Patricia Cornwell - Predator

“Shit,” Marino says.

“Hold on,” Scarpetta says, and she calls the Medical Examiner’s Office and gets the administrator on the phone. “Who notified you about the shotgun death?”

“Hollywoodpolice.”

“But which officer?”

“Detective Wagner.”

“Detective Wagner?” Scarpetta puzzles. “What time’s on the call sheet?”

“Uh, let me see.Two eleven.”

Scarpetta looks at Marino again and asks him, “Do you know exactly what time you called me?”

He checks his cell phone and replies, “Two twenty-one.”

She glances at her watch. It is almostthree thirty. She won’t be on her six-thirty flight.

“Is everything all right?” the administrator asks her over the phone.

“Anything come up on caller ID when you got that call, the one supposedly from Detective Wagner?”

“Supposedly?”

“And it was a woman who called.”

“Yes.”

“Anything unusual about the way she sounded?”

“Not at all,” he says, pausing. “She sounded credible.”

“What about an accent?”

“What’s going on, Kay?”

“Nothing good,” she says.

“Let me scroll through. Okay,two eleven. Came in as unavailable.”

“Of course it did,” Scarpetta says. “See you in about an hour.”

She leans closer to the bed and looks carefully at the hands, turning them gently. She is always gentle, doesn’t matter that her patients can’t feel anything anymore. She notices no abrasions, cuts or bruises that might suggest binding or defense injuries. She checks again with a lens and finds fibers and dirt adhering to the palms of both hands.

“She might have been on the floor at some point,” she says as Reba walks into the room, pale and wet from the rain and obviously shaken.

“The streets are like a maze back here,” Reba says.

“Hey,” Marino says to her, “what time did you call the ME?”

“About what?”

“About the price of eggs inChina.”

“What?” she says, staring at the gore on the bed.

“About this case,” Marino says gruffly. “What the hell do you think I meant? And why don’t you get a damn GPS.”

“I didn’t call the ME. Why would I when she was standing right next to me?” she replies, looking at Scarpetta.

“Let’s bag her hands and her feet,” Scarpetta says. “And I want her wrapped in the quilt and a clean plastic sheet. The bed linens need to come in, too.”

She goes to a window that overlooks the backyard and the waterway. She looks at citrus trees pommeled by rain and thinks about the inspector she saw earlier. He was in this yard, she’s pretty sure, and she tries to pinpoint the exact time she saw him. She knows it wasn’t long before she heard what she now suspects was a gunshot. She looks around the bedroom again and notices two dark stains on the rug near the window that overlooks the citrus trees, the water.

The stains are very hard to see against the dark blue background, and she gets a presumptive blood kit out of her bag, gets chemicals and medicine droppers out of it. There are two stains several inches apart. Each is about the size of a quarter and oval-shaped, and she swabs one of them, then drips isopropyl alcohol, then phenolphthalein, then hydrogen peroxide on the swab and it turns bright pink. That doesn’t mean the stains are human blood, but there’s a very good chance they are.

“If it’s her blood, what’s it doing way over here?” Scarpetta talks to herself.

“Maybe back spatter,” Reba volunteers.

“Not possible.”

“Drips and not exactly round,” Marino says. “Looks like whoever was bleeding was upright, almost.”

He looks around for any other stains.

“Kind of unusual they’re here and nowhere else. If someone was bleeding a lot, you’d expect more drips,” he then says, as if Reba isn’t in the room.

“It’s hard to see them on a dark textured surface like this,” Scarpetta replies. “But I don’t see any others.”

“Maybe we should come back with luminol.” Marino talks around Reba and anger begins to flicker on her face.

“We need a sample of these carpet fibers when the techs get here,” Scarpetta says to everyone.

“Vacuum the rug, check for trace,” Marino adds, avoiding Reba’s stare.

“I’ll need to get a statement from you before you leave, seeing as how you’re the one who found her,” Reba says to him. “I’m not sure what you were doing just walking in her house.”

He doesn’t answer her. She doesn’t exist.

“So how about you and me step outside for a few minutes so I can hear what you’ve got to say,” she says to him. “Mark?” she says to one of the officers. “How about checking Investigator Marino for gunshot residue?”

“Fuck off,” Marino says.

Scarpetta recognizes the low rumble in his voice. It is usually the prelude to a major eruption.

“It’s just pro forma,” Reba replies. “I know you wouldn’t want anybody accusing you of something.”

“Uh, Reba,” the officer named Mark says. “We don’t carry GSR stubs. The crime-scene techs got to do that.”

“Where the hell are they, anyway?” Reba asks irritably, embarrassed, still so new on the job.

“Marino,” Scarpetta says. “How about checking on the removal service. See where they are.”

“I’m just curious,” Marino says, getting so close to Reba she is forced to back up a step. “How many scenes you been the only detective at a scene where there’s a dead body?”

“I’m going to need you to clear out,” she replies. “You and Dr. Scarpetta both. So we can start processing.”

“The answer’s none.” He keeps talking. “Not a single goddamn one.” He gets louder. “Well, if you go back and take a look at your Detective for Dummies notes, you might find out that the body is the medical examiner’s jurisdiction, meaning right now the Doc here’s in charge, not you. And since I just so happen to be a certified death investigator in addition to all my other fancy titles and assist the Doc as needed, you can’t order my ass around, either.”

The uniformed officers are struggling not to laugh.

“All of which adds up to one very important fact,” Marino goes on. “Me and the Doc are in charge at the moment and you don’t know chicken shit and are in the goddamn way.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” Reba exclaims, near tears.

“Could one of you please get a real detective here?” Marino asks the uniformed cops. “Because I’m not leaving until you do.”

Bentonsits in his office on the ground floor of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory, one of few contemporary buildings on a two-hundred-and-thirty-seven-acre campus graced with century-old brick and slate, and fruit trees and ponds. Unlike most offices atMcLean, his has no view, just a handicapped-parking space directly beyond his window, then a road, then a field that is popular withCanadageese.

His office is small and cluttered with papers and books, and is located in the middle of the H-shaped lab. At each corner is an MR scanner, and collectively, their electromagnetic fields are powerful enough to pull a train off its tracks. He is the only forensic psychologist whose office is located in the lab. He has to be easily accessible to the neuroscientists because of PREDATOR.

He buzzes his study coordinator.

“Has our newest normal called back yet?”Bentonstares out the window at two geese wandering along the road. “Kenny Jumper?”

“Hold on, that might be him now.” Then, “Dr. Wesley? He’s on the line.”

“Hello,”Bentonsays. “Good afternoon, Kenny. It’s Dr. Wesley. How are you today?”

“Not too bad.”

“You sound as if you have a bit of a cold.”