Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

"Kind of interesting," Marino points out, "that Mrs. Dard was so fucked up and having violent fits, and nobody worried about her throwing a fancy garden party?"

"I'm thinking that," Rudy says.

"You know what?" Marino adds. "I drove almost twenty hours to get here. Then Lucy made me airsick. I gotta go to bed. Otherwise, I'll be making deductions that will cause you to arrest Santa Claus for something."

"I didn't make you airsick," Lucy says. "Go to bed. You need your beauty sleep. I thought you were Santa Claus."

He gets up from the couch and leaves, heading to the main house.

"I'm not going to make it much longer, either." Scarpetta gets up from her chair.

"Time to go," Nic says.

"You don't have to." Scarpetta tries hard to help.

"Can I ask you just one last thing?" Nic says.

"Of course." She is so tired, her brain feels frozen.

"Why would he beat her to death?"

"Why did someone beat Rebecca Milton to death?"

"Things didn't go the way he planned."

"Would your mother have resisted him?" Lucy asks.

"She would have clawed his eyes out," Nic replies.

"Maybe that's your answer. Please forgive me. I can't be much use to you now. I'm too tired."

Scarpetta leaves the small living room and closes her bedroom door.

"How are you?" Lucy moves to the couch and looks at Nic. "This is tough, really tough. Too tough to describe. You're brave, Nic Robillard."

"Worse for my father. He gave up on life. Quit everything."

"Like what?" Rudy asks gently.

"Well, he loved to teach. And he loves the water, or used to. He and Mom. They had this little fishing camp where nobody would bother them. Out in the middle of nowhere, I mean nowhere. He's never been there since."

"Where?"

"Dutch Bayou."

Rudy and Lucy look at each other.

"Who knew about it?" Lucy asks.

"I guess whoever my mother chatted about it to. She was a talker, all right. Unlike my dad."

"Where's Dutch Bayou?" Lucy then asks.

"Near Lake Maurepas. Off Blind River."

"Could you find it now?"

Nic stares at her. "Why?"

"Just answer my question." She lightly touches Nic's arm.

She nods. Their eyes lock.

"Okay, then." Lucy doesn't stop looking at her. "Tomorrow. You ever been in a helicopter?"

Rudy gets up. "I gotta go. I'm beat."

He knows. In his own way, he accepts it. But he's not going to watch.

Lucy gives him her eyes, aware that he understands but in a way never will. "See you in the morning, Rudy."

He walks off, his feet light on the stairs.

"Don't be reckless," Lucy tells Nic. "You strike me as the type who would and probably has been."

"I've been engaging in my own sting operations," she confesses. "Dressing like potential victims. I look like a potential victim."

Lucy examines her closely, looking her over, making an assessment, as if she hasn't been making assessments all night.

"Yes, with your blond hair, body build, air of intelligence. But your demeanor isn't that of a victim. Your energy is strong. However, that could simply present more of a challenge to the killer. More exciting. A bigger coup."

"I've been wrongly motivated," Nic chastises herself. "Not that I don't want him caught. More than anything, I want him caught. But I admit I'm more aggressive, more bullheaded, maybe putting myself in danger, yes, because of a task force that doesn't want small-town girls like me in their club. Even though I'm probably the only one who's been trained at the best forensic academy in the U.S., trained by the best. Including your aunt."

"When you've been out there putting yourself in danger, did you observe anything?"

"The Wal-Mart where Katherine was abducted. I was there within hours of it happening. One thing still stands out, this lady who acted peculiar, fell down in the parking lot, said her knee went out from under her. Something bothered me. I backed off and wouldn't help her up. Something told me not to touch her. I thought her eyes were weird, scary. And she called me a lamb. I've been called a lot of things, but never a lamb. I think she was some homeless schizo."

"Describe what she looked like." Lucy tries to remain calm, tries not to make the evidence fit the case instead of the other way around.

Nic describes her. "You know, the funny thing about it is, she looked a bit like this woman I saw a few minutes earlier inside the store. She was digging around in cheap lingerie, shoplifting."

Now Lucy is getting excited.

"It's never occurred to anyone that the killer might be a woman or at least have a woman who is an accomplice. Bev Kiffмn," she says.

Nic gets up for more coffee, her hand shaking. She blames it on caffeine. "Who is Bev Kiffмn?"

"On the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list."

"Oh my God." Nic sits back down, this time closer to Lucy. She wants to be close to her. She doesn't know why. But the near proximity of her is energizing and exciting.

"Promise me you won't go out there prowling again," Lucy tells her. "Consider yourself on my task force, okay? We do things together, all of us. My aunt, Rudy, Marino." 1 promise.

"You don't want to tangle with Bev Kiffмn, who is probably bringing the abducted women to her partner, Jay Talley, number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list."

"They hiding out here?" Nic can't believe it. "Two people like that are hiding out here?"

"I can't think of a better place. You said your father has a fishing shack that he abandoned after your mother was murdered. Any possibility Charlotte Dard might have known about it, known where it was? Or is."

"Is. Papa never sold it. The place must be half-rotted by now. Mrs. Dard might have known, since my mother was so into salvage, the stuff she sold in her shop. She liked old weathered wood, would recommend using it for fireplace mantels, exposed beams, whatever. Especially, she liked the thick pilings the fishing shacks are built on. I don't know what she might have said to Mrs. Dard. But my mother was completely trusting. She thought everybody had their good qualities. The truth is, she talked too much."

"Can you show me where the fishing shack is, the one your father abandoned?"

"It's in Dutch Bayou, off the Blind River. I can show you."

"From the air?"

"I'm pretty sure," Nic says.

BENTON LEAVES HIS JAGUAR tucked in a church's back parking lot less than half a mile from the Dard plantation house.

Each time he hears a car or truck approaching from either direction, he crashes through underbrush and hides in thick woods across the road from the Mississippi River. In addition to not knowing who might come along, he is well aware that it would appear odd to see a man in a black suit, black T-shirt, black cap and black butt pack walking along the side of a narrow road in the rain. Someone might stop and ask if he's had car trouble. People would stare.

When he spots the gates that he drove past late last night, he leaves the pavement and enters the woods, this time penetrating deeper, until the mansion rises above trees, his scan constant. Looking where he steps, he does his best to avoid snapping fallen branches. Fortunately, the dead leaves are wet and silent. When he scouted the area last night, he didn't venture into the woods because it was too dark to see, and he didn't dare use a flashlight. He did, however, climb over the gate, getting rust all over his jacket and jeans, one of many explanations for why he opted to wear his suit again.

He wondered how much the place had changed since he had been here last. In the dark, it was difficult to tell whether it had been kept in good repair, but his last act was to toss a rock near shrubbery around the front to see if the motion sensors lit up. They didn't. He tried again, and not a single light was triggered. If any of them are still in working order and he activates them this morning, they won't be conspicuous, even though the sun is blanketed in gray. The grounds used to have an elaborate camera system, but there was no way Benton would have been foolish enough to test cameras, to see if they would turn red and follow him as if they were alive.