Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

Her abruptness is more about her annoyance with her former office than with him. Giving out her unlisted phone number is blatant harassment-not that it hasn't happened before. Some people who still work at the Chief Medical Examiners Office remain loyal to their boss. Others are traitors and bend in the direction that power pulls.

"Quick it will be," Dr. Lanier says. "I'm wondering if you would review a case for me, Dr. Scarpetta-an eight-year-old case that was never successfully resolved. A woman died under suspicious circumstances, apparently from a drug overdose. You ever heard of Charlotte Dard?"

"No."

"I've just gotten information-don't know if it's good or not-but I don't want to discuss it while you're on a cell phone."

"This is a Baton Rouge case?" Scarpetta digs in her handbag for a notepad and pen.

"Another story for another day. But yes, it's a Baton Rouge case."

"Your case?"

"It was. I'd like to send you the reports, slides and all the rest. Looks like I'd better dig back into this thing." He hesitates. "And as you might suspect, I don't have much of a budget…"

"Nobody who calls me has consultants built into the budget," she interrupts him. "I didn't either when I was in Virginia."

She tells him to FedEx her the case and gives him her address.

She adds, "Do you happen to know an investigator in Zachary named Nic Robillard?"

A pause, then, "Believe I talked to her on the phone a few months back. I'm sure you know what's going on down here."

"I can't help but know. It's all over the news," Scarpetta cautiously replies over the noise of the taxi and rush-hour traffic.

Neither her tone nor her words betray that she has any personal information about the cases, and her trust of Nic slips several notches as she frets that perhaps Nic called Dr. Lanier and talked about her. Why she might have done that is hard to say, unless she simply volunteered that Scarpetta could be a very useful resource for him, should he ever need her. Maybe he really does need her for this cold case he's just told her about. Maybe he's trying to develop a relationship with her because he's not equipped to handle these serial murders by himself.

"How many forensic pathologists work for you?" Scarpetta asks him. One.

"Did Nic Robillard call you about me?" She doesn't have time for subtlety.

"Why would she?" 1 hat s no answer.

"Hell no," he says.

AN AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT rattles in a dusty window, the afternoon hotter than usual for April, as Jay Talley hacks meat into small pieces and drops them into a bloody plastic bucket below the scarred wooden table where he sits.

The table, like everything else inside his fishing shack, is old and ugly, the sort of household objects people leave at the edges of their driveways to be picked up by garbage collectors or spirited away by scavengers. His work space is his special place, and he is patient as he repeatedly adjusts torn bits of clothing that he jams under several of the table legs in his ongoing attempt to keep the table level. He prefers not to chop on a surface that moves, but balance is virtually impossible in his warped little world, and the graying wood floor slopes enough to roll an egg from the kitchenette right out to the dock, where some planks are rotted, others curled like dull dead hair flipped up at the ends.

Swatting at sea gnats, he finishes a Budweiser, crushes the can and hurls it out the open screen door, pleased that it sails twenty feet past his boat and plops into the water. Boredom gives pleasure to the most mundane activities, including checking on the crab pots suspended below floats in the murky freshwater. It doesn't matter that crabs aren't found in freshwater. Crawfish are, and they're in season, and if they don't pick the pots clean, something bigger usually comes along.

Last month, a large log turned into an alligator gar weighing at least a hundred pounds. It moved like a torpedo, speeding off with a trotline and its makeshift float of an empty Clorox bottle. Jay sat calmly in his boat and tipped his baseball cap to the carnivorous creature. Jay doesn't eat what he catches in the pots, but out here in the middle of this hellish nowhere he now calls home, his only acceptable fresh choices are catfish, bass, turtles and as many frogs as he can gig at night. Otherwise, his food comes in bags and cans from various grocery stores on the mainland.

He brings down a meat cleaver, cutting through muscle and bone. More pieces of foul flesh land in the bucket. It doesn't take long for meat to rot in this heat.

"Guess who I'm thinking about right now," he says to Bev Kiffin, his woman.

"Shut up. You just say that to get to me."

"No, ma chйrie, I say it because I'm remembering fucking her in Paris."

Jealousy flares. Bev can't control herself when she is forced to think of Kay Scarpetta, who is fine-looking and smart-plenty fine-looking, and smart enough for Jay. Rarely does it occur to Bev that she has no good reason to compete with a woman Jay fantasizes about chopping up and feeding to the alligators and crawfish in the bayou outside their door. If Bev could cut Scarpetta's throat, she sure as hell would, and her own dream is to one day get her chance. Then Jay wouldn't talk about the bitch anymore. He wouldn't stare out at the bayou half the night, thinking about her.

"How come you have to always talk about her?"

Bev moves closer to him and watches sweat trickle down his perfectly sculpted, smooth chest, soaking the waistband of his tight cutoff jeans. She stares at his muscular thighs, the hair on them fine and shiny as gold. Her fury heats to flashover and erupts.

"You got a damn hard-on. You chop away and get a stiff dick! Put down that meat ax!"

"It's a cleaver, honey. If only you weren't so stupid." His handsome face and blond hair are wet with sweat, his cold blue eyes bright against his tan.

She bends over and cups her thick, stubby hand around the bulge between his thighs as he calmly spreads his legs wide and leans back in the chair long enough for her to get started on his zipper. She wears no bra, her cheap flower-printed blouse halfway unbuttoned, offering him a view of heavy, flaccid breasts that arouse nothing beyond his need to manipulate and control. He rips open her blouse, buttons lightly clattering against wood, and begins fondling her the way she craves.

"Oh," she moans. "Don't stop," she begs, moving his head closer.

"Want more, baby?"

"Oh."

He sucks her, disgusted by her salty, sour taste, and shoves her hard with his bare feet.

The thud of her body hitting the floor, her shocked gasp, are familiar sounds in the fishing shack.

BLOOD SEEPS FROM A SCRAPE on Bev's dimpled left knee, and she stares at the wound.

"How come you don't want me no more, baby?" she says. "You used to want me so bad I couldn't keep you off me."

Her nose runs. She shoves back her short, frizzy, graying brown hair and pulls her torn blouse together, suddenly humiliated by her ugly nakedness.

"Want is when /want."

He resumes the blows with the meat cleaver. Tiny bits of flesh and bone fly out from the thick, shiny blade and stick to the stained wooden table and to Jay's sweaty bare chest. The sweet, sour stench of rotting flesh is heavy in the stifling air, and flies drone in lazy zigzags, lumbering airborne like fat cargo planes. They hover over the gory mother lode inside the bucket, their black and green swarming bodies shimmering like spilled gasoline.

Bev collects herself off the floor. She watches Jay hacking and tossing flesh into the bucket, flies darting up and greedily dive-bombing back to their feast. They buzz loudly, bumping against the side of the bucket.

"And now we're supposed to eat off that table." Hers is an old line.