Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

"If Talley baited that hook with the arm," Lucy says, "then I have a feeling he's hiding out not too far from here."

"Well, if you're right and keep circling, he damn well is going to see us," Marino replies.

They head back, keeping up their scan, mostly concentrating on antennas and careful not to overfly petrochemical plants and find themselves intercepted. Lucy has spotted several bright orange Dauphine helicopters, the sort usually flown by the Coast Guard, which is now part of homeland security and constantly on alert for terrorists. Flying over a petrochemical plant is not a wise move these days. Flying into a thousand-foot antenna is worse. Lucy has pushed back the airspeed to ninety knots, in no hurry to return to the airport as she debates if now is the time to tell Marino the truth.

She won't be able to look at him while airborne and keeping alert to avoid coming anywhere near obstacles. Her stomach tightens and her pulse speeds up.

"I don't know how to say this," she begins.

"You don't have to say nothing," he replies. "I already know."

"How?" She is baffled and scared.

"I'm a detective, remember? Chandonne sent two sealed letters, one to you, one to me, both of them inside NAJ envelopes. You never let me read yours. Said it was a lot of deranged crap. I could've pushed, but something told me not to. Then next thing, you've disappeared, you and Rudy, and a couple days later I find out Rocco's dead. All I ask is if Chan-donne told you where to find him and gave you enough info to get Rocco pinned with a Red Notice."

"Yes. I didn't show you the letter. I was afraid you'd go to Poland yourself."

"And do what?"

"What do you think? If you found him inside that hotel room and finally confronted him, saw him up close for what he was, what would you have done?"

"Probably the same thing you and Rudy did," Marino says.

"I can tell you all the details."

"I don't want to know."

"Maybe you really couldn't have done it yourself, Marino. Thank God you didn't. He was your son," she tells him. "And in some very hidden part of your heart, you loved him."

"What hurts worse than him being dead is I never did," he says.

THE FIRST BLOOD IS THREE feet inside the front door, a single drop the size of a dime, perfectly round with a stellate margin reminiscent of a buzzsaw blade.

Ninety-degree angle, Scarpetta thinks. A drop of blood moving through the air assumes an almost perfect spherical shape that is maintained on impact if the blood falls straight down, at a ninety-degree angle.

"She was upright, or someone was," Scarpetta says.

She stands very still, her eyes moving from one drop to the next on the terra-cotta tile floor. At the edge of the rug in front of the couch is a bloody area that appears to have been smeared by a foot, as if the person who stepped on the blood-spotted tile slipped. Scarpetta moves in for a closer inspection, staring at the dry, dark red stain, then turning her head and meeting Dr. Lanier s eyes. He comes over, and she points out an almost indiscernible partial footwear impression of a heel with a small undulating tread pattern that reminds Scarpetta of a child's drawing of ocean waves.

Eric begins taking photographs.

From the couch, the signs of the struggle continue around a glass and wrought-iron coffee table that is askew, the rug rumpled beneath it, and just beyond, a head was slammed against the wall.

"Hair swipes." Scarpetta points out a bloody pattern feathering over the pale pink paint.

The front door opens and in walks a plainclothes cop, young, with dark, receding hair. He looks back and forth between Dr. Lanier and Eric, and fixes on Scarpetta.

"Who's she?" he asks.

"Let's start with who you are," Dr. Lanier says to him.

The cop seems threatening because he is frantic, his eyes darting back in the direction of an area of the house they can't see. "Detective Clark, with Zachary." He swats at a fly, the black hair on top of his fingers showing through translucent latex gloves stretched over his big hands. "I just got transferred into investigations last month," he adds. "So I don't know her." He nods again at Scarpetta, who hasn't moved from her spot by the wall.

"A visiting consultant," Dr. Lanier replies. "If you haven't heard of her, you will. Now tell me what happened here. Where's the body, and who's with it?"

"In a front bedroom-a guest room, it looks like. Robillard's in there, taking pictures and everything."

Scarpetta glances up at the mention of Nic Robillard's name.

"Good," she says.

"You know her?" Now Detective Clark seems very confused. He irritably swats at another fly. "Damn, I hate those things."

Scarpetta follows tiny spatters of blood on the wall and floor, some no bigger than a pinpoint, the tapered ends pointing in the direction of flight. The victim was down on the floor by the baseboard and managed to struggle back to her feet. Small, elongated drops on the wall are not the usual cast-off blood that Scarpetta is accustomed to seeing when a victim has been repeatedly beaten or stabbed and blood has flown off the weapon as it is swung through the air.

The point of origin is what appears to be a violent struggle in the living room, and Scarpetta envisions punching, grabbing, feet sliding and perhaps kicking and clawing, resulting in a bloody mess-but not thousands of drops of blood cast great distances from the swings of a weapon. Possibly, there was no weapon, Scarpetta ponders, at least not at this stage of the assault. Maybe early on, after the assailant came through the front door, the only weapon was a fist. Possibly, the assailant did not assume he would need a weapon, and then he lost control of the situation quickly.

Dr. Lanier glances toward the back of the house. "Eric, go on and make sure everything's secure. We'll be right in."

"What do you know about the victim?" Scarpetta asks Detective Clark. "What do you know about any of this?"

"Not much." He flips back several pages in a notepad. "Name's Rebecca Milton, thirty-six-year-old white female. All we really know at this time is she rents this house, and her boyfriend stopped by around twelve-thirty to take her to lunch. She doesn't answer the door, so he lets himself in and finds her."

"Door unlocked?" Dr. Lanier asks.

"Yes. He finds her body and calls the police."

"Then he identified her," Scarpetta says, getting up from her squatting position, her knees aching.

Clark hesitates.

"How good a look did he get?" Scarpetta doesn't trust visual identifications, and one should never assume that a victim found inside a residence is the person who lived there.

"Not sure," Clark replies. "My guess is he didn't stay in that bedroom long. You'll see when you get there. She's in bad shape, real bad shape. But Robillard seems to think the victims Rebecca Milton, the lady who lives here."

Dr. Lanier frowns. "How the hell would Robillard know?"

"She lives two houses down."

"Who does?" Scarpetta asks, panning the living room like a camera.

"Robillard lives right over there." Detective Clark points toward the street. "Two houses down."

"Jesus God," Dr. Lanier says. "How weird is that? And she didn't hear anything, see anything?"

"It's the middle of the day. She was out on the street like the rest of us."

The house is that of a neat person with a reasonably good income and expensive tastes, Scarpetta notes. Oriental rugs are machine-made but handsome, and to the left of the front door is a cherry entertainment center with an elaborate sound system and large-screen television. Bright Cajun paintings hanging on the walls are joyous in their loud, primary colors and primitive depictions of fish, people, water and trees. Rebecca Milton, if she is the victim, loved art and life. In whimsical frames are photographs of a tan woman with shiny black hair, a bright smile and a slim body. In several other photographs she is in a boat or standing on a pier with another woman, also with dark hair, who looks enough like her to be her sister.