Blow Fly (38 page)

I
NSIDE THE GEORGE BUSH
Intercontinental Airport, Scarpetta stands near a wall, out of traffic.

She sips black coffee, knowing it's the last thing she needs. Her appetite has abandoned her, and when she bought a hamburger less than an hour ago, she couldn't swallow the first bite. Caffeine makes her hands shake. A hit of Scotch would calm her down, but she won't dare, and the reprieve would only be temporary. Of all times, she needs to think clearly now, to somehow handle her stress without self-destructive assistance.

Please answer your phone,
she silently begs.

Three rings and, “Yeah.”

Marino is driving his loud truck.

“Thank God!” she exclaims, turning her back to passengers walking with purpose or running to their gates. “Where in God's name have you been? I've been trying to reach you for days. I'm so sorry about Rocco . . .”

For Marino's sake, she is.

“I don't want to talk about it,” he replies, subdued and more unhappy than usual. “Where I've been is hell, if you want to know. Maybe broke
my all-time record for drinking bourbon and beer and not answering the goddamn phone.”

“Oh, no. Another fight with Trixie. I told you what I think of . . .”

“I don't want to talk about it,” he says again. “No offense, Doc.”

“I'm in Houston,” she tells him.

“Oh, shit.”

“I did it. I took notes. Maybe none of it is true. But he did say that Rocco has a place in some gay district near downtown. In Baton Rouge. Chances are good the house isn't in his name. But neighbors must know about him. Could be a lot of evidence in that house.”

“On another subject, in case you ain't been listening to the news, a female arm turned up in one of the creeks down there,” he informs her. “They're doing DNA. Might be the last lady, Katherine Bruce. If it is, he's getting frenzied. The location the arm was found in was right off Blind River, which runs into Lake Maurepas. This guy's got to be familiar with the bayous and so on around there.

“Word is, the creek where the arm was isn't easily accessible. You'd have to know where it is, and almost nobody goes there. He was using the arm as gator bait, on a hook suspended from a rope.”

“Or he was displaying it for the shock effect.”

“I don't think that's it,” he says.

“Whatever the case, you're right, he's escalating.”

“Probably looking for another one even as we speak,” he says.

“I'm headed to Baton Rouge,” Scarpetta says.

“Yeah, I figured you would.” Marino's voice is barely audible over the thrumming of his V-8 engine. “All to help out with some stupid drug overdose that happened eight years ago.”

“This isn't just about a drug overdose, Marino. And you know it.”

“Whatever it's about, you ain't safe down there, which is why I'm heading that way. Been driving since midnight and have to stop every other minute for coffee, then I have to stop again every other minute for a john.”

She reluctantly tells him about Rocco's connection to the Charlotte Dard case, that he represented a pharmacist, an alleged suspect.

It is as if Marino doesn't hear her.

“I still got another ten hours on the road. And I gotta sleep at some point. So I probably won't catch up with you until tomorrow,” he says.

J
AY HEARS ABOUT
his mutant brother on the radio.

He isn't sure how he feels about it as he sweats inside the fishing shack, his head bleary, his beauty not quite what it was even a week ago. He faults Bev for this, for everything. The more often she goes to the mainland, the more often the beer supply is replenished. Jay used to go weeks, a month, without a beer. Of late, the refrigerator is never empty.

Resisting alcohol has always been a challenge for him, ever since he began tasting fine wines as a boy in France, wines that are for the gods, his father would say. As a free man with complete mastery of his life, Jay sipped, savored and enjoyed in moderation. Now he is held hostage by cheap beer. Since Bev's last shopping expedition, he has been drinking a case a day.

“I guess I'm gonna have to make another run,” Bev says, her eyes fixed on his Adam's apple bobbing as he tilts a can straight up and drains it.

“Yeah, you do that.” Beer trickles down his bare chest.

“Whatever you want.”

“Fuck you. It's all about what you want.” He steps closer to her, his face menacing. “I'm falling apart!” he yells at her as he crumples a beer
can and hurls it across the room. “It's your fucking fault! How could anybody be holed up in here with a stupid cow like you and not have to drink his fucking brains out!”

