a brick fireplace, heart-of-pine floors, exposed beams, and plaster walls. She places a chemical log on the grate and lights it, and pulls two chairs close and switches off the lamps.

He watches flames burn the paper wrapping off the log and says, “I can’t believe you use those things. Original this, original that, and then you use fake logs.”

Lucious Meddick drives around the block and his resentment festers.

He saw them go inside after that asshole investigator thundered up on his motorcycle drunk and disturbed the neighbors. Daily double , Lucious thinks. He’s blessed because he’s been wronged and God is making it up to him. Setting out to teach her a lesson, Lucious has caught both of them, and he slowly noses his hearse into the unlighted alleyway, worrying about another flat tire, and getting angrier. He snaps the rubber band hard as his frustration spikes. Voices of dispatchers on his police scanner are a distant static he can decipher in his sleep.

They didn’t call him. He drifted past a fatal car crash on William Hilton Highway, saw the body being loaded into a competitor’s hearse — an old one — and again Lucious was ignored. Beaufort County is her turf now, and nobody calls him. She’s blackballed him because he made a mistake about her address. If she thought that was a violation of her privacy, she doesn’t know the meaning.

Filming women through a window at night is nothing new. Surprising how easy it is and how many of them don’t bother with curtains or blinds, or leave them open just a tiny inch or two, thinking Who’s going to look? Who’s going to get down behind the shrubbery or climb up in a tree to see? Lucious, that’s who. See how the snotty lady doctor likes watching herself in a home movie that people can gawk at for nothing and never know who took it. Better still, he’ll get both of them in the act. Lucious thinks of the hearse — nowhere near as nice as his — and the car wreck, and the unfairness of it is unendurable.