Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“Why?”

“So you would do this. Find him yourself, because I could never turn him in. I needed you to ask the questions so I could answer them, and now I have.”

“If we don’t find him quickly, Paulo, he’ll kill again. There must be something else you know. You must have a picture of him?”

“Not a recent one.”

“E-mail what you’ve got.”

“The Air Force should have what you need. Perhaps his fingerprints and his DNA. Certainly a photograph. It’s better you get such things from them.”

“And by the time I go through all those hoops,” Benton says, “it will be too goddamn late.”

“I won’t be back, by the way,” Dr. Maroni says. “I’m certain you won’t try to bring me back but will leave me alone because I have shown you respect, so you will show me some. It would be futile, anyway, Benton,” he says. “I have many friends over here.”

Lucy goes through her pre-start checklist.

Landing lights, Nr switch, OEI limit, fuel valves. She checks the flight instrument indications, sets the altimeter, turns on the battery. She starts the first engine as Scarpetta emerges from the FBO and walks across the tarmac. She slides open the helicopter’s back door and sets her crime scene case and camera equipment on the floor, then opens the left front door. She steps up on the skid and climbs in.

Engine one locked into ground idle position, and Lucy fires up engine number two. The whining turbines and thud-thudding get louder, and Scarpetta buckles herself into the four-point harness. A linesman trots across the ramp, waving his marshaling wands, and Scarpetta puts her headset on.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lucy says into her mike. “Hey!” As if the linesman can hear her. “We don’t need your help. He’s gonna be standing there for a while.” Lucy opens her door, tries to motion for him to go away. “We’re not a plane.” She says more things he can’t hear. “Don’t need your help to take off. Go on now.”

“You’re awfully tense.” Scarpetta’s voice sounds inside Lucy’s headset. “Any word from other people searching?”

“Nothing. No helicopter up in the Hilton Head area yet, still too foggy there. No luck with the search on the ground. FLIR on standby.” Lucy turns on the overhead power switch. “Need about eight minutes for it to cool. Then we’re on the go. Hey!” As if the linesman has on a headset, too, and can hear her. “Go away. We’re busy. Damn, he must be new.”

The linesman stands there, orange wands down by his side, not marshaling anyone anywhere. The tower tells Lucy, “You got the heavy C-seventeen on downwind….”

The military cargo jet is a cluster of big, bright lights and barely seems to move, hangs hugely in the air, and Lucy radios back that she’s got it. The “heavy C-seventeen” and its “heavy wingtip vortices” aren’t a factor because she wants to head toward downtown, toward the Cooper River bridge. Referring to the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Toward whatever she wants. Doing figure-eights if she wants. Barely above the water or the ground if she wants. Because she isn’t a plane. That’s not how she explains it in radio talk, but it’s what she means.

“I called Turkington,” she then says to Scarpetta. “Filled him in. Benton called me, so I guess you talked to him and he’s filled you in. He should be here any minute, or he’d better be. I’m not sitting here forever. We know who the asshole is.”

“We just don’t know where he is,” Scarpetta says. “I’m supposing we still have no idea where Marino is.”

“If you want my opinion, we should be looking for the Sandman, not a dead body.”

“Within the hour, everybody will be looking for him. Benton’s notified the police, local and military. Somebody’s got to look for her. That’s my job, and I intend to do it. Did you bring the cargo net? And have we heard any word from Marino? Anything at all?”

“I’ve got the cargo net.”

“The usual gear’s in baggage?”

Benton is walking toward the linesman. He hands him a tip and Lucy laughs.

“I suppose every time I ask about Marino, you’re going to ignore me,” Scarpetta says, as Benton gets closer.

“Maybe you should be truthful with the person you’re supposed to marry.” Lucy watches Benton.

“What makes you think I haven’t been?”

“I wouldn’t know what you’ve done.”

“Benton and I have talked,” Scarpetta says, looking at her. “And you’re right, I should be truthful, and I have been.”

Benton slides open the back door and gets in.

“Good. Because the more you trust someone, the more criminal it is to lie. Including by omission,” Lucy says.

The clunking and scraping sounds of Benton putting his headset on.

“I have to get over this,” Lucy says.

“I should be the one who needs to get over it,” Scarpetta says. “And we can’t talk about this now.”

“What is it we can’t talk about?” Benton’s voice in Lucy’s headset.

“Aunt Kay’s clairvoyance,” Lucy says. “She’s convinced she knows where the body is. Just in case, I’ve got the gear and chemicals for decon. And body bags in case we need to slingload. Sorry to be insensitive, but no way a decomp’s riding in the back.”

“Not clairvoyance. Just gunshot residue,” Scarpetta says. “And he wants her found.”

“Then he should have made it easier,” Lucy says, rolling up the throttles.

“What about the gunshot residue?” Benton asks.

“I have an idea. If you ask what sand around here might have traces of GSR.”

“Jesus,” Lucy says. “The guy’s going to blow away. Look at him. Just standing there with his cones like a zombie referee for the NFL. I’m glad you tipped him, Benton. Poor guy. He’s trying.”

“Yes, a tip. Only not a hundred-dollar bill,” Scarpetta says, as Lucy waits to get on the radio.

Air traffic is almost impossible, because flights have been delayed all day, and now the tower can’t keep up.

“When I went off to UVA, what did you do?” Lucy says to Scarpetta. “Sent me a hundred bucks now and then. For no reason. That’s what you always wrote at the bottom of the check.”

“It wasn’t much to do.” Scarpetta’s voice goes straight into Lucy’s head.

“Books. Food. Clothes. Computer stuff.”

Voice-activated mikes, and people talk truncated talk.

“Well,” Scarpetta’s voice says. “It was nice of you. That’s a lot of money for someone like Ed.”

“Maybe I was bribing him.” Lucy leans closer to Scarpetta to check the FLIR’s video display. “Ready and waiting,” she says. “We’re out of here as soon as you’ll let us,” as if the tower can hear her. “We’re a damn helicopter, for Christ’s sake. Don’t need the damn runway. And we don’t need to be vectored. Makes me crazy.”

“Maybe you’re too cranky to fly.” Benton’s voice.

Lucy contacts the tower again, and at last is cleared to take off to the southeast.

“Going while the going’s good,” she says, and the helicopter gets light on its skids. The linesman is marshaling as if he’s going to park them. “Maybe he should get a job as a traffic cone,” Lucy says, lifting her three-and-a-quarter-ton bird into a hover. “We’ll follow the Ashley River a little ways, then turn east, track along the shoreline toward Folly Beach.” She hovers at the intersection of two taxiways. “Un-stowing the FLIR.”

She switches from standby to on, and the display turns dark gray, splotched with bright white hot spots. The C-17 does a thunderous touch-and-go, long plumes of white fire blasting from its engines. Lighted window of the FBO. The lights on the runways. All of it surreal in infrared.