He grabs another beer out of the refrigerator and pushes the door shut with his bare foot. Bev doesn't react. She resists the smile she feels inside. Nothing gives her more satisfaction than to see Jay out of control, confused and headed for hurting himself. At last she has found a way to get him back, and now that his monster brother is on the loose, Jay's going to get worse and do something, so she needs to keep up her guard. Her self-defense is to keep him drunk. She doesn't know why she didn't think of it a long time ago, but beer was scarce when she went to the mainland no more than once every four or six weeks.

Suddenly, his demands became once a month, twice a month, and each time she returned with cases of beer and was amazed by how much more he was drinking. Until lately, she had never seen him drunk. When he is drunk, he doesn't resist her advances, and she wipes him down with a wet towel as he sinks into unconsciousness. The next morning, he has no memory of what she did, of how she satisfied her own pleasure in creative ways, since he couldn't perform and wouldn't have, were he sober.

She watches him fumble with the radio, searching through static for the latest news updates, well on his way to being drunk again. As long as she's known him, he's had no body fat, his perfectly defined body a constant source of envy and humiliation for her. This will change quickly. It is inevitable. He'll get fat around his waist, and his pride will suffocate beneath puffiness and flab no matter how many push-ups and sit-ups and crunches he does. Maybe his perfect face won't look so good, either. Wouldn't that be something if he got so ugly—as ugly as he thinks she is—that she didn't want him anymore.

What was that story in the Bible? Samson—the mighty, beautiful Samson—gave in to what's-her-name, and she cut off his magical hair, or something. He lost all his strength.

“You stupid bitch!” Jay calls out. “Why are you just standing here, staring? My brother's on his way here if he isn't already here. He'd figure out where I'd be. He always has.”

“I hear twins think like that, are real tuned-in to each other.” The word
twin
is a deliberate scorpion sting. “He won't hurt you. He won't hurt me. You forget I've met him before. Why, I think he likes me because I can get beyond his looks.”

“He doesn't like anybody.” Jay gives up on the radio and angrily turns it off. “You don't live in the real world. I've got to find him first before he does something stupid, sees some woman and does her, leaving his damn bite marks all over her and smashing her head.”

“You ever watched him do it?” she casually asks.

“Go get the boat ready, Bev.”

She can't remember the last time he said her name. It is rich, like melted butter.

Then he spoils the moment by adding, “It's your goddamn fault about the arm. Wouldn't have happened if you'd brought me some pups.”

Since she returned from her errand-running on the mainland, all he's done is complain that she didn't bring gator bait, not the least bit grateful for what she did bring him.

She stares at the empty mattress by the wall.

“You got plenty of gator bait,” she said the other day. “More than you know what to do with these days.”

She convinced him that baiting a gator hook with human flesh would work just fine, maybe even better. Jay could have his fun with a reptile that was longer than he was tall. He'd watch it thrashing until he got bored, then shoot it in the head. Outlaw hunter that he is, he never keeps what he catches. He'd cut the nylon rope and watch the reptile slide into the water. Then he'd motor back to the shack.

This time it didn't work that way. All he vaguely remembers is baiting the hook and stringing it up over the thick branch of a cypress tree, and then hearing another boat not far away, someone else hunting gators
or maybe gigging frogs. Jay got the hell out of there, the hook still baited and dangling from the yellow nylon line. He should have cut it down. He made a big mistake but won't admit it. She suspects there was no other hunter out there. Jay was hearing things and he didn't think straight. Had he, it would have entered his mind that when another hunter found the caught gator, the bait either would have been found hanging out of its jaws or discovered in its guts when the gator was field-dressed.

“Do what I say, damn it. Get the boat ready,” he orders her. “So I can deal with him.”

“And how do you think you'll do that?” Bev asks calmly, placated and pleased by the craziness in front of her.

“I already told you. He'll find me,” Jay says, his head beginning to throb. “He can't live without me. He can't even die without me.”

L
ATE AFTERNOON, SCARPETTA SITS
fifteen rows back, her legs cramped.

