“We can’t run the risk she might see us in the same car,” Lucy says, pulling off her ballistic jacket, complaining that the sleeves are like Chinese handcuffs.
“Maybe it’s some kind of cult thing,” Marino says. “Some cult like a bunch of witches that paint red hands all over themselves.Salem’s up there in the same part of the world. All kinds of witches up there.”
“Witches are by the coven, not the bunch.” Lucy pokes him in the shoulder.
“Maybe she’s one of them,” he says. “Maybe your new friend is a witch who steals cell phones.”
“Maybe I’ll just come right out and ask her,” Lucy says.
“You should be careful about people. That’s the only thing with you, your judgment about who you hook up with. I wish you’d be more careful.”
“I guess we share the same dysfunction. Your judgment in that department seems to be almost as good as mine. Aunt Kay says Reba’s really nice and you were a dick to her at the Simister scene, by the way.”
“The Doc better not have said that. She better not have said nothing.”
“She didn’t say just that. She also said Reba’s smart, new on the job, but smart. Not as dumb as a bag of hammers and all those other cliches you like so much.”
“Bullshit.”
“She must be the one you were dating for a while,” Lucy says.
“Who told you?” Marino blurts out.
“You just did.”
45
Lucy has a macroadenoma. Her pituitary gland, which hangs by a threadlike stalk from the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, has a tumor.
The normal pituitary is about the size of a pea. It is referred to as the Master Gland because it transmits signals to the thyroid, the adrenals and ovaries or testes, controlling their production of hormones that dramatically affect metabolism, blood pressure, reproduction and other vital functions. Lucy’s tumor measures approximately twelve millimeters, or approximately half an inch, in diameter. It’s benign but won’t go away on its own. Her symptoms are headaches and an overproduction of prolactin, resulting in unpleasant symptoms that mimic pregnancy. For now, she controls her condition with drug therapy that is supposed to lower prolactin levels and shrink the tumor in size. Her response hasn’t been ideal. She hates taking her medication and isn’t consistent with it. Eventually, she might have to have surgery.
Scarpetta parks at Signature, the FBO at theFort Lauderdaleairport where Lucy hangars her jet. She gets out and meets the pilots inside as she thinks aboutBenton, not sure she’ll ever forgive him, so sick with hurt and anger that her heart is racing and her hands are shaking.
“There are still a few snow showers up there,” Bruce, the pilot in command, says. “We should be in the air about two hours twenty. We have a decent headwind.”
“I know you didn’t want catering, but we’ve got a cheese tray,” his copilot says. “Do you have baggage?”
“No,” she says.
Lucy’s pilots don’t wear uniforms. They are specially trained agents of her own design, don’t drink or smoke or do any kind of drugs, are very fit and trained in personal protection. They escort Scarpetta out to the tarmac where the Citation X waits like a big, white bird with a belly. It reminds her of Lucy’s belly, of what’s happened to her.
Inside the jet, she settles into the large leather seat, and when the pilots are busy in the cockpit, she callsBenton.
“I’ll be there by one,one fifteen,” she says to him.
“Please try to understand, Kay. I know what you must feel.”
“We’ll talk about it when I get there.”
“We never leave things like this,” he says.
It’s the rule, the old adage. Never let the sun go down on your wrath, never get into a car or a plane or walk out of the house when you’re angry. If anybody knows how quickly and randomly tragedy can strike, he and Scarpetta do.
“Fly safe,”Bentonsays to her. “I love you.”
Lex and Reba are walking around the outside of the house as if looking for something. They stop looking when Lucy makes her conspicuous entrance into Daggie Simister’s driveway.
She kills the engine of the V-Rod, takes off her black, full-face helmet and unzips her black ballistic jacket.
“You look like Darth Vader,” Lex says cheerfully.
Lucy’s never known anybody so chronically happy. Lex is a find, and the Academy wasn’t about to let her go after she graduated. She’s bright, careful and knows when to get out of the way.
“What are we looking for out here?” Lucy asks, scanning the small yard.
“The fruit trees over there,” Lex replies. “Not that I’m a detective. But when we were at the other house where those people disappeared”-she indicates the pale orange house on the other side of the waterway-“Dr. Scarpetta said something about a citrus inspector over here. She said he was examining trees in the area, maybe in the yard next door. And you can’t see it from here, but some of the trees over there have these same red stripes.” She again points to the pale orange house on the other side of the water.
“Of course, the canker spreads like crazy. If trees are infected here, I suppose a lot of trees in the area might be, too. I’m Reba Wagner, by the way,” she says to Lucy. “You’ve probably heard about me from Pete Marino.”
Lucy looks her in the eye. “What might I have heard if he’s talked about you?”
“How mentally challenged I am.”
“Mentally challenged might stretch his vocabulary to the point of injury. He probably said retarded.”
“There you have it.”
“Let’s go in,” Lucy says, heading to the front porch. “Let’s see what you missed the first time,” she says to Reba, “since you’re so mentally challenged.”
“She’s kidding,” Lex says to Reba, picking up the black crime-scene case she parked by the front door. “Before we do anything else”-she directs this to Reba-“I want to verify the house has been sealed since you guys cleared the scene.”
“Absolutely. I saw to it personally. All the windows and doors.”
“An alarm system?”
“You’d be amazed how many people down here don’t have them.”
Lucy notices stickers on windows that say H amp;W Alarm Company and comments, “She was worried, anyway. Probably couldn’t afford the real thing but still wanted to scare away bad people.”
“Problem is, the bad guys know that trick,” Reba replies. “Stickers and signs in the flower beds. Your typical burglar would take one look at this house and figure it probably doesn’t have an alarm system. That the person inside probably can’t afford it or is too old to bother.”
“A lot of elderly people don’t bother, it’s true,” Lucy says. “For one thing, they forget their codes. I’m serious.”
Reba opens the door and musty air greets them as if the life inside fled long ago. She reaches in and flips on lights.
“What’s anybody done about it so far?” Lex says, looking at the terrazzo floor.
“Nothing except in the bedroom.”
“Okay, let’s just stand out here a minute and think about this,” Lucy says. “We know two things. Her killer somehow got inside the house without breaking down a door. And after he shot her, he somehow left. Also through a door?” she asks Reba.
“I’d say so. She’s got all these jalousie windows. No way to climb through them unless you’re Gumby.”
“Then what we should do is start spraying at this door and work our way back to the bedroom where she was killed,” Lucy says. “Then we’ll do the same thing at all the other doors. Triangulating.”
“That would be this door, the kitchen door and the sliders leading from the dining room to the sunporch and on the sunporch itself,” Reba tells them. “Both sets of the sliders were unlocked when Pete got here, so he says.”
She steps inside the foyer, and Lucy and Lex follow. They shut the door.