Predator

12

The Citation Xflies south at just under mach one as Lucy uploads files on a virtual private network that is so firewall-protected not even Homeland Security can break in.

At least, she believes her information infrastructure is secure. She believes that no hacker, including the government, can monitor the transmissions of classified data generated by the Heterogenous Image Transaction database management system that goes by the acronym HIT. She developed and programmed HIT herself. The government doesn’t know about it, she is sure of it. Few people do, she is sure of it. HIT is proprietary, and she could sell the software easily, but she doesn’t need the money, having made her fortune years ago from other software development, mostly from some of the same search engines she is conducting through cyberspace this minute, looking for any violent deaths that might have occurred in aSouth Floridabusiness of any description.

Other than homicides in the expected convenience and liquor stores, massage parlors and topless clubs, she has found no violent crime, unsolved or otherwise, that might verify what Basil Jenrette toldBenton. However, there once was a business called The Christmas Shop. It was located at the intersection of A1A and East Las Olas Boulevard, along a strip of tacky touristy boutiques and cafes and ice-cream joints on the beach. Two years ago, The Christmas Shop was sold to a chain called Beach Bums that specializes in T-shirts, swimwear and souvenirs.

It is hard for Joe to believe how many cases Scarpetta has worked in what is a relatively brief career. Forensic pathologists rarely land their first job until they are thirty, assuming their arduous educational track is continuous. Added to her six years of postgraduate medical training were three more for law school. By the time she was thirty-five, she was the chief of the most prominent medical examiner system in theUnited States. Unlike most chiefs, she wasn’t just an administrator. She did autopsies, thousands of them.

Most of them are in a database that is supposed to be accessible to her only, and she’s even gotten federal grants to conduct various research studies on violence-sexual violence, drug-related violence, domestic violence-all kinds of violence. In quite a number of her old cases, Marino, a local homicide detective when she was chief, was the lead investigator. So she has his reports in the database as well. It’s a candy store. It’s a fountain spewing fine champagne. It’s orgasmic.

Joe scrolls through case C328-93, the police suicide that is the model for this afternoon’s hell scene. He clicks on the scene photographs again, thinking about Jenny. In the real case, the trigger-happy daughter is facedown in a pool of blood on the living-room floor. She was shot three times, once in the abdomen, twice in the chest, and he thinks about the way she was dressed when she killed her daddy while he was on the toilet and then put on an act in front of the police before pulling out her pistol again. She died barefoot, in a pair of cutoff blue jeans and a T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing panties or a bra. He clicks to her autopsy photographs, not as interested in what she looked like with a Y incision as in how she looked naked on the cold, steel table. She was only fifteen when the police shot her dead, and he thinks of Jenny.

He looks up, smiles at her from the other side of his desk. She has been sitting patiently, waiting for instructions. He opens a desk drawer and pulls out a Glock nine-millimeter, pulls back the slide to make sure the chamber is clear, drops out the magazine and pushes the pistol across the desk to her.

“You ever shot a gun before?” he asks his newest teacher’s pet.

She has the cutest turned-up nose and huge eyes the color of milk chocolate, and he imagines her naked and dead like the girl in the scene photograph on his screen.

“I grew up with guns,” she says. “What’s that you’re looking at, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“E-mail,” he says, and not telling the truth has never bothered him.

He rather likes not telling the truth, likes it far more than dislikes it. Truth isn’t always truth. What is true? What is true is what he decides is true. It’s all a matter of interpretation. Jenny cranes her head to get a better look at what’s on his screen.

“Cool. People e-mail entire case files to you.”

“Sometimes,” he says, clicking to a different photograph, and the color printer behind his desk starts up. “What we’re doing is classified,” he then says. “Can I trust you?”

“Of course, Dr. Amos. I completely understand classified. If I didn’t, I’m training for the wrong profession.”

A color photograph of the dead girl in a pool of blood on the living-room floor slides into the printer tray. Joe turns around to get it, looks it over, hands it to her.

“That’s going to be you this afternoon,” he says.

“I hope not literally,” she teases.

“And this is your gun.” He looks at the Glock in front of her on the desk. “Where do you propose you hide it?”

She looks at the photograph, not fazed by it, and asks, “Where did she hide it?”

“You can’t see it in the photograph,” he replies. “A pocketbook, which, by the way, should have cued somebody. She finds her father dead, supposedly, calls nine-one-one, opens the door when the cops get there and has her pocketbook. She’s hysterical, never left the house, so why’s she walking around with her pocketbook?”

“That’s what you want me to do.”

“The pistol goes in your pocketbook. At some point, you reach in for tissues because you’re boo-hooing, and you pull the gun and start shooting.”

“Anything else?”

“Then you’re going to get killed. Try to look pretty.”

She smiles. “Anything else?”

“The way she’s dressed.” He looks at her, tries to show it in his eyes, what he wants.

She knows.

“I don’t have the exact same thing,” she replies, playing him a little, acting naive.

She’s anything but, probably been fucking since kindergarten.

“Well, Jenny, see if you can approximate. Shorts, T-shirt, no shoes or socks.”

“She doesn’t have on underwear, looks to me.”

“Then there’s that.”

“She looks like a slut.”

“Okay. Then look like a slut,” he says.

Jenny thinks this is very funny.

“I mean, you are a slut, aren’t you?” he asks, his small, dark eyes looking at her. “If not, I’ll ask somebody else. This hell scene requires a slut.”

“You don’t need someone else.”

“Oh, really.”

“Really,” she says.

She turns around, glancing at the shut door as if worried that someone might walk in. He doesn’t say anything.

“We could get in trouble,” she says.

“We won’t.”

“I don’t want to get kicked out,” she says.

“You want to be a death investigator when you grow up.”

She nods, looking at him, coolly playing with the top button of her Academy polo shirt. She looks good in it. He likes the way she fills it.

“I’m a grown-up,” she says.

“You’re fromTexas,” he then says, looking at the way she fills her polo shirt, the way she fills her snug-fitting khaki cargo pants. “They grow things big inTexas, don’t they.”

“Why, are you talking dirty to me, Dr. Amos?” she drawls.

He imagines her dead. He imagines her in a pool of blood, shot dead on the floor. He imagines her naked on the steel table. One of life’s fables is that dead bodies can’t be sexy. Naked is naked if the person looks good and hasn’t been dead long. To say a man has never had a thought about a beautiful woman who happens to be dead is a joke. Cops pin photographs on their corkboards, pictures of female victims who are exceptionally fine. Male medical examiners give lectures to cops and show them certain pictures, deliberately pick the ones they’ll like. Joe has seen it. He knows what guys do.

“You do a good job getting killed in the hell scene,” he says to Jenny, “and I’ll cook dinner for you. I’m a wine connoisseur.”

“You’re also engaged.”

“She’s at a conference inChicago. Maybe she’ll get snowed in.”

Jenny gets up. She looks at her watch, then looks at him.

“Who was your teacher’s pet before me?” she asks.

“You’re special,” he says.