On her left, a young boy, blond and cute, with braces on his teeth, despondently draws Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from a stack on his tray. On her right, an obese man, probably in his fifties, drinks screwdrivers next to the window. He is constantly pushing up wire-rimmed glasses, the oversized curved frames that remind Scarpetta of Elvis. The obese man noisily flips through the
Wall Street Journal
and periodically glances at Scarpetta, obviously hoping to engage her in conversation. She continues to ignore him.

The boy draws another Yu-Gi-Oh! card and places it faceup on the tray.

“Who's winning?” Scarpetta asks him with a smile.

“I don't have anybody to duel with,” the boy replies without looking up.

He is probably ten and is dressed in jeans, a faded Spiderman shirt and tennis shoes. “You have to have at least forty cards to play,” he adds.

“I'm afraid I'm disqualified, then.”

He picks up a card, a colorful one with a menacing ax on it. “See,” he
says, “this one's my favorite. The Axe of Despair. It's a good weapon for a monster to have, worth a thousand points.” He picks another card, this one called the Axe Raider. “A very strong monster with the ax,” he explains.

She studies the cards and shakes her head. “Sorry. Too complicated for me.”

“You want to learn how to play?”

“I couldn't possibly,” she replies. “What's your name?”

“Albert.” He draws more cards from the deck. “Not Al,” he lets her know. “Everybody thinks they can call me Al. But it's Albert.”

“Nice to meet you, Albert.” She does not offer her name.

Scarpetta's seatmate next to the window shifts around to face her, his shoulder pressing against her upper arm. “You don't sound like you're from Louisiana,” he says.

“I'm not,” she replies, leaning away from him, her sinuses assaulted by the overpowering cologne he must have splashed on when he uprooted her to go to the restroom.

“Don't have to tell me that. One or two spoken words and I know.” He sips his vodka and orange juice. “Let me guess. Not Texas, either. You don't exactly look Mexican.” He grins.

She resumes reading a structural biology article in
Science
magazine and wonders when the man will get the not-so-subtle message to leave her alone.

Rarely is Scarpetta accessible to strangers. If she is, then usually within two minutes they ask where she's going and why and wander into the restricted airspace of her profession. Telling them she's a doctor doesn't stop the quizzing, nor does saying that she's a lawyer, and should she let on that she is both, the consequences are bad enough. But to go on and explain that she is a forensic pathologist will mean the ruination of her trip.

Next, JonBenet Ramsey, O. J. Simpson and other mysterious cases and miscarriages of justice bubble up, and Scarpetta is trapped, buckled in her seat at an altitude of some thirty thousand feet. Then there are those strangers who don't care if she works but would rather see her later for
dinner, or preferably for a drink in a hotel bar that might lead to a hotel room. They, like the tipsy slob sitting to her right, would rather stare at her body than hear about her résumé.

“Looks like a mighty complicated article you're reading,” he says. “I'm guessing you're some sort of schoolteacher.”

She doesn't respond.

“You see, I'm good at this.” He squints his eyes and snaps his thick fingers, pointing at her face. “A biology teacher. Kids are worthless these days.” He lifts his drink from his tray and rattles the ice in the plastic cup. “I don't know how you stand being around them, to tell the truth,” he goes on, apparently having decided she is a teacher. “Plus, they don't think twice about bringing a gun to school.”

She feels his puffy eyes on her as she continues to read.

“You got children? I got three. Teenagers, all of them. Obviously, I got married when I was twelve.” He laughs, and flecks of spittle spray through the air. “How 'bout I get your card from you—in case I need a little tutoring while both of us are in Baton Rouge? You changing planes or going there? I live in the downtown area, the name's Weldon Winn—with two n's. Good name for a politician, huh? Guess you can imagine the campaign slogans if I ever run for office.”

“When are we landing?” Albert asks her.

She looks at her watch and forces a smile as the name Weldon Winn shocks her. “Not too much longer,” she says to the boy.

“Yes, ma'am, I can just imagine signs all over Louisiana:
It's Win-Win with Winn.
Get it? And
Go with the Winner.
Maybe I'll be lucky and have an opponent named
Miracle.
So
Winn Needs No Miracle.
How 'bout that? And when
Mr. Miracle
slides hopelessly downhill in the polls, he'll be called
Miracle-Whipped.”
He winks again.

“I suppose there's no chance you might run against a
she,”
Scarpetta comments without looking up from her magazine, pretending she doesn't have a clue that Weldon Winn is the Middle District U.S. Attorney for Louisiana that Nic Robillard complained about.

“Hell. No woman would take me on.”

“I see. So what kind of politician are you?” Scarpetta finally asks him.

“One in spirit only at the moment, pretty lady. I'm the U.S. Attorney for Baton Rouge.”

He pauses to let the importance of his position sink in, finishing his screwdriver and craning his neck in search of a flight attendant. Spotting one, he holds up an arm and snaps his fingers at her.

It can't be chance that Weldon Winn just happens to be sitting next to her on a plane when she just happens to be on her way to assist in a suspicious death that, according to Dr. Lanier, just happens to have captured Weldon Winn's interest, after she just happens to have left Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.

She tries to figure out how Winn would have had time to intercept her in Houston. Maybe he was already there. She has no doubt whatsoever that he knows who she is and why she's on this flight.

“Got a getaway in New Orleans, quite a cozy little palace in the French Quarter. Maybe you can visit while you're in the area. I'll be around for just a couple nights, got business with the governor and a few of the boys. I'd be more than happy to give you a personal tour of the capital, show you the bullethole in a pillar where Huey Long was shot.”

Scarpetta knows all about the notorious Huey Long's assassination. When the case was reopened in the early nineties, the results of the new investigation were discussed at various forensic science academy meetings. She's had enough of the pompous Weldon Winn.

“For your own edification,” she tells him, “the so-called bullethole in the marble pillar was not caused by a bullet intended for Huey Long or anyone else, but more likely from an imperfection in the stone or a chiseled facsimile of a bullethole to attract tourism. As a matter of fact,” she adds, as Winn's eyes flatten and his smile freezes, “since the assassination, the Capitol was restored, and that particular pillar's marble panels were removed and never returned to their original location. I'm surprised you spend a lot of time at the state capital and don't know all this,” she concludes.

“My aunt's supposed to pick me up and if I'm late, what if she isn't there?” Albert asks Scarpetta, as if the two of them are traveling together.

He has lost interest in his trading cards, which are neatly stacked next to a blue cell phone. “Do you know what time it is?” he says.

“Almost six,” Scarpetta says. “If you're sleepy, take a little nap and I'll let you know when we're about to land.”

“I'm not sleepy.”

She recalls noticing him at the gate in Houston, playing with his cards. Because he was sitting next to other adults, she assumed he was accompanied and that his family or whoever he is traveling with were seated elsewhere on the plane. It never occurred to her that any parent or relative would allow a young child to travel alone, especially these days.

“Now isn't that something. Not too many people are experts on bulletholes,” the U.S. Attorney comments as the flight attendant serves him another drink.

“No, I don't suppose too many people are.” Scarpetta's attention is focused on the lost little boy next to her. “You aren't by yourself, are you?” she asks him. “And why aren't you in school?”

“It's spring break. Uncle Walt dropped me off, and a lady at the airport met me. I'm not tired. Sometimes I get to stay up really late, watching movies. We get a thousand channels.” He pauses and shrugs. “Well, maybe not that many, but a lot. Do you have any pets? I used to have a dog named Nestlé because it was brown like chocolate chips.”

“Let's see,” Scarpetta says. “I don't have a dog the color of chocolate, but I have an English bulldog who's white and brown with very big lower teeth. His name is Billy. Do you know what an English bulldog is?”

“Like a pit bull?”

“Not anything like a pit bull.”

Weldon Winn butts into the conversation. “Might I ask where you're staying while you're in town?”

“Nestlé used to miss me when I wasn't home,” Albert wistfully says.

“I'm sure he did,” Scarpetta replies. “I think Billy misses me, too. But my secretary takes good care of him.”

“Nestlé was a girl.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don't know.”

“My, my, if you aren't a mysterious little lady,” the U.S. Attorney says, staring at her.

Scarpetta turns to him, catching a cold glint in his eyes.

She leans close to him and whispers in his ear, “I've had enough of your bullshit.”