Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

"Marino, I'm sure she's let them know what's…" I started to defend her.

"Oh yeah. She's been on the phone and promised she'll be there in a few days."

"They can't wait a few days for her to get there?" I asked as I unlocked my car.

"The whole fuckup down there was videotaped;" he said as I slid into a cold leather seat. "And they've been going through it over and over again."

I started the engine as the night suddenly seemed darker and colder and emptier.

"There's a lot of questions." He dug his hands in the pocket of his coat.

"About whether the shooting was justified? Isn't saving Jo's life, her own life, justification enough?"

"I think it's her attitude, mainly, Doc. She's so, well, you know. So ready to charge in and fight all the time. It comes across in everything she does, which is why she's so damn good. But it can also be one hell of a problem if it gets out of hand."

"You want to get inside the car so you don't freeze?"

"I'm going to follow You home, then I got things to do. Lucy's going to be there, right?"

"Yes”

Otherwise I ain't leaving you alone, not with that asshole still on the loose out there."

"What do I do about her?" I quietly asked.

I no longer knew. I felt my niece was beyond my reach. Sometimes I wasn't even sure she loved me anymore.

"This is all about Benton, you know," Marino said. "Sure, she's pissed at life in general and goes off on a regular basis. Maybe you should show her his autopsy report, make her face it, get it the hell out of her system before she does herself in."

"I will never do that;" I said as old pain rushed back, but not as intensely.

"Jesus, it's cold. And getting closer to a full moon, which is exactly what I don't want to see right now."

"All a full moon means is that if he tries again, it will be easier to see him," T said.

"Want me tу follow you?"

"I'll be fine."

"Well, you call me if for some reason Lucy ain't there. No way you're staying alone."

I felt like Rose as I drove toward home. I knew exactly what she meant about being held hostage by fear, by old age, by grief, by anything or anyone. I had almost reached my neighborhood when I decided to turn around and cut over to West Broad Street, where I occasionally went to Pleasants Hardware on the twenty-two-hundred block. It was an old neighborhood store that had expanded over the years and tended to carry more than just the standard tools and garden supplies.

When I shopped here, I never arrived earlier than seven o'clock in the evening, when most men came in after work and cruised the aisles like boys coveting toys. There were many cars, trucks and vans in the parking lot, and I was in a hurry as I walked past close-out lawn furniture and discontinued power tools. Just inside the door, spring flower bulbs were on special, and clearance-sale gallon cans of blue and white paint were stacked in a pyramid.

I wasn't sure what class of tool I was looking for, although I suspected the weapon that had killed Bray was something like a pickaxe or a hammer. So I kept an open mind and went up and down aisles, scanning shelves of nails, nuts, fasteners, screw hooks, hinges, hasps and latches. I wandered through thousands of feet of neatly coiled rope and cord, and weatherizers and caulk and just about everything one needed for plumbing. I saw nothing that mattered, not in the large section of bars and claws and hammers, either.

Pipes didn't quite work, because the threads weren't thick or widely spaced enough to have left the strange striped pattern we found on Bray's mattress. Tire tools didn't even come close. I was getting very discouraged by the time I reached the masonry section of the store, and I saw the tool hanging on a distant peg board and I felt flushed, my heart jumping.

It looked like a black iron pickaxe with a coiled handle that brought to mind a thick large spring. I went over and picked one up. It was heavy. One end was pointed, the other like a chisel. The tag on it said it was a chipping hammer and cost six dollars and ninety-five cents.

The young man who rang it up had no idea what a chipping hammer was, and didn't know the store carried such a thing.

"Is there anyone here who would know?" I asked.

He got on an intercom and asked for an assistant manager named Julie to come to his register. She got there right away and seemed far too proper and well dressed to know about tools.

"It can be used in welding to knock off slag," she let me know. "But much more commonly it's used in masonry. Brick, stone, whatever. It's a multipurpose tool, as you can probably tell by looking at it. And the orange dot on the tag means it's ten percent off." - "So you might find these at any site where masonry is involved? It must be a rather obscure tool," I said.

"Unless you're into masonry, or maybe welding, you'd have no reason to know about it."

I bought a chipping hammer for ten percent off and drove home. Lucy was not there when I pulled into the driveway, and I hoped she had gone to MCV to pick up Jo and bring her back to my house. A flat bank of clouds was moving in seemingly out of nowhere, and it was beginning to feel like it might snow. I backed my car into the garage and went inside my house, heading straight for the kitchen. I thawed a package of chicken breasts in the microwave oven.

I poured barbecue sauce over the chipping hammer, especially on the coiled handle, and dropped it and rolled it on a white pillow case. The striping was unmistakable. I pounded chicken breasts with both ends of that ominous black iron tool and recognized the punched-out shapes right away. I called Marino..He wasn't home. I paged him. He didn't get back to me for fifteen minutes. By then my nerves were shorting out.

"Sorry," he said. 'The battery went dead in my phone, had to find a pay phone."

"Where are you?"

"Driving around. We got the state police fixed-wing plane circling the river, probing everything with a search: light. Maybe the bastard's eyes glow in the dark like a dog. You seen the sky? Goddamn, they're suddenly saying we might get six inches of snow. It's already started."

"Marino, Bray was killed with a chipping hammer," I said.

"What the hell is that?"

"Used in masonry. You aware of any construction along the river that might involve stone, brick or something like that? On the off chance he got the tool from there because he's staying there?".

"Where did you find a chipping hammer? I thought you was going home? I hate it when you do shit like this."

"I am home," I impatiently said. "And maybe he is, too, right this minute. Maybe it's some place putting in pavers or a wall."

Marino paused.

"I wonder if you use something like that on a slate roof," he said. "Fhere's this big old house behind gates, way back from Windsor Farms, right on the river. They're putting on a new slate roof."

"Is anybody living there?'

I didn't think anything about it, since construction guys are crawling around it all day long. Nobody's in it. It's for sale," he said.

"He could be inside during the day and come out after dark when the crew is gone," I replied. "Maybe the alarm isn't on for fear the construction noise would set it off."

"1'm on my way."

"Marino, please don't go there alone."

"ATF's got people all over the place," he said.

I built a fire and when I went out for more wood, it was snowing hard, the moon a faint face behind low clouds. I cradled split logs in one arm and tightly gripped my Glock in my hand as I kept my eye on every shadow and tuned my ear to every sound. The night seemed to bristle with fear. I hurried inside my house and reset the alarm.

I sat in the great room, flames lashing the sooty throat уf the chimney, and I worked on sketches. I tried to reconstruct how the killer might have gotten Bray back to the bedroom without inflicting a single blow. Despite her years in administration, she was a trained police officer. How did he incapacitate her seemingly so easily without apparent injury or a struggle? My television. was on, and every half hour or so the local networks had news breaks.