“Do you have a tape of the show you’re talking about?”Bentonasks. “An audio clip?”
“We have tapes of everything.”
“How quickly could you get me that audio clip, and one from your television show earlier today? I’m afraid we’re snowed in up here-at the moment, anyway. We’re doing what we can remotely but are somewhat limited.”
“Yes, I hear you’ve had quite the storm up there. Hope you don’t lose power,” she says, as if they’ve just spent the past half-hour having a pleasant conversation. “I can call my producer right now, and he can get it to you by e-mail. I’m sure he’ll want to talk with you about being on my show sometime.”
“And the phone numbers of the callers,”Bentonreminds her.
“Dr. Self?” Scarpetta says, looking out the window with dismay.
It is starting to snow again.
“What about Tony? David’s brother?”
“They fought a lot.”
“Did you see Tony, too?”
“I never met him,” she says.
“You said you know both Ev and Kristin. Did one of them have an eating disorder?”
“I wasn’t treating either one of them. They weren’t my patients.”
“I should think you could tell by looking at them. One of them was on a steady diet of carrots.”
“Based on her appearance, Kristin,” she replies.
Scarpetta looks atBenton. She had the Academy’s DNA lab contact Detective Thrush the instant she discovered the yellowish dura mater. DNA from the dead woman up here has been matched to DNA from yellowish stains on a blouse Scarpetta removed from Kristin’s and Ev’s house. The body in theBostonmorgue most likely is Kristin, and Scarpetta has no intention of relaying this information to Dr. Self, who might very well talk about it on the air.
Bentongets up from the couch to put another log on the fire as Scarpetta gets off the phone. She watches the snow. It falls fast in the light of the lamps atBenton’s front gate.
“No more coffee,”Bentonsays. “My nerves have had it.”
“Does it do anything besides snow up here?”
“The main streets are probably already clear. They’re amazingly fast up here. I don’t think the boys have anything to do with this.”
“They have something to do with it,” she says, moving in front of the fire, sitting on the hearth. “They’re gone. It appears Kristin’s dead. Probably all of them are.”
60
Marino calls Joe while Reba sits quietly nearby, engrossed in hell scenes.
“I’ve got a few things to go over with you,” Marino tells Joe. “There’s a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” he says cautiously.
“You need to hear about it from me. I’ve got to return a few calls in my office, take care of a few things. Where you going to be during the next hour?”
“Roomone twelve.”
“You there now?”
“Walking that way.”
“Let me guess,” Marino says. “Working on another hell scene you stole from me?”
“If that’s what you want to talk to me about…”
“It’s not,” Marino says. “It’s a whole lot worse than that.”
“You’re really something,” Reba says to Marino, placing the file of hell scenes back on his desk. “They’re really good. They’re brilliant, Pete.”
“We’re going to do this in five, give him time to get into his office,” and now he has Lucy on the phone. “Lay it on me, what do I do?”
“You’re going to hang up, so am I, then hit the conference button on your desk phone and dial my cell phone. When I answer, hit conference again and dial your cell phone. Then you can either put your desk phone on hold to keep the line open or just leave it off the hook. If someone’s monitoring our call, he’s going to assume you’re in your office.”
Marino waits a few minutes, then does what she said. He and Reba walk out of the building while he and Lucy talk to each other on their cell phones. They have a real conversation while he hopes like hell that Joe is listening in. He and Lucy are lucky so far. The reception is good. She sounds as if she’s in the next room.
They chat about the new motorcycles. They chat about all sorts of things as Marino and Reba walk.
The Last Stand motel is a modified double-wide trailer that has been divided into three rooms that are used for mock crime scenes. Each section has a separate door with a number on it. Room 112 is in the middle. Marino notes that the curtain is drawn over the front window, and he can hear the air conditioner running. He tries the door and it’s locked, and he kicks it hard with his big, Harley-booted foot and the cheap door flies open and slams against the wall. Joe is sitting at the desk, the receiver to his ear, a tape recorder hooked up to the phone, his face shocked, then terrified. Marino and Reba look at him.
“Know why they call this the Last Stand motel?” Marino asks, walking over to Joe, grabbing him out of the chair as if he weighs nothing. “Because you’re as dead as Colonel Custer.”
“Let me go!” Joe yells.
His feet are off the floor. Marino is holding him up by his armpits, their faces inches apart. Marino shoves him against a wall.
“Let me go! You’re hurting me!”
Marino drops him. He sits down hard on the floor.
“You know why she’s here?” He indicates Reba. “To arrest your sorry ass.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Falsifying records, grand larceny, maybe homicide since you obviously stole a gun that was used out of state to blow a lady’s head off. Oh, and add fraud,” Marino adds to the list, not caring if any of it’s valid.
“I didn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Quit yelling. I’m not deaf. See, Detective Wagner here’s a witness, right?”
She nods, her face hard. Marino’s never seen her look so scary.
“You see me lay a finger on him?” he asks her.
“Absolutely not,” she says.
Joe is so scared, he might wet himself.
“You want to tell us why you stole that shotgun and who you gave it to or sold it to?” Marino pulls up the desk chair, turns it around, sits on it backward, his huge arms resting on the back. “Or maybe you blew the lady’s head off. Maybe you’re living out hell scenes, only I didn’t write that one. You must have stole it from someone else.”
“What lady? I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t steal a shotgun. What shotgun?”
“The one you checked out last June twenty-eighth at three-fifteen in the afternoon. That one that belongs to the computer record you just updated, falsifying that record, too.”
Joe’s mouth is open, his eyes wide.
Marino reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a piece of paper, unfolds it and hands it to him. It’s a photocopy of the ledger page showing when Joe signed out the Mossberg shotgun and supposedly returned it.
Joe stares at the photocopy, his hands shaking.
He says, “I swear to God I didn’t take it. I remember what happened. I was doing more research with ordnance gelatin and maybe test-fired it once. Then I left to do something in the lab kitchen, I think it was to check on some more blocks I’d just made, the ones we were using to simulate passengers in an airplane crash. Remember when Lucy used that big helicopter to drop an airplane fuselage out of the sky so the students could…?”
“Get to the point!”
“When I came back, the shotgun was gone. I assumed Vince locked it back up in the vault. It was late in the day. He probably locked it up because he was about to go home. I remember feeling pissed about it because I wanted to fire it a couple more times.”
“No wonder you have to steal my hell scenes,” Marino says. “You’ve got no imagination. Try again.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“You want her to haul you off in handcuffs?” Marino says, jerking his thumb toward Reba.