Patricia Cornwell - Predator

Marino misses it. He’s tired of being left out.

“I’m sorry,” Reba says, “I didn’t mean to say anything disrespectful about her. All I was saying was some of the guys I work with-”

“I need you to arrest somebody,” he cuts her off, looking at his watch, not interested in hearing her repeat what she told him at Hooters, not interested in perhaps having to face that some of it was him.

Most of it was him.

The Effexor. Reba would have found out sooner rather than later. The damn stuff ruined him.

“In maybe half an hour. If you can put off going to the Laundromat,” he is saying.

“The dry cleaner’s, jerk,” she says with hostility that’s not at all convincing.

She still likes him.

“I’ve got my own washer and dryer,” she says. “I don’t live in a trailer.”

Marino tries Lucy on the cell phone as he says to Reba, “I’ve got an idea. Not sure it will work, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Lucy answers and tells him she can’t talk.

“It’s important,” Marino says, looking at Reba, remembering their weekend inKey Westwhen he wasn’t on Effexor. “Just give me two minutes.”

He can hear Lucy talking to someone, saying she’s got to take the call and will be right back. A man’s voice says no problem. Marino can hear Lucy walking. He looks at Reba and remembers getting drunk on Captain Morgan rum in the Paradise Lounge at the Holiday Inn and watching the sunsets and sitting up late at night in the hot tub when he wasn’t on Effexor.

“You there?” Lucy is asking him.

“Is it possible for me to have a three-way conference call with two cell phones, one landline and only two people?” he asks.

“This some kind of Mensa test question?”

“What I want is to make it look like I’m on my phone in my office talking to you, but what I’m really doing is talking to you on my cell phone. Hello? Are you there?”

“Are you suggesting someone may be monitoring your phone calls from a multiline phone that’s connected to the PBX system?”

“From the damn phone on my desk,” he says, looking at Reba looking at him, trying to see if she’s impressed.

“That’s what I meant. Who?” Lucy says.

“I intend to find out but I’m pretty sure I know.”

“No one could do that without the system admin’s password. And that would be me.”

“I think someone’s got it. It would explain a lot of things. Is it possible to do what I said?” he asks her again. “Can I call you on my office phone, then conference in on my cell phone, then leave my office phone line open so it seems I’m in there talking but I’m not?”

“Yes, we can,” she says. “But not right this minute.”

Dr. Self presses a flashing button on the phone.

“Our next caller-well, he’s been on hold for several minutes now, and he has an unusual nickname. Hog? I apologize. You still with us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” a soft-spoken voice enters the studio.

“You’re on the air,” she says. “Now, Hog? Why don’t you tell us about your nickname first. I’m sure everybody’s curious.”

“It’s what I’m called.”

Silence, and Dr. Self fills it instantly. There can be no dead time on the air.

“Well, Hog it is. Now, you called in with a startling story. You’re in the lawn-care business. And you were in a certain neighborhood and noticed citrus canker in someone’s yard…?”

“No. It’s not quite like that.”

Dr. Self feels a pinch of irritation. Hog’s not following the script. When he called late Tuesday afternoon and she pretended to be someone other than herself, he distinctly said he had discovered canker in an old woman’s yard in Hollywood, just one orange tree, and now every citrus tree in her yard and all her neighbors’ yards has to be cut down, and when he mentioned the problem to the owner of that particular infected tree, the old woman, she threatened to kill herself if Hog reported the canker to the Department of Agriculture. She threatened to shoot herself with her dead husband’s shotgun.

The old woman’s husband had planted the trees when they first got married. He’s dead and the trees are all she has left, the only living thing left. To cut down her trees is to destroy a precious part of her life that nobody has any business touching.

“Eradicating those trees is to cause her to at last accept her loss.” Dr. Self is explaining all this to her audience. “And in doing so, she doesn’t see anything left worth living for. She wants to die. That’s quite a dilemma to find yourself in, isn’t it, Hog? Playing God,” she says to the speakerphone.

“I don’t play God. I do what God says. It’s not an act.”

Dr. Self is confused but carries on. “What a choice for you to make. Did you follow the government’s rules or follow your heart?”

“I painted red stripes on them,” he says. “Now she’s dead. You were next. But there isn’t time.”

They sit in the kitchen at a table before a window that overlooks the narrow, murky canal.

“When the police got involved,” Fred Quincy is saying, “they did ask for a few things that might have their DNA. Hairbrush, toothbrush, I forget what else. I never heard anything about what they did with the stuff.”

“They probably never analyzed it,” Lucy says, thinking about what she and Marino just talked about. “Possibly it’s still in their evidence room. We can ask them about it, but I’d rather not wait.”

The suggestion that someone may have gained access to her system’s administrative password is incredible. It’s sickening. Marino must be mistaken. She can’t stop thinking about it.

“Obviously, the case isn’t a priority for them. They’ve always believed they just ran off. There was no sign of violence,” Fred says. “They said there should have been a sign of a struggle, or someone should have seen something. It was the middle of the morning, and there were people around. And Mom’s SUV was missing.”

“I was told her car was there. An Audi.”

“It definitely wasn’t. And she didn’t have an Audi. I did. Someone must have seen my car when I got there later, looking for them. Mom had a Chevy Blazer. She used it to haul things around. You know, people get things so twisted. I went to the shop after trying to call all day. My mom’s purse and Blazer were gone, and there was no sign of her or my sister.”

“Any sign they had ever been inside the shop?”

“Nothing was on. The closed sign was out.”

“Anything missing?”

“Not that I could tell. Certainly nothing obvious. Nothing in the cash drawer, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. If she left money in it overnight, it wasn’t much. Something must have come up if you suddenly need their DNA.”

“I’ll let you know,” Lucy says. “We may have a lead.”

“You can’t tell me?”

“I promise I’ll let you know. What was your first thought when you went looking for them, drove to the shop?”

“Truth? I thought maybe they’d never gone there at all, had just driven off somewhere over the rainbow.”

“Why do you put it like that?”

“There had been a lot of problems. Financial ups and downs. Personal problems. Dad had this extremely successful landscaping business.”

“InPalm Beach.”

“That’s where it was headquartered. But he had greenhouses and tree farms in other locations, including around here. Then, in the mid-eighties, he got wiped out by citrus canker. Every damn one of his citrus trees had to be destroyed, and he had to let go of almost all of his employees and came very close to declaring bankruptcy. That was hard on Mom. He got back on his feet and was more successful then, and that was hard on Mom, too. You know, I’m not sure I should be telling you all this.”