Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“Had to be. There’s ridge detail in what sure looks like superglue, the same as if it had been fumed.”

“Maybe he had glue on his finger and touched the coin,” she says. “And left his print that way.”

Nine p.m. A hard rain slaps the street in front of Marino’s fishing shack.

Lucy is soaking wet as she turns on a wireless receiver mini-disc recorder disguised as an iPod. In exactly six minutes, Scarpetta will call Marino. Right now, he is arguing with Shandy, their every word picked up by the multidirectional mike embedded in his computer’s thumb drive.

His heavy footsteps, the refrigerator door opening, the swish of a can popped open, probably a beer.

Shandy’s angry voice sounds in Lucy’s earpiece. “…Don’t lie to me. I’m warning you. All of a sudden? All of a sudden you decide you don’t want a committed relationship? And by the way, who said I’m committed to you? The only fucking thing that ought to be committed is you — to a fucking mental hospital. Maybe the Big Chief’s fiancé can give you a discount on a room up there.”

He’s told her about Scarpetta’s engagement to Benton. Shandy’s hitting Marino where it hurts, meaning she knows where it hurts. Lucy wonders how much she’s used that against him, taunted him about it.

“You don’t own me. You don’t get to have me until it don’t suit you anymore, so maybe I’m getting rid of you first,” he yells. “You’re bad for me. Making me get on that hormone shit — it’s a damn wonder I hadn’t had a stroke or something. After barely more than a week. What happens in a month, huh? You picked out a fucking cemetery? Or maybe I’ll end up in the fucking penitentiary because I lose my mind and do something.”

“Maybe you already did something.”

“Go to hell.”

“Why would I be committed to an old, fat fuck like you, who can’t even get it up without that hormone shit?”

“Cut it out, Shandy. I’ve had it with you putting me down, you hear me? If I’m such a nothing, why are you here? I need some space, time to think. Everything’s so fucked up right now. Work’s turned to shit. I’m smoking, not going to the gym, drinking too much, doped up. Everything’s gone to hell, and all you do is get me in worse and worse trouble.”

His cell phone rings. He doesn’t answer. It rings and rings.

“Answer it!” Lucy says out loud in the heavy, steady rain.

“Yeah.” his voice sounds in her earpiece.

Thank God. He’s quiet for a moment, listening, then says to Scarpetta on the other line, “That can’t be right.”

Lucy can’t hear Scarpetta’s side of the conversation but knows what’s being said. She’s telling Marino there were no hits in NIBIN or IAFIS for the serial number of the Colt.38 and any prints or partial prints recovered from the gun and the cartridges that Bull found in her alleyway.

“What about him?” Marino asks.

He means Bull. Scarpetta can’t answer that. Bull’s prints wouldn’t be in IAFIS, because he’s never been convicted of a crime, and his being arrested several weeks ago doesn’t count. If the Colt is his but isn’t stolen or wasn’t used in a crime and then ended up back on the street, it wouldn’t be in NIBIN. She’s already told Bull it would be helpful if he were printed for exclusionary purposes, but he’s not gotten around to it. She can’t remind him again because she can’t get hold of him, and both she and Lucy have tried several times since they left Lydia Webster’s house. Bull’s mother says he went out in his boat to pick oysters. Why he would do that in this weather is baffling.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Marino’s voice fills Lucy’s ear, and he is walking around again, obviously careful what he says in front of Shandy.

Scarpetta will also tell Marino about the partial print on the gold coin. Maybe that’s what she’s relaying to him right now, because he makes a sound of surprise.

Then he says, “Good to know.”

Then he falls silent again. Lucy hears him pacing. He moves closer to the computer, to the thumb drive, and a chair scrapes across the wooden floor as if he’s sitting down. Shandy is quiet, probably trying to figure out what he’s talking about and to whom.

“Okay,” he finally says. “Can we deal with this later? I’m in the middle of something.”

No. Lucy’s certain her aunt will force him to talk about whatever she wants, or at least listen. She’s not going to get off the phone without reminding him that within the past week, he started wearing an old Morgan silver dollar on a necklace. It may have no connection to the gold coin necklace that was at least held, at some point, by the dead little boy in Scarpetta’s freezer. But where did Marino get his gaudy new necklace? If she’s asking him that, he isn’t answering. He can’t. Shandy’s right there listening. And as Lucy stands in the dark, in the rain, and the rain soaks her cap and seeps in around the collar of her slicker, she thinks about what Marino did to her aunt, and that same feeling comes back. A fearless, flat feeling.

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Marino says. “Like a ripe apple falling from a tree.”

Lucy infers that her aunt is thanking him. What an irony, she’s thanking him. How the fuck can she thank him for anything? Lucy knows why, but it’s still revolting. Scarpetta’s thanking him for talking with Madelisa, which resulted in her confessing that she’d taken the basset hound, and then showing him a pair of shorts that had blood on them. The blood had been on the dog. Madelisa wiped it on her shorts, indicating she must have arrived on the scene very soon after someone was injured or killed, because the blood on the dog was still wet. Marino took the shorts. He let her keep the dog. His story, he told her, is that the killer stole the basset hound, probably killed it and buried it somewhere. Amazing how kind and decent he is to women he doesn’t know.

Rain is relentless cold fingers drumming the top of Lucy’s head. She walks, staying out of view, should Marino or Shandy move close to a window. It may be dark, but Lucy takes no chances. Marino is off the phone now.

“You think I’m so stupid I don’t know who the hell you were talking to and that you were making damn sure I had no idea what you’re saying? Speaking in riddles, in other words.” Shandy is shrieking. “As if I’m so stupid I fall for it. The Big Chief, that’s who!”

“It’s none of your damn business. How many times I got to tell you that? I can talk to who the hell I want.”

“Everything’s my business! You spent the night with her, you lying asshole! I saw your damn motorcycle there early the next morning! You think I’m stupid? Was it good? I know you been wanting it half your life! Was it good, you big, fat fuck!”

“I don’t know who beat it into your spoiled rich girl’s head that everything in life is your business. But hear this. It ain’t.”

After more fuck-yous and other profanities and threats, Shandy storms out and slams the door. From where she hides, Lucy watches her stride angrily underneath the fishing shack to her motorcycle, angrily ride it through Marino’s sliver of a sandy front yard, then loudly speed away toward the Ben Sawyer Bridge. Lucy waits a few minutes, listening to make sure Shandy isn’t coming back. Nothing. Just the distant sound of traffic and the loud spattering of the rain. On Marino’s front porch, she knocks on the door. He flings it open, his angry face suddenly blank, then uneasy, his expressions running through emotions like a slot machine.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, looking past her, as if worried Shandy might come back.

Lucy walks into a squalid sanctuary she knows better than he thinks. She notices his computer, the thumb drive still in it. Her fake iPod and its earpiece are tucked in a pocket of her slicker. He shuts the door, stands in front of it, looking more uncomfortable by the second as she sits on a plaid couch that smells like mildew.