Predator (41 page)

    
“I hope he didn’t try to chat with you too much, bother you. He strikes me as the type,” he says.

    
“It’s nice to see you, too, Benton,” she says, walking one step ahead of him.

    
“I happen to know you don’t think it’s nice at all.”

    
He picks up his pace, holds the glass front door for her, and the wind rushing in is cold and carries small flakes of snow. The day is dark gray, so dusky that lights in the parking lot have come on.

    
“She gets these guys, all of them good-looking and addicted to the gym, and they think they’re action heroes,” he says.

    
“You made your point. Are you trying to pick a fight before I have a chance?”

    
“It’s important you notice certain things, don’t assume someone’s just being friendly. I worry you don’t pick up important signals.”

    
“That’s ridiculous,” she replies, anger sounding in her voice. “If anything, I pick up too many signals. Although I obviously missed some pretty important ones this past year. You want a fight, now you’ve got it.”

    
They are walking through the snowy parking lot, and the lamps along the tarmac are blurred by the snow and sound is muted. Usually, they hold hands. She wonders how he could have done what he did. Her eyes water. Maybe it is the wind.

    
“I’m worried who’s out there,” he says oddly, unlocking his Porsche, this one a four-wheel-drive SUV.

    
Benton likes his cars. He and Lucy are into power. The difference is, Benton knows he’s powerful. Lucy doesn’t feel she is.

    
“Worried in general?” Scarpetta asks, assuming he’s still talking about all the signals she supposedly misses.

    
“I’m talking about whoever just murdered this lady up here. NIBIN got a hit on a shotgun shell that appears to have been fired by the same shotgun used in a homicide in Hollywood two years ago. A convenience-store robbery. The guy was wearing a mask, killed a kid in the store and then the manager killed him. Sound familiar?”

    
He looks over at her as they talk, as they drive away from the airport.

    
“I’ve heard about it,” she replies. “Seventeen years old, armed with nothing but a mop. Anybody have a clue as to why that shotgun’s back in circulation?” she asks as her resentment grows.

    
“Not yet.”

    
“A lot of shotgun deaths recently,” she says, coolly professional.

    
If he wants to be this way, she can too.

    
“I wonder what that’s about,” she adds in a detached sort of way. “The one used in the Johnny Swift case disappears—now one is used in the Daggie Simister case.”

    
She has to explain to him the Daggie Simister case. He doesn’t know about it yet.

    
“A shotgun that is supposed to be in custody or destroyed is just used again up here,” she goes on. “Then we have the Bible in the house of these missing people.”

    
“What Bible and what missing people?”

    
She has to explain that to him, tell him about the anonymous call from someone who referred to himself as Hog. She has to tell him about the centuries-old Bible inside the house of the women and boys who have vanished, that it was open to the Wisdom of Solomon, that the verse is the same one this man called Hog recited to Marino over the phone.

    
Therefore unto them, as to children without the use of reason, thou dids’t send a judgment to mock them.

    
“Marked with X’s in pencil,” she says. “The Bible printed in 1756.”

    
“Unusual they would have one that old.”

    
“There were no other old books like that in the house. According to Detective Wagner. You don’t know her. People who worked with them at the church say they’ve never seen the Bible before.”

    
“Checked it for prints, for DNA?”

    
“No prints. No DNA.”

    
“Any theories about what might have happened to them?” he asks, as if the sole reason for her racing here on a private jet was to discuss their work.

    
“Nothing good,” and her resentment grows.

    
He knows almost nothing about what her life has been like of late.

    
“Evidence of foul play?”

    
“We’ve got a lot to do at the labs. They’re in overdrive,” she says. “I found earprints outside a slider in the master bedroom. Someone had his ear pressed up against the glass.”

    
“Maybe one of the boys.”

    
“It’s not,” she says, getting angrier. “We got their DNA, or presumably it’s their DNA, from clothing, their toothbrushes, a prescription bottle.”

    
“I don’t exactly consider earprints good forensic science. There have been a number of wrongful convictions because of earprints.”

    
“Like a polygraph, it’s a tool,” she almost snaps.

    
“I’m not arguing with you, Kay.”

    
“DNA from an earprint the same way we get DNA from fingerprints,” she says. “We’ve already run that and it’s unknown, doesn’t appear to be anybody who lived in the house. Nothing in CODIS. I’ve asked our friends at DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota to test for gender and ancestral inference or racial affiliation. Unfortunately, that will take days. I don’t really give a damn about matching someone’s ear to an earprint.”

    
Benton doesn’t say a word.

    
“Do you have anything to eat in the house? And I need a drink. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the day. And I need us to talk about something besides work. I didn’t fly up here in a snowstorm to talk about work.”

    
“It’s not a snowstorm yet,” Benton says somberly. “But it will be.”

    
She stares out her window as he drives toward Cambridge.

    
“I have plenty of food in the house. And whatever you want to drink,” he says quietly.

    
He says something else. She’s not sure she heard it correctly. What she thinks she heard can’t be right.

    
“I’m sorry. What did you just say?” she asks, startled.

    
“If you want out, I’d rather you tell me now.”

    
“If I want out?” She looks at him, incredulous. “Is that all it takes, Benton? We have a major disagreement and should discuss ending our relationship?”

    
“I’m just giving you the option.”

    
“I don’t need you to give me anything.”

    
“I didn’t mean you need my permission. I just don’t see how it can work if you don’t trust me anymore.”

    
“Maybe you’re right.” She fights back tears, turns her face away from him, looks out at the snow.

    
“So you’re saying you don’t trust me anymore.”

    
“What if I had done it to you?”

    
“I would be very upset,” he replies. “But I’d try to understand why. Lucy has a right to her privacy, a legal right. The only reason I know about the tumor is because she told me she was having a problem and wondered if I could arrange for her to be scanned at McLean, if I could make sure nobody knew, could keep it absolutely quiet. She didn’t want to make an appointment at some hospital somewhere. You know how she is. Especially these days.”

    
“I used to know how she is.”

    
“Kay.” He glances over at her. “She didn’t want a record. Nothing’s private anymore, not since the Patriot Act.”

    
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

    
“You have to assume your medical records, prescription drugs, bank accounts, shopping habits, everything private about your life might be looked at by the Feds, all in the name of stopping terrorists. Her controversial past career with the FBI and ATF is a realistic concern. She doesn’t trust that they won’t find out anything they can about her, and she ends up audited by the IRS, on a no-fly list, accused of insider trading, scandalized in the news, God knows what.”

    
“What about you and your not-so-pleasant past with the FBI?”

    
He shrugs, driving fast. A light snow swirls and seems to barely touch the glass.

    
“There’s not much else they can do to me,” he says. “Truth is, I’d probably be a waste of their time. I’m much more worried about who’s running around with a shotgun that’s supposed to be in the custody of the Hollywood police or destroyed.”

    
“What is Lucy doing about her prescription drugs? If she’s so anxious about leaving any sort of paper or electronic trail.”

    
“She should be anxious. She’s not delusional. They can get hold of pretty much anything they want—and are. Even if it requires a court order, what do you suppose happens in reality if the FBI wants a court order from a judge who just so happens to have been appointed by the current administration? A judge who worries about the consequences if he doesn’t cooperate? Do I need to paint about fifty possible scenarios for you?”

    
“America used to be a nice place to live.”

    
“We’ve handled everything we can in-house for Lucy,” he says.

    
He goes on and on about McLean, assures her that Lucy couldn’t have come to a better place, that if nothing else, McLean has access to the finest doctors and scientists in the country, in the world. Nothing he says makes her feel better.

    
They are in Cambridge now, passing the splendid antique mansions of Brattle Street.

    
“She hasn’t had to go through the normal channels for anything, including her meds. There’s no record unless somebody makes a mistake or is indiscreet,” Benton is saying.

    
“Nothing’s infallible. Lucy can’t spend the rest of her life paranoid that people are going to find out she has a brain tumor and is on some type of dopamine agonist to keep it under control. Or that she’s had surgery, if it comes to that.”

    
It is hard for her to say it. No matter the statistical fact that surgical extraction of pituitary tumors is almost always successful, there is a chance something can go wrong.

    
“It’s not cancer,” Benton says. “If it were, I probably would have told you no matter what she said.”

    
“She’s my niece. I raised her like a daughter. It’s not your right to decide what constitutes a serious threat to her health.”

    
“You know better than anyone that pituitary tumors aren’t uncommon. Studies show that approximately twenty percent of the population has incidental pituitary tumors.”

    
“Depending on who’s surveying. Ten percent. Twenty percent. I don’t give a damn about statistics.”

    
“I’m sure you’ve seen them in autopsies. People never even knew they had them—a pituitary tumor isn’t why they ended up in your morgue.”