Patricia Cornwell - Predator

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“Someone who works there is passing around the story thatLaurelkilled Johnny for money, for whatever Johnny might have left him in his will. SaysLaurel’s got habits he can’t afford.”

“Sounds like hearsay. Or maybe someone who has a grudge.”

Dave walks to the door.

“I haven’t talked to her. Every time I try, she’s not there. I personally thinkLaurel’s a really nice guy, by the way. I just find it a bit coincidental that I start hearing stories and then Johnny’s case is reopened.”

“I’m not aware it was ever closed,” Scarpetta says.

Snow flakes are icy and sharp, the sidewalks and streets frosted white. Few people are out.

Lucy walks briskly, sipping from a steaming hot latte, heading to the Anchor Inn, where she checked in several days ago under a fictitious name so she could hide her rented Hummer. She hasn’t parked it at the cottage once, never interested in strangers knowing what she drives. She veers off on a narrow drive that winds around to the small parking lot on the water where the Hummer is covered with snow. She unlocks the doors, starts the engine and turns on the defrost, and the white-blanketed windows give her the cool, shady sensation of being inside an igloo.

She is calling one of her pilots when a gloved hand suddenly begins wiping snow off her side window and a black-hooded face fills the glass. Lucy aborts the call and drops the phone on the seat.

She stares at Stevie for a long moment, then lowers the window as her mind races through possibilities. It isn’t a good thing that she was followed here. It is a very bad thing that she didn’t notice she was being followed.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asks.

“I just wanted to tell you something.”

Stevie’s face has an expression that is hard to read. Maybe she is near tears and extremely upset and hurt, or it could be the cold, sharp wind blowing in from the bay that is making her eyes so bright.

“You’re the most awesome person I’ve ever met,” Stevie says. “I think you’re my hero. My new hero.”

Lucy isn’t sure if Stevie is mocking her. Maybe she isn’t.

“Stevie, I’ve got to get to the airport.”

“They haven’t started canceling flights yet. But it’s supposed to be terrible the rest of the week.”

“Thanks for the weather update,” Lucy says, and the look in Stevie’s eyes is fierce and unnerving. “Look, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t,” Stevie says, as if this is the first she’s heard of it. “Not at all. I didn’t think I’d like you so much. I wanted to find you to tell you that. Tuck it away in some part of that clever head of yours, maybe remember it on a rainy day. I just never thought I would like you so much.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s intriguing. You come across so sure of yourself, arrogant really. Hard and distant. But I realize it’s not who you are inside. Funny how things turn out so differently from what you expect.”

Snow is blowing inside the Hummer, dusting the interior.

“How did you find me?” Lucy asks.

“I went back to your place but you were gone. I followed your footprints in the snow. They led right here. You wear what? Size eight? It wasn’t hard.”

“Well, I’m sorry for…”

“Please,” Stevie says intensely, strongly. “I know I’m not just another notch on your belt, as they say.”

“I’m not into that,” Lucy says, but she is.

She knows it, even if she would never describe it like that. She feels bad for Stevie. She feels bad for her aunt, for Johnny, for everyone she has failed.

“Some might argue you’re a notch on mine,” Stevie says playfully, seductively, and Lucy doesn’t want to have the feeling again.

Stevie is sure of herself again, full of secrets again, amazingly attractive again.

Lucy shoves the Hummer into reverse as snow blows in and her face stings from the snow and the wind blowing off the water.

Stevie digs in her coat pocket, pulls out a slip of paper, hands it to her through the open window.

“My phone number,” she says.

The area code is 617, theBostonarea. She never told Lucy where she lived. Lucy never asked.

“That’s all I wanted to say to you,” Stevie says. “And happy Valentine’s Day.”

They look at each other through the open window, the engine rumbling, snow coming down and clinging to Stevie’s black coat. She’s beautiful and Lucy feels what she felt atLorraine’s. She thought it was gone. She is feeling it.

“I’m not like all the rest,” Stevie says, looking into Lucy’s eyes.

“You’re not.”

“My cell phone number,” Stevie says. “I actually live inFlorida. After I left Harvard, I never bothered to change my cell phone number. It doesn’t matter. Free minutes, you know.”

“You went to Harvard?”

“I usually don’t mention it. It can be rather off-putting.”

“Where inFlorida?”

“Gainesville,” she says. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she says again. “I hope it turns out to be the most special one you’ve ever had.”

The smart board inside classroom 1A is filled with a colorful photograph of a man’s torso. His shirt is unbuttoned, a large knife plunged into his hairy chest.

“Suicide,” one of the students volunteers from his desk.

“Here’s another fact. Although you can’t tell from this picture,” Scarpetta says to the sixteen students who make up this session’s Academy class, “he has multiple stab wounds.”

“Homicide.” The student quickly changes his answer and everybody laughs.

Scarpetta flashes up the next slide, this one of multiple wounds clustered near the fatal one.

“They look shallow,” another student says.

“What about the angle? They should be angled up if he did it to himself?”

“Not necessarily, but here’s a question,” Scarpetta says from the podium in the front of the classroom. “What might his unbuttoned shirt tell you?”

Silence.

“If you were going to stab yourself, would you do it through your clothing?” she asks. “And, by the way, you’re right.” She directs this to the student who made the comment about shallow stab wounds. “Most of these”-she points them out on the smart board-“barely broke the skin. What we call hesitation marks. ”

The students take notes. They are a bright, eager bunch, different ages, different backgrounds, from different areas of the country, two of them fromEngland. Several are detectives who want intensive forensic training in crime-scene investigation. Others are death investigators who want the same thing. Some are college graduates working on master’s degrees in psychology, nuclear biology and microscopy. One is an assistant district attorney who wants more convictions in court.

She displays another slide on the smart board, this one an especially gruesome photograph of a man with his intestines spilling out of a gaping incision to his abdomen. Several students groan. One says “ouch.”

“Who’s familiar with seppuku?” Scarpetta asks.

“Hari-kari,” a voice sounds from the doorway.

Dr. Joe Amos, this year’s forensic pathology fellow, walks in as if it is his class. He is tall and gangly, with an unruly shock of black hair, a long, pointed chin and dark, glittering eyes. He reminds Scarpetta of a black bird, a crow.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” he says, then he does it anyway. “This guy”-he nods at the gruesome image on the smart board-“took a big hunting knife, stabbed it into one side of his abdomen and slashed across to the other. That’s called motivation.”

“Was it your case, Dr. Amos?” a student asks, this one female and pretty.