Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

MARINO TURNS INTO THE LOUISIANA AIR parking lot and stops cop-style, drivers window to driver's window, with Lucy's SUV.

"Good man. You got rid of the truck," Lucy commends him without saying hello. "Don't need a monster-garage truck with Virginia plates around here."

"Hey. I'm not stupid. Even if this is a piece of shit."

His rental truck is a six-cylinder Toyota. It doesn't even have mud flaps.

"Where'd you ditch it?" Lucy asks.

"The regular airport, long-term parking. Hope nobody breaks in to it. Everything I owns in there. Even if it ain't much."

"Lets go."

They park, but not near each other.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Marino asks as they walk toward the FBO.

"Prowling. Seeing if he can find Rocco s place in Spanish Town, the historic district where Rocco kept a place."

She stops briefly at the desk. "The Bell four-oh-seven," she says, not giving the tail number.

It isn't necessary. Her helicopter is the only one on the tarmac at the moment. The woman at the desk pushes a button that unlocks the door. A Gulf Stream is starting its engines, the roar painfully loud, and Lucy and Marino cover their ears, making sure they don't walk around the back of the plane and get blasted with exhaust, a good way to smell like jet fuel, which is sure to give one a headache when confined to a small cockpit. They hurry to the helipad, which is at the outer edge of the tarmac, far away from planes, because people ignorant of helicopters assume their rotor wash will kick up rocks and sand and scour the paint right off fixed-wing aircraft.

Marino is ignorant of helicopters and doesn't like them. He can barely force his massive body into the left seat, which doesn't adjust. He can't slide it back.

"Goddamn son of a bitch," is all he says, loosening his harness as far as it will go.

Lucy has already done her usual thorough prefiight, checks breakers and switches and throttle one last time and turns on the battery. She waits for automatic checks to go through their routines and she goes through hers, flipping on the generator. Headset on, she eases the throttle up to 100 RPMs. This is a time when the GPS will be of no value, nor will any other navigational instruments. A flight chart isn't going to be of much use, either, so she spreads open a Baton Rouge map on her lap and runs her finger southeast, along Route 408, also known as Hooper Road.

"Where we're going is off the map," she says into her mike. "Lake Maurepas. We keep going in this direction, towards New Orleans, and hopefully don't end up at Lake Pontchartrain. We're not going that far, but if we do, we've overflown Lake Maurepas, and Blind River and Dutch Bayou. I don't think that will happen."

"Fly fast," Marino says. "I hate helicopters, including yours."

"On the go," she announces and stabilizes into a hover, taking off into the wind.

SWAMP MAMA'S IS A BAR that smells like beer, with old vinyl booths and a stained, unvarnished wooden floor.

While an LSU student waiter takes drink orders, Eric and Dr. Lanier disappear into the men's room.

"I tell you," Eric says as they push through the restroom's door. "I'd take her home with me any time. What about tonight?"

"She's not interested in you," Dr. Lanier says in a cadence that rises in pitch at the end of each sentence, causing his comments to sound like questions when they aren't. "Come on now."

"She's not married."

"Don't be messing with my consultants, especially this one. She'll eat you alive."

"Oh, please, God. Let her."

"Every time you get dumped by your latest girlfriend, you turn into a mental case."

They are conducting this conversation at the urinals, one of the few places on the planet where they don't mind having their backs to the door.

"I'm trying to figure out how to describe her," Eric says. "Not pretty like your wife. Stronger-featured than that, and to me there's nothing sexier than a really great body in a suit or maybe a uniform."

"You're goofy as a shit-eating fly. Don't go buzzing around her geography, Eric."

"I like those little glasses she wears, too. I wonder if she's dating anybody. That suit doesn't hide what's important, you notice?"

"No, I didn't notice." Dr. Lanier vigorously scrubs his hands in the sink, as if he's about to perform a heart transplant. "I'm blind. Don't forget to wash up."

Eric laughs as he moves to the sink, blasts on the hot water and pumps globs of pink soap into his palms. "No kidding, what if I ask her out, Boss? What harm could there be in that?"

"Maybe you should try her niece. She's closer to your age. Very attractive and smart as hell. She might be too much of a handful for you. She's also with a guy. But they didn't sleep in the same room."

"When do I meet her? Maybe tonight? You cook? Maybe we can go to Boutin's?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"I ate oysters last night."

Dr. Lanier snatches paper towels out of a metal dispenser on the wall. He places a short stack of them on the edge of Eric's sink. Walking out of the men's room, he watches Scarpetta, noticing that every detail of her is unusual, even the way she reaches for her coffee, slowly, with deliberation, exuding confidence and power that has absolutely nothing to do with drinking coffee. She is scanning notes in a diary that has a black leather slipcover so she can refill it as often as needed. He suspects she is constantly refilling that diary. She's the sort who would record any detail or conversation that in her mind might prove important. Her meticulousness goes beyond her training. He slides in next to her.

"I recommend the gumbo," he says as his cell phone plays a thin, mechanical version of Beethoven's Fifth.

"Wish you'd set your ringer on something else," Eric comments. "Lanier," he answers. He listens for a minute, frowning, his eyes fixing on Eric. "I'm leaving right now."

He gets up from the booth and tosses his napkin on the table. "Come on," he says "We got a bad one."

THE TERRAIN BETWEEN the Baton Rouge airport and Lake Maurepas is a series of swamps, waterways and creeks that make Lucy nervous.

Even with pop-out floats, she would worry about a forced landing. How anyone would get to them is a valid question, and she doesn't want to imagine the reptiles that lurk in those dark waters, on mucky shores and in the shadows of moss-draped trees. In the baggage compartment, she always carries an emergency kit that includes handheld radios, water, protein bars and insect repellent.

Camouflaged in thick trees are duck blinds and an occasional fishing shack. She flies lower and slower but sees no signs of human occupation. In some areas, only a very small boat, perhaps an airboat, could work its way through narrow waterways that from the air look like veins reticulating through saw grass.

"See any gators down there?" she asks Marino.

"I ain't looking for gators. And there ain't nothing down there."

As creeks move into rivers and Lucy spots a faint blue line on the horizon, they begin to reach civilization. The day is balmy and partly cloudy, good weather for being on the water. A lot of boats are out, and fishermen and people on pleasure crafts stare up at the helicopter. Lucy is careful not to fly too low, avoiding any appearance of surveillance. She's just a pilot heading somewhere. Banking east, she starts looking for Blind River. She tells Marino to do the same.

"Why do you think they call it Blind River?" he says. " 'Cause you can't see it, that's why."

The farther east they go, the more fishing camps they see, most of them well cared for, with boats docked in front. Lucy spots a canal, turns around and follows its convolutions south as it gets wider and turns into a river that empties into the lake. Numerous foreboding canals branch out from the river, and she circles, getting lower, finding not a single fishing shack.