Patricia Cornwell - Predator

She watches a figure in dark pants and a white shirt walking into someone’s backyard, possibly Mrs. Simister’s backyard.

“As far as we know, it’s their real names,” Reba replies, looking where Scarpetta is looking. “Damn canker inspectors are all over the map. Politics. It’s all about preventing people from growing their own citrus fruit so they have to buy it.”

“Actually, it’s not. Citrus canker is a terrible blight. If it’s not controlled, nobody will be growing citrus fruit in their yards.”

“It’s a conspiracy. I’ve been listening to what all these commentators are saying on the radio. You ever listen to Dr. Self on the radio? You should hear what she has to say about it.”

Scarpetta never listens to Dr. Self if she can avoid it. She watches the figure across the waterway squat in the grass and dig inside what appears to be some sort of dark bag. He pulls out something.

“Ev Christian’s a reverend or priest or whatever you want to call it in some offbeat little church… Okay, I’m gonna have to read this to you. It’s too much to remember,” Reba says, flipping through her notepad. “The True Daughters of the Seal of God.”

“Never heard of that denomination,” Scarpetta comments rather ironically as she writes it down. “And Kristin? What does she do?”

The inspector stands up, screwing together what looks like a fruit picker. He raises it high up in a tree, pulling down a grapefruit that lands on the grass.

“Kristin also works at the church. An assistant who does readings and meditations during the services. The kids’ parents got killed in a scooter accident about a year ago. You know, one of those Vespas.”

“Where?”

“South Africa.”

“And this information came from?” Scarpetta asks.

“Someone at the church.”

“You have a report on the accident?”

“Like I said, it happened inSouth Africa,” Detective Wagner replies. “We’re trying to track it down.”

Scarpetta continues to deliberate over when she should tell her about the disturbing phone call from Hog.

“What are the boys’ names?” Scarpetta asks.

“Davidand Tony Luck. Kind of funny, when you think about it. Luck.”

“You’re not getting cooperation from the South African authorities? Where inSouth Africa?”

“Capetown.”

“Where the sisters are also from?”

“That’s what I’m told. After the parents got killed, the sisters took the kids in. Their church is maybe twenty minutes from here onDavie Boulevard, right next to one of these alternative pet stores, kind of figures.”

“Have you checked with the medical examiner’s office in Capetown?”

“Not yet.”

“I can help you with that.”

“That would be great. Kind of figures, doesn’t it? Spiders, scorpions, poisonous frogs, all these little white rat pups you can buy to feed to your snakes,” Reba says. “Sounds like some sort of cultville over there.”

I’ve never let anybody come in and photograph a business of mine unless it’s a genuine police matter. I was robbed once. That was a while back,” Larry explains from the stool behind the counter.

Through the window is the constant traffic along A1A, then the ocean beyond. A light rain has begun to fall, a storm moving in, heading south. Lucy thinks about what Marino told her a few minutes ago, about the house and the missing people, and of course his flat tire, which was his bigger complaint. She thinks of what her aunt must be doing right now, of the storm heading her way.

“Of course I’ve heard quite a lot about it.” Larry gets back to the subject of Florrie and Helen Quincy after a long digression about how muchSouth Floridahas changed, how much he has been seriously considering moving back toAlaska. “It’s like everything else. The details get more exaggerated with time. But I don’t think I want you videotaping,” he says again.

“This is a police matter,” Lucy reiterates. “I’ve been asked to privately investigate the case.”

“How do I know you aren’t a reporter or something?”

“I’m former FBI, former ATF. You ever heard of theNationalForensicAcademy?”

“That big training camp out there in theEverglades?”

“It’s not exactly in theEverglades. We have private labs and experts and an agreement with most of the police departments inFlorida. We help them out as needed.”

“Sounds expensive. Let me guess, taxpayers like me.”

“Indirectly. Grants, quid pro quo-services for services. They help us, we train them. All sorts of things.”

She reaches into a back pocket and works out a black wallet and hands it to him. He studies her credentials, a fake ID, an investigator shield that isn’t worth the brass it’s made from because it’s also fake.

“There’s no picture on it,” he says.

“It’s not a driver’s license.”

He reads her fictitious name out loud, reads that she’s Special Operations.

“That’s right.”

“Well, if you say so.” He hands the wallet back to her.

“Tell me what you’ve heard,” Lucy says, setting the video camera on top of the counter.

She looks at the locked front door, at a young couple in skimpy swimsuits trying to open it.

They peer through the glass and Larry shakes his head. No, he’s not open.

“You’re losing me business,” he says to Lucy, but he doesn’t seem to care very much. “When I had a chance to take over this space, I got quite an earful about theQuincysdisappearing. The story I heard is she always got here at seven-thirty in the morning so she could get the little electric trains running on their tracks and light up the trees, turn on the Christmas music and do all this other stuff. It appears she never opened up that day. The closed sign was still on the door when her son finally got worried and came looking for her and the daughter.”

Lucy reaches inside a pocket of her cargo pants and removes a black ballpoint pen from the holder of a concealed tape recorder. She slips out a small notebook.

“Mind if I take a few notes?” she asks.

“Don’t take everything I say as gospel. I wasn’t here when it happened, just passing along what I’ve been told.”

“I understand Mrs. Quincy called in a take-out order,” Lucy says. “There was something in the paper about it.”

“At the Floridian, that old diner on the other side of the drawbridge. A pretty nifty place, if you’ve never eaten there. It’s my understanding she didn’t call it in, didn’t need to. They always had the same thing ready for her. A tuna plate.”

“Something for the daughter, too? Helen?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Mrs. Quincy usually pick it up herself?”

“Unless her son was in the area. He’s one of the reasons I know a few things about what happened.”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“I haven’t seen him in a year. For a while early on, I did. He would drop by, look around, chat. I guess you could say he was obsessed for maybe the first year after they disappeared. Then, it’s my opinion, he couldn’t bear to think about it. He lives in a real nice house inHollywood.”

Lucy looks around the store.

“There’s no Christmas stuff here,” Larry says, in case that’s what she is wondering.

She doesn’t ask anything about Mrs. Quincy’s son, Fred. She already knows from HIT that Fred Anderson Quincy is twenty-six years old. She knows his address and that he’s self-employed, into computer graphics, a Web designer. Larry goes on to say that on the day Mrs. Quincy and Helen disappeared, Fred tried numerous times to reach them and finally drove to the shop and found it closed, his mother’s Audi still parked in back.

“We’re sure they actually had unlocked the shop that morning?” Lucy asks. “Any possibility something happened to them after they got out of the car?”