Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

"You look like you been up all night," he said to me, slurping coffee.

"Lucy ran off to New York. I talked to Jo and her parents."

"Lucy did what?"

"She's on her way back. It's all right."

"Well, she'd better mind her p's and q's. This ain't a good time for her to be acting squirrelly."

"Marino," I quickly said, "it's possible the killer bathes in rivers with some notion it might cure his disorder. I'm wondering if he's staying someplace near the James."

He thought about this for a minute, an odd expression spreading over his face. Running footsteps sounded in the hall.

"Let's hope there ain't some old estate along there where the owner ain't been heard from for a while," Marino said. "I have a bad feeling."

Then Fielding was in my office yelling at Marino.

"What the hell's wrong with you!"

Veins and arteries were bulging in Fielding's neck, his face bright red. I'd never heard him raise his voice to anyone.

"You let the fucking press find out before we can even get to the goddamn scene!" he accused.

"Hey," Marino said. "Calm down. Let the fucking press know what?"

"Diane Bray's been murdered," Fielding said. "It's all over the news. They've got a suspect in custody. Detective Anderson."

39It was very overcast and rain had begun to fall when we reached Windsor Farms, and it seemed bizarre to be driving the office's black Suburban past Georgian brick and Tudor homes on gracious acres beneath old trees.

I'd never known my neighbors to worry much about crime. It seemed that old family money and genteel streets with English names had created a fortress of false security. I had no doubt that was about to change.

Diane Bray's address was at the outer limits of the neighborhood, where the Downtown Expressway ran loudly and continuously on the other side of a brick wall. When I turned onto her narrow street, I was dismayed. Reporters were everywhere. Their cars and television trucks blocked traffic and outnumbered police vehicles three to one in front of a white Cape Cod with a gambrel roof that looked like it belonged in New England.

"This is as close as I can get," I said to Marino:

"We'll see about that," he replied, jerking up his door handle.

He got out in heavy rain and stalked over to a radio van that was halfway on the lawn in front of Bray's house. The driver rolled down his window and was foolish enough to poke his microphone Marino's way.

"Move!" Marino said with violence in his voice.

"Captain Marino, can you verify…?"

"Move your fucking van, now!"

Tires spun, clawing up grass and mud as the driver of the van pulled out. He stopped in the center of the street and Marino kicked the back tire.

"Move!" he ordered.

The van driver rolled away, windshield wipers flying. He' parked on someone's lawn two houses away. Rain whipped my face and strong gusts of wind pushed me like a hand as I got my scene case out of the back of the Suburban.

"I hope your latest act of graciousness doesn't make it on the air," I said when I reached Marino.

"Who the hell's working this thing?"

"I hope you are," I said, walking fast with head bent.

Marino grabbed my arm. A dark blue Ford Contour was parked in Bray's driveway. A patrol car was parked behind it, an officer in front, another in back with Anderson. She looked angry and hysterical, shaking her head and talking fast in words I couldn't hear.

"Dr. Scarpetta?" A television reporter headed toward me, the cameraman on his heels.

"Recognize our rental car?" Marino quietly said to me, water running down his face as he stared at the dark blue Ford with the familiar number RGG-7112 on the license plate.

"Dr. Scarpetta?"

"No comment."

Anderson didn't look at us as we walked past.

"Can you tell…?" Reporters were relentless.

"No," I said, hurrying up the front steps.

"Captain Marino, I understand the police were led here by a tip."

Rain smacked and engines rumbled. We ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape stretching from railing to railing. The door suddenly swung open and an officer named Butterfield let us in.

"Glad as hell to see you;" he said to both of us. "Thought you were on vacation," he added to Marino.

"Yeah. I got vacated, you're right."

We put on gloves, and Butterfield shut the door behind us. His face was tight, his attention going everywhere.

"Tell me about it," Marino said, eyes sweeping the foyer and zooming into the living room beyond.

"Got a nine-one-one call made from a phone booth not too far from here. We get here, and this is what we find. Someone beat the holy hell out of her;" Butterfield said.

"What else?" Marino asked.

"Sexual assault. Looks like robbery, too. Billfold on the floor, no money in it, everything in her purse dumped out. Watch where you step;" he added as if we didn't know better.

"Damn, she had big bucks, no kidding;" Marino marveled, looking around at the very expensive furnishings of Bray's very expensive home.

"You ain't seen nothing yet;" Butterfield replied.

What struck me first was the collection of clocks in the living room. There were wall clocks and hanging shelf clocks in rosewood, walnut and mahogany, and calendar and steeple clocks, and novelty clocks, all of them antique and perfectly synchronized. They tick-tocked loudly and would have driven me mad were I to live amidst their monotonous reminder of time.

She was fond of English antiques that were grand and unfriendly. A scroll-end sofa and a revolving bookcase with dummy leather book dividers faced the TV Placed here and there with no thought of company in mind, it seemed, were stiff armchairs with ornate upholstery and a satinwood pole-screen. A massive ebonized sideboard overpowered the room. The heavy gold damask draperies were drawn, and.cobwebs laced box-pleated valances. I saw no art, not a single sculpture or painting, and with every detail I took in, Bray's personality became colder and more overbearing. I liked her less. That was hard to acknowledge about someone who had just been beaten to death.

"Where did she get her money?" I asked.

"Got no idea," Marino answered.

"All of us been wondering that ever since she came here," Butterfield said. "You ever seen her car?"

"No,"- I replied.

"Huh," Marino retorted. "She takes a brand-new Crown Vic home with her every night."

"A damn Jaguar, fire-engine red. In the garage. Looks like a ninety-eight or ninety-nine. Can't even guess what that cost" The detective shook his head..

"About two years of your working ass," Marino commented.

"Tell me."

They talked on about Bray's tastes and wealth as if her battered dead body didn't exist. I saw no evidence that an encounter had occurred in the living room, or that anyone even used it much or bothered to clean it thoroughly.

The kitchen was off the living room to the right, and I glanced inside it, again checking for blood or any other sign of violence and finding none. The kitchen did not feel lived in, either. Countertops and the stove were spotless. I saw no food, only a bag of Starbucks coffee and a small wine rack holding three bottles of merlot.

Marino came up from behind and edged past me through the doorway. He opened the refrigerator with gloved hands.

"Doesn't look like she was into cooking;' he said, scanning sparsely stocked shelves.

I surveyed a quart of two-percent milk, tangerines, margarine, a box of Grape-Nuts and condiments. The freezer held no more promise.

"It's like she was never home, or ate out all the time," he said, stepping on a pedal to pop up the trash-can lid.

He reached inside and pulled out pieces of a torn-up Domino's pizza box, a wine bottle and three St. Pauli Girl beer bottles. He pieced together fragments of the receipt.