Patricia Cornwell - Cause Of Death

I didn't say anything, because he was right.

"Maybe you had a guest on your property tonight so you would realize just how uninvited you are," he went

"I want the FBI in this thing now because there's more to it than some guy in a johnboat you had to fish out of the river."

"What else did you find in Eddings' apartment?" I asked him.

I could see his reluctance as he stared off, and I did not understand it.

"I'll serve dinner first and then we'll sit down and talk," I said.

"If it could wait until tomorrow, it would be better." He glanced toward the kitchen as if worried that Lucy might overhear.

"Marino, since when have you ever worried about telling me something?"

"This is different." He rubbed his face in his hands. "I think Eddings got himself tangled up with the New Zionists."

The lasagne was superb because I had drained fresh mozzarella in dishcloths so it did not weep too much during baking, and of course, the pasta was fresh. I had served the dish tender instead of cooking it bubbly and brown, and a light sprinkling of Parmesan reggiano at the table had made it perfect.

Marino ate virtually all of the bread, which he slathered with butter, layered with prosciutto and sopped with tomato sauce, while Lucy mostly picked at the small portion on her plate. The snow had gotten heavier, and Marino told us about the New Zionist bible he had found as fireworks sounded in Sandbridge.

I pushed back my chair. "It's midnight. We should open the champagne."

I was more disturbed than I had supposed, for what Marino had to say was worse than I feared. Over the years, I had heard quite a lot about Joel Hand and his fascist followers who called themselves the New Zionists. They were going to cause a new order, create an ideal land. I had always feared they were quiet behind their Virginia compound walls because they were plotting a disaster.

"What we need to do is raid the asshole's farm," Marino said as he got up from the table. "That should have been done a long time ago."

"What probable cause would anybody have?" Lucy said.

"You ask me, with squirrels like him, you shouldn't need probable cause."

"Oh, good idea. You should suggest that one to Gradecki," she drolly said, referring to the U.S. attorney general.

"Look, I know some guys in Suffolk where Hand lives, and the neighbors say some really weird shit goes on there.

"Neighbors always think weird shit goes on with their neighbors," she said.

Marino got the champagne out of the refrigerator while I fetched glasses.

"What sort of weird shit?" I asked him.

"Barges pull up to the Nansemond River and unload crates so big they got to use cranes. Nobody knows what goes on there, except pilots have spotted bonfires at night, like maybe there's occult rituals. Local people swear they hear gunshots all the time and that there have been murders on his farm."

I walked into the living room because we would clean up later.

I said, "I know about the homicides in this state, and I've never heard the New Zionists mentioned in connection with any of them, or with any crime at all, for that matter.

I've never heard they are involved in the occult, either.

Only on-the-fringe politics and oddball extremism. They seem to hate America and would probably be happy if they could have their own little country somewhere where Hand could be king. Or God. Or whatever he is to them."

"You want me to pop this thing?" Marino held up the champagne.

"The new year's not getting any younger," I said. "Now let me get this straight." I settled on the couch. "Eddings had some link with the New Zionists?"

"Only because he had one of their bibles, like I already told you," Marino said. "I found it when we was going through his house."

That's what you were worried about me seeing?" I looked quizzically at him.

"Tonight, yes," he said. "Because I'm more worried about her seeing it, if you want to know." He looked at Lucy.

"Pete," my niece spoke very reasonably, "you don't need to protect me anymore, even though I appreciate it."

He was silent.

"What sort of bible?" I asked him.

Not any sort you've ever carried to Mass."

"Satanic?"

"No, I can't say it's like that. At least not like the ones I've seen, because it's not about worshiping Satan and doesn't have any of the sort of symbolism that you associate with that. But it sure as hell isn't something you'd want to read before going to bed." He glanced at Lucy again.

"Where is it?" I wanted to know.

He peeled foil off the top of the bottle and unwound wire. The cork popped loudly, and he poured champagne the way he poured beer, tilting the glasses sharply to prevent a head.

"Lucy, how about bringing my briefcase here. It's in the kitchen," he said, and he looked at me as she left the room and lowered his voice. "I wouldn't have brought it with me if I thought I was going to be seeing her."

"She's a grown woman. She's an FBI agent, for God's sake," I said.

"Yeah, and she gets whacked out sometimes, and you know that, too. She don't need to be looking at spooky stuff like this. I'm telling you, I read it because I had to, and I felt really creepy. I felt like I needed to go to Mass, and when have you ever heard me say that?" His face was intense.

I had never heard him say that, and I was uneasy. Lucy had been through hard times that had seriously frightened me. She had been self-destructive and unstable before.

"It is not my right to protect her," I said as she returned to the living room.

"I hope you're not talking about me," she said as she handed Marino his briefcase.

"Yeah, we were talking about you," he said, "because I don't think you should be looking at this."

Clasps sprang open.

"It's your case." Her eyes were calm as they turned to me. "I am interested in it and would like to help in even the smallest way, if I can. But I'll leave the room, if you want me to."

Oddly, the decision was one of the hardest ones I'd had to make, because my allowing her to look at evidence I wanted to protect her from was my concession to her professional accomplishment. As wind shook windows and rushed around the roof, sounding like spirits in distress, I moved over on the couch.

"You can sit next to me, Lucy," I said. "We'll look at it together."

The New Zionist bible was actually titled the Book of Hand, for its author had been inspired by God and had modestly named the manuscript after himself. Written in Renaissance script on India paper, it was bound in tooled black leather that was scuffed and stained and lettered with the name of someone I did not know. For more than an hour, Lucy leaned against me and we read while Marino prowled about, carrying in more wood and smoking, his restlessness as palpable as the fire's wavering light.

Like the Christian Bible, much of what the manuscript had to say was conveyed in parables, and prophesies and proverbs, thus making the text illustrative and human. This was one of many reasons why reading it was so hard. Pages were populated with people and images that penetrated to deeper layers of the brain. The Book, as we came to call it during the beginning of this new year, showed in exquisite detail how to kill and maim, frighten, brainwash and torture. The explicit section on the necessity of pogroms, including illustrations, made me quake.

I found the violence reminiscent of' the Inquisition, and it was, in fact, explained that the New Zionists were here on earth to effect a new Inquisition, of sorts.

"We are in an age when the wrongful ones must be purged from our midst," Hand had written, "and in doing so we must be loud and obvious like cymbals. We must feel their weak blood cool on our bare skin as we wallow in their annihilation. We must follow the One into glory, and even unto death."