Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

She presses the buzzer and announces into the intercom, “Delivery for Jaime Berger.”

As I hold the door open, I mention to her, “That’s all right. I’m going up. I can take it. How much?”

“Two tekka maki, two unagi maki, two California maki, two seaweed salads. Already on her credit card.” She hands me the bag, and I give her a ten-dollar tip. “Her usual Thursday delivery. Have a nice night.”

I shut the door behind me and take the elevator to the top floor, where I follow an empty carpeted hallway to a unit in the southeast corner. Ringing the bell, I look up into the lens of another camera as the heavy oak door opens, and anything I might have said is eclipsed by my astonishment.

“Doc,” Pete Marino says. “Don’t be pissed.”

He invites me in as if it’s his apartment, and the seriousness of his eyes behind his unstylish wire-rim glasses and the hard set of his mouth completely unnerve me at first.

“Jaime should be back any minute.” He shuts the door.

My shocked response just as suddenly turns to anger as I take him in from the top of his shiny shaved head and big weathered face to the rubber-soled canvas shoes he wears with no socks. I note his Hawaiian shirt and the drape of it over shoulders that seem more massive and a belly that seems flatter than I remember. Baggy green fishing shorts with cargo pockets hang low on his hips, and he’s darkly tanned except for under his chin, where the sun has spared him. He’s been out in a boat or on a beach, out somewhere in the summer weather, his skin bronzed with a ruddy hue. Even his bare pate and the tops of his ears are the color of cognac, but he is pale around his eyes. He’s been wearing sunglasses and no cap, and I envision the white cargo van and the charter-boat brochures in the glove box. I think of the fast-food napkins.

Marino craves Bojangles’ and Popeyes fried chicken and biscuits, and often complains that fried food isn’t a “food group” in New England like it is in the South. There were the comments he made not long ago about preowned gas-guzzling trucks and boats selling for a song, and how much he misses warm weather, and I recall being somewhat bothered by his last-minute notice when he stopped by my office earlier this month. He said he’d been offered an opportunity for some great vacation package. He wanted to go fishing, and his calendar was clear. His last day on duty for the CFC was June 15.

Marino vanished in the middle of this month, and other things happened almost simultaneously. Kathleen Lawler’s e-mails to me stopped. She was transferred to Bravo Pod. Suddenly she wanted me to visit the GPFW, to talk to me about Jack Fielding. Leonard Brazzo thought it was a good idea for me to agree, and then I discovered Jaime Berger is here. Now that I have the luxury of looking back, it’s plain what occurred. Marino lied to me.

“She’s picking up dinner,” he says, taking the bag of take-out sushi from me. “Real food. I don’t eat fish bait.”

I notice a desk, a small table, and two chairs arranged near the far wall, with two laptops and a printer, and books and legal pads, and on the floor stacks of expansion file folders.

“The three of us talking in a restaurant isn’t exactly a good idea,” he adds, setting the take-out bag on the kitchen counter.

“I wouldn’t know if it’s a good idea or not, since I have no idea why you’re here. Or, more to the point, why I am,” I reply.

“You want something to drink?”

“Not now.”

I move past the closed-circuit monitor mounted on the wall, past a coat rack, and for an instant I smell cigarettes.

“I don’t blame you for wondering what the hell,” Marino says, and paper rattles as he opens the bag. “I probably should stick this in the fridge. Don’t be pissed, Doc….”

“Don’t tell me what to be. Are you smoking again?”

“Hell, no.”

“I smell cigarettes. Someone was smoking in the rental van I didn’t reserve, which also stinks like dead fish and stale fast food and has suspicious brochures in the glove box. I hope you’re not smoking again, for God’s sake.”

“No way I’d get hooked on cigarettes after all I went through to quit.”

“Who is Captain Link Michaels?” I refer to one of the brochures in the glove box. “Year-round fishing with Captain Link Michaels,” I quote.

“A charter boat out of Beaufort. A nice guy. Been out with him a few times.”

“You weren’t wearing a cap, probably not sunblock, either. What about skin cancer?”

“I don’t have it anymore.” He self-consciously touches the top of his ruddy bald head where he had several basal cell carcinomas removed some months ago.

“Just because spots have been removed doesn’t mean you don’t wear sunblock. You should always wear a hat.”

“Blew off when we had the boat full throttle. I got a little burned.” He touches the top of his head again.

“I guess we don’t need to run the plate of that van I’ve been driving today. I guess we know it won’t come back to Lowcountry Concierge Connection,” I then say. “Who was smoking in it, if not you?”

“You weren’t followed here, that’s what matters,” he says. “No one was going to follow you in the van. I forgot to clean out the glove box. Should have known you’d look.”

“The kid who dropped it off to me, who was that? Because I don’t believe he really works for some VIP rental-car company called Low-country Concierge Connection. Is that your rental van, and you got some charter-boat captain’s kid to drop it off to me?”

“It’s not a rental,” Marino says.

“Well, I guess I know why Bryce hasn’t returned my phone calls today. I have a feeling he got influenced, not that it hasn’t happened before when you sneak around behind my back and get him to cooperate by telling him you have my best interests in mind. Did you instruct him to cancel my hotel room, too?”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s turned out okay.”

“Good God, Marino,” I mutter. “Why would you have Bryce cancel my room? What the hell is the matter with you? What if they hadn’t had another room available?”

“I knew they would.”

“I could have been killed in that damn van. It’s not drivable.”

“It was fine the other day.” He frowns. “What was it doing? I wouldn’t put you in something that’s not safe. And I would have known if you broke down.”

“ Not safe is an understatement,” I reply. “Speeds up, slows down, lurching all over the road as if it’s having a grand mal seizure.”

“We had a lot of rain last night, a huge storm in South Carolina, even worse than here. It rained like hell, and it was sitting out. It needs a new hood seal.”

“South Carolina?”

“Maybe the spark plugs got wet. Then maybe they got even more wet when you had it parked out there at the prison, and maybe Joey hit potholes or something and the tires are out of alignment. A nice kid but dumb as a box of hair. He should have called me if it was driving like shit. Well, I’m sorry about that. Yeah, I got a little place I just started renting. In Charleston, a condo near the aquarium, with a pier and boat slips, an easy drive or motorcycle ride from here. I was going to tell you about it, but things have happened.”

I look around and try to make sense of what things Marino might mean. What has happened? What on earth?

“I had to make sure you weren’t followed, Doc,” he then says. “Let’s be honest, Benton knows your plans and has your itinerary because Bryce copies him on the e-mails. They’re on the CFC computer.”

What he’s saying is the rental car Bryce reserved for me is on my itinerary but a malfunctioning cargo van with a bad hood seal wouldn’t be, and my room at the Hyatt is moot because it was canceled. But I’m not sure what Marino is implying about Benton.