Patricia Cornwell - Trace

"From the way I hear it," he replies, "the Feds are interested in little Gilly because her dad's a snitch, you might say, for Homeland Security. He's down there in Charleston supposedly snitching on pilots who might have terrorist inclinations, and that's a big worry down there since they've got the biggest fleet of C-17 cargo planes in the country, each one about one hundred and eighty-five million a pop. Wouldn't be a good thing if some terrorist pilot suddenly crashed a plane into that fleet, now would it?"

"It probably would be a good idea for you to shut up right about now," Special Agent Weber says to him, her fingers still laced on top of her legal pad, but her knuckles are white. "You don't want to be getting into this."

"Oh, I'm in it," he replies, taking off his baseball cap and rubbing the sandy stubble sprinkled over his otherwise perfectly bald head. "Sorry. I was up kind of late and didn't have time to shave this morning." He rubs his stubbly jaw and it scratches like sandpaper. "Me and Forensic Scientist Rise and Detective Browning had a bonding moment at the FOP, and then I had a few other chats I won't go into for confidentiality reasons."

"You can stop right now," FBI Special Agent Weber warns him, as if she might just arrest him for talking, as if talking is a new federal crime. Maybe in her mind he is about to commit treason.

"I'd rather you didn't stop," Scarpetta says.

"The FBI and Homeland Security don't like each other much," Marino says. "See, a big chunk of Justice's budget has been forked over to Homeland Security, and we all know how much the FBI likes a big fat budget. What is it last I heard?" He looks coolly at Special Agent Weber. "About seventy lobbyists on Capitol Hill, every one of them there to beg for money while all you empty suits run around trying to take over everybody's jurisdiction, take over the goddamn world?"

"Why are we sitting here listening to this?" Special Agent Weber asks Dr. Marcus.

"The story is," Marino says to Scarpetta, "the Bureau's been sniffing around Frank Paulsson for a while. And you're right. There's rumors about him, all right. Seems he supposedly abuses his privileges as a flight surgeon, which is especially scary in light of him being a. snitch for Homeland Security. Sure would hate for him to sign off on a pilot-especially a military pilot-because maybe he's getting favors. And nothing the Bureau would like better than to nail Homeland Security and make them look like idiots, so when the governor got a little worried about things and called the FBI, that opened the gate, now didn't it." He looks at the special agent. "Now I doubt the governor knows just what kind of help she asked for. Didn't realize the Bureau's idea of help was to make another federal agency look like shit. In other words, this is all about power and money. But then, ain't everything?"

"No, not everything," Scarpetta replies in a hard voice, and she has had as much of this as she intends to take. "This is about a fourteen-year-old girl who died a painful, terrifying death. It's about Gilly Paulsson's murder." She gets up from her chair and snaps shut her briefcase and picks it up by its leather handles and looks at Dr. Marcus, then at Special Agent Weber. "That's what this is supposed to be about."

By the time they reach Broad Street, Scarpetta is ready to get the truth out of him. It doesn't matter what he wants. He is going to tell her.

"You did something last night," she says, "and I'm not just talking about your hanging out at the FOP with whoever you were drinking with."

"I don't know what you're getting at." Marino is big and gloomy in the passenger's seat, his cap pulled low over his sullen face.

"Oh yes you do. You went to see her."

"Now I sure as hell don't know what you're talking about." He stares out his side window.

"Oh yes you do." She cuts across Broad at a vigorous rate of speed, driving because she insisted on it, because there was no way she was going to allow Marino or anyone else to be in the driver's seat right this minute. "I know you. Damn it, Marino. You've done this before. If you did it again, just tell me. I saw the way she looked at you when we were at her house. You saw it, you damn well did, and were happy about it. I'm not stupid."

He doesn't answer her, staring out his window, his face shadowed by the cap and averted from her.

"Tell me, Marino. Did you go see Mrs. Paulsson? Did you meet up with her somewhere? Tell me the truth. I'm going to get it out of you eventually. You know I will," Scarpetta says, stopping abruptly at a yellow light turning red. She looks over at him. "Okay. Your silence speaks volumes. That's why you acted so strange when you ran into her at the office this morning, isn't it? You were with her last night and maybe things didn't go quite the way you hoped, so you got surprised this morning when you saw her at the office."

"That's not it."

"Then tell me."

"Suz just needed someone to talk to and I needed information. So we helped each other out," he says to the window.

Suz?

"She helped out, now didn't she?" he goes on. "I got some insight about all this Homeland Security, about what a dickhead her ex-husband is, about what a sleaze he is and why the FBI might be after him."

"Might be?" She swings left on Franklin Street, heading to her first office in Richmond, her former building that is being torn down. "You seemed pretty sure of yourself in the meeting, if what just happened can be called a meeting. This was guessing on your part? Might be? What are you saying, exactly?"

"She called my cell phone last night," Marino replies. "They've torn down a lot since we got here. A lot's been torn down in more ways than one." He looks out at the demolition ahead.

The precast building is smaller and more pitiful than when they first saw it. Or maybe they are no longer surprised by the destruction, and it only seems smaller and more pitiful. Scarpetta slows as she approaches 14th Street and looks for a place to park the car.

"We're going to have to go up Gary," she decides. "There's a pay lot just a block or two up Gary, or at least there used to be."

"The hell with it. Drive right up to the building and off the road," Marino says. "I've got us covered." He reaches down and unzips his black cloth briefcase, and pulls out a red Chief Medical Examiner plate. He slides it between the windshield and dash.

"Now how did you manage that?" She can't believe it. "How the hell did you do that?"

"Things happen when you take time "to chat with the girls in the front office."

"You're very bad," she says, shaking her head. "I've missed having one of those." she adds, because once upon a time, parking was nor the problem or inconvenience that it has become. She could roll up on any crime scene and park anywhere she wanted. She could show up for court during rush hour and tuck her car in some illegal spot, easily, because she had a little red plate with chief medical examiner stamped on it in big white letters. "Why did Mrs. Paulsson call you last night?" She can't quite bring herself to call her Suz.

"She wanted to talk," he says, opening his door. "Come on, let's get this over with. You should have worn boots."

All the time since last night Marino has been thinking about Suz. He likes the way she wears her hair just long enough to brush her shoulders, and he likes it blond. Blond is his favorite, it always has been.

When he met her at her house for the first time, he liked the curve of her cheek and the fullness of her lips. He liked the way she looked at him. She made him feel big and important and strong, and in her eyes he saw that she believed he knew what to do about problems, even though her problems are beyond fixing, no matter who she might look at. She would have to look at God Himself to get her problems fixed, and that isn't going to happen because God probably isn't moved in the same way men like Marino